Wednesday night I finally got a chance to interview Craig James, so I hope to have the video of that up next week (though I have to warn you in advance that the technical quality is not as good as it could be, as the location (the Rudy’s on south 360) was less than ideal for filming, sound-wise). I also hope (if he has the time) to post an email mini-interview with Ted Cruz specifically focused on the Supreme Court taking up the ObamaCare case.
Cruz also got a generally fair and balanced piece on his arguing of cases before the Supreme Court by Kate Alexander in the Austin-American Statesman. Of all the MSM reporters covering the race, so far I’d say she’s doing the best job, something I never thought I would say about someone at the Statesman…
And the one upcoming debate Dewhurst is not ducking? Turns out one of the hosts is backing a Dewhurst SuperPac That’s some might fine objective journalism you’ve got going on there, Lou…
Paul Sadler, Addie Dainell Allen and Grady Yarbrough all appeared at a debate in Dallas, the details of which, alas, are hidden behind the Dallas Morning News paywall. But where was Sean Hubbard?
This is a significant pickup for the Cruz campaign, since David Dewhurst was previously endorsed by the NRA for Lt. Governor. Thus far Dewhurst has gotten a the lion’s share of business group endorsements, split social conservative groups with Cruz, and essentially garnered none of the economic conservative or Tea Party endorsements, which Cruz has been dominating. The Gun Owners of America is a big win for Cruz, since Texas has lots of gun owners. My guess (and it’s just a guess) is that the NRA will either issue no endorsement in the race, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that they could endorse Dewhurst. (How the NRA does endorsements is a somewhat murky area I don’t fully understand, especially when they candidates in question have no legislative record.)
Gun Owners of America is a smaller and newer organization than the NRA, and have been far-stauncher in support of issues like concealed carry that the NRA was initially more cautious on. It’s a good endorsement for Cruz, and one that will solidify his position as the candidate most likely to be in a runoff with Dewhurst.
It’s been a very quiet week in the Senate race. I suspect that some of the candidates had already scheduled vacation or break time following the original March primary date, so I expect things to pick up shortly. But Both Ted Cruz and David Dewhurst released ads mentioning their fathers:
Ted Cruz has released two radio ads, one called “Fighter” and the other “Delivered”:
Forbes columnist Louis Woodhill looks at Ted Cruz’s economic program. He generally likes them, but doesn’t go far enough in some areas, and goes to far in seeking entitlement reform. I agree with the former and disagree with the latter.
Robert T. Garrett in The Dallas Morning news says that the “guilt by association” wars between Cruz, Dewhurst, and Craig James is more than a little silly. Unless there’s more to the Tony Podesta story than the Cruz campaign has been able to bring forth, I tend to agree.
He also seems to be doing something of a straddle on the Texas Women’s Health Program issue:”I’m all for protecting life. I’m pro-life. I’m also for taking care of women and their health so there’s a balance somewhere in there, personal responsibility, and if they have a need for things, that they need to be able to take care of it themselves. If they can’t, then there needs to be a service to help them take care of their health issues.”
The Texas Tribune talks about Texas having a conservative core of voters, and how that’s affecting the presidential and Senate races (among others). It’s actually not too bad as these things go, but I do wonder if anyone has ever done a similar profile on “extremely liberal” voters?
Finally, I still haven’t been able to meet with David Dewhurst or Craig James for interviews. If the campaigns of either are reading this, and your candidate will be in either Austin or Houston sometime in the next month, please contact me so we can set up an interview.
A left-wing Irish documentary maker sets out to make a documentary about the plight of the Palestinians, but gets waylayed by those annoying facts, and instead decides to tell both sides of the story. Guess what? His friends aren’t interested. “The problem began when I resolved to come back with a film that showed both sides of the coin. Actually there are many more than two. Which is why my film is called Forty Shades of Grey. But only one side was wanted back in Dublin. My peers expected me to come back with an attack on Israel. No grey areas were acceptable.”
Israel and Hamas declare a ceasefire after four days of fighting. Honestly, maybe because I was traveling, or because I no longer feel the need to consult MSM news sources on a daily basis, I was actually unaware that there was slightly more violence than usual in the Middle East. The fact that Hamas cried uncle after a mere four days, despite the fact that Israel set it off by giving Hamas leader Zuhair al-Qaissi an express ticket to paradise, tells you that they must really have been getting their asses kicked by the IDF. Maybe Zuhair al-Qaissi really was important, or possibly Iran and Syria have had their hands too full to dole out the Qassam rockets with their customary generosity.
Today was going to be the day Texans went to the polls, but the redistricting lawsuit put the kibosh on that plan. Now we get six more weeks of winter twelve more weeks of campaigning.
David Dewhurst denies that the meeting he attending in Washington, DC at Democrat Tony Podesta’s house was a fundraiser, and he says the people attending were Republicans who worked for the Podesta Group, not Democrats. I would link directly to Dewhurst’s denial, but the recent reorganization of the Andrew Breitbart empire (evidently already planned before his untimely death) has broken the links.
David Dewhurst also hits Cruz for (in their words) “Ted Cruz’s close ties to the Obama Administration.” How close? Big donations to Democrats from…partners at the Morgan, Lewis and Bockius law where Cruz is also partner. Given that there are some 1,300 lawyers employed by Morgan, Lewis and Bockius, of which some 469 are partners, and the firm isn’t named Morgan, Lewis, Bockius and Cruz, this is pretty weak sauce. (Weaker even than the working for Red China slam, which at least had the virtue of involving Cruz directly.)
Cruz won three more straw polls: the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club, Brazos County GOP and New Braunfels GOP Women. However, do note that the Cruz campaign’s claim that Cruz “has now beaten all the major candidates in 20 straw polls by wide margins” is carefully phrased to omit the fact that Glenn Addison won two straw polls in that timeframe…
The “insiders” polled by the Texas Tribune were somewhat split, but 62% think the Republican Senate race will end up in a runoff. They also think Greg Abbott can take Rick Perry in the 2014 Governor’s race, should Perry run again. Also this from one respondent to the “biggest surprise” question: “Doggett switches to U.S. Senate race.” I’ve had similar thoughts myself. With his $3 million war chest and name recognition, Doggett could easily win the Democratic primary…only to be creamed by Cruz or Dewhurst in the general election. Hmmm, lose a Senate race in the general election, or potentially lose your congressional seat in the Democratic primary? Decisions, decisions. (It’s not to be, as Doggett, as expected, filed for the District 35 race today.)
Trying to catch back up with the Senate race after my trip, so some of this may be slightly old news:
The biggest recent news in the Senate race is the newest Texas Tribune/UT poll that shows David Dewhurst leading the race at 38%, but with Ted Cruz up to 27%. Tom Leppert and Craig James are tied way back in third place at 7% each, an outcome that must be discouraging for the Leppert team, given that he’s been running for over a year and James has only been running for two months. Glenn Addison and Lela Pittenger are the only other candidates to get any support at all at 1% each. However, the margin of error is ±5%. Full results in PDF form here.
Dewhurst managed to pull in big bucks from a big donor in Washington. A big democratic donor. “He was doing what he always does: reaching across the aisle. He’s not a Washington insider yet, and he’s already a Washington insider. No wonder the Texas press has so often labeled him ‘bipartisan’…This is a critical race for the Tea Party and for conservatives across the country. If Dewhurst wins, we’ll have yet another squish on our hands – and a squish who is only too eager to rub elbows with the liberal establishment.” (Hat tip: Must Read Texas.)
This Kate Alexander piece in the Austin-American Statesman is pretty interesting, not so much for the information there (BattleSwarm readers will find very little I haven’t already covered), but for the approach. Overall the piece is probably mildly negative on Cruz, but not unfairly negative. Unlike, say, certain of Robert T. Garrett’s pieces in The Dallas Morning News, the issues she raises are generally real and non-trivial, though not ones that most conservatives will find of burning importance.
Cruz womps the field in a survey of the North Texas Tea Party.
The Dewhurst campaign attacks Cruz for “not supporting Sen. John Cornyn for Republican Senate Whip.”
Cruz has previously told reporters it’s more important to elect Senators who would pledge fealty to a divisive challenge to GOP leadership than it is for Republicans to regain its U.S. Senate majority this year. Cruz’s glaring lack of support for Sen. Cornyn, who’s now responsible for Republican efforts to retake that majority, effectively puts Cruz’s personal ambition and interests above conservative attempts to organize and stop the Obama agenda.
So Dewhurst is attacking Cruz for actually wanting to enact conservative ideas rather than just paying lip-service to it while toeing the Republican establishment line. Got it. (Maybe someone on Team Dewhurst might want to take a look at this.)
Scott Haddock interviews Tom Leppert Part 1 and Part 2.
The Texas Tribune did an interview with Craig James:
Glenn Addison gets a profile by the Houston Chronicle‘s Joe Holley. Addison’s evident friendliness with the John Birch society (yes, it’s still around) is not a plus in my book. I am gratified to see that Holley, who I dinged heavily, correctly lists both the number of candidates for each party, as well as their names.
That same TT/UT poll shows the Democratic side of the race virtually tied, with Sean Hubbard at 12%, Paul Sadler, Daniel Boone, and Addie D. Allen all tied at 10%, and John Morton (who the Democrats kicked off the ballot two months ago) at 3%. That’s good news for Hubbard (frontrunner again!) and Allen (whose campaign might be charitably called “low-key”), and bad news for anointed Democratic establishment candidate Sadler and “Gene Kelly 2.0” Boone. But the margin of error for Democrats is even higher at ±6%, so it’s still anyone’s race at this point.
Democrat Addie D. Allen now has a website (though it just has the GoDaddy parking page for now) and a Twitter feed.
University of Texas Democrats endorse Paul Sadler. That should be good for an extra five, maybe even six votes, easy…
Daniel Boone appeared before the Llano Tea Party, which I think makes him the first Democratic senate candidate to take up the repeated Tea Party offers for Democrats to speak. Good for him.
Pro-tip for Boone: Most people put the newest content at the top of their blog, not the oldest.
As far as I can tell, Craig James, Charles Holcomb, Ben Gambini, Joe Agris and Addie D. Allen have not filed Q4 reports with the FEC. Maybe none of them conducted any fundraising in the quarter.
I just got back from a business trip abroad, so it’s taking me a little time to get back up to speed. One thing I did want to note was David Jennings of Big Jolly Politics taking a couple of my senate race posts and running with them.
First, he took a look at that donation chart I did, and then produced several additional interesting charts. He also dug deeper into Dewhurst’s 800+ page Q4 report and noticed something that I didn’t, namely that Dewhurst loaned his campaign $2 million, then the campaign paid off the loan four days later, then loaned his campaign another $2 million on December 31. Which means he spent $2.4 million, not $4.4 million, in Q4. Why he did that I couldn’t tell you, unless there’s some sort of campaign finance reason, or he wants to make it look like he put more money into his campaign than he actually did.
I do, however, have differences with Jennings on interpreting the data. When he says “Much has been made of Dewhurst’s and Leppert’s ability to self-fund,” that’s like saying “Much has been made of Wolfgang Mozart and Antonio Salieri’s composing ability.” Tom Leppert has a net worth of $12 million, David Dewhurst has a net worth of $225 million. Leppert simply can’t self fund to the extent that Dewhurst can, which is probably a big reason why Leppert went from throwing in $1 million in self-funding in both Q1 and Q2 to only half that in Q3 and Q4.
Likewise, his contention that Leppert has slipped into second place relies on taking that internal Dewhurst poll as gospel, which (as I’ve argued time and time again) we can’t do due not only to its provenience, but also the opaque nature of its methodology. And his list of Cruz “stumbles” is mostly much ado about nothing, as I don’t see anything on his list that would cause Republican voters to change their vote.
Still, they’re interesting posts on the race, even if I disagree with some of the conclusions.
When I first started covering the senate race, I would grab just about any scrap of information I could about and throw a link to it. Now? The firehose is starting to open up, and I’m getting a bit more selective. For example, I’m not feeling the need to link to Democrat Paul Sadler calling out David Dewhurst over education funding (or Dewhurst’s response), especially since Sadler repeats the lie that the state cut education funding, when it actually increased slightly. (Actually, Sadler attacking Dewhurst, and Dewhurst counter-attacking, is good for both of them; by attacking each other, not only do they garner publicity, but it’s easier for them to ignore the primary challengers that threaten them from their left and right flanks (respectively.) Likewise, I’m not going to link to the Politifact piece on Cruz, since doing so would suggest Politifact has something resembling credibility, which it doesn’t.
Maybe I’m just feeling cranky today.
Politico looks at the Cruz-Dewhurst contest. The idea that Tom Leppert is in second place is mainly supported by that internal Dewhurst poll, which is (as I’ve argued before) dubious due to the completely opaque nature of the methodology,
David Dewhurst: The GOP’s Bad Side Personified: Dewhurst’s “complete disregard for the voters has become so pervasive an issue that it threatens to throw him into a downward spiral; and rightfully so…familiarity with Dewhurst makes it easy to discern that the more he interacts with the right-wing base, the higher his negatives grow.” Ouch!
Ted Cruz was interviewed several times at CPAC. Here he is on Fox Business News:
He also gets some love from The American Spectator.
Dewhurst campaign endorsed by HOSPICE, errr, HOSPAC, the Texas Hospital Association’s political action committee. I can see Dewhurst seeking these business group endorsements, I just can’t see why he would think announcing them to the world at large would cause anyone to vote for him. Every single one of them is like a big rubber stamp that reads APPROVED REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT CANDIDATE.
Dewhurst picks up the endorsement of the Texas Agricultural Aviation Association, which means…wait, really? That’s a real organization? There are enough cropdusters in Texas that they have their own PAC? How can I be sure they’re not just making it up to see if I’ll link to it?
This tiff by the Glenn Addison campaign over Cruz campaign “dirty tricks” is much ado about nothing. You mean opposition research staffers actually sign up for opponent’s emails? Do tell. The piece also mentions that Team Dewhurst is the one pushing for inclusion of Addison in the debates, since he potentially siphons conservative votes from Cruz. That’s smart thinking from the Dewhurst campaign, and even principled, as Addison has run a hard-working, serious Senate campaign in every aspect except fundraising.
Craig James gets some fundraising help from fellow “Pony Express” backfield star (and NFL Hall of Famer) Eric Dickerson.
He also endorsed Rick Santorum for President. That’s probably a pretty canny move for him, as Santorum (for good or ill) seems to be consolidating support as the anti-Romney conservative candidate, and thus, very possibly, the actual GOP candidate. (Now that I’ve said that, given my previous prognostication skills when it comes to predicting Presidential races, expect Ron Paul to sweep Super Tuesday.) It’s quite possible that some Santorum supporters take a closer look at him on that basis alone.
James discusses his endorsement on (you guessed it) Mark Davis of WBAP, who seems to be the go-to radio guy for this race:
Paul Burka covers it as well. Ignore the usual Burka liberal hand-wringing and there’s actually a lot of useful information here. (Hat tip: Texas Iconoclast, which has stopped updating the main page, but still puts tidbits in their sidebar.)
The Texas Tribune offers a handy overview of the their tax returns.
Cruz wins another straw poll, this one at the Tarrant County Republican Party Candidate Fair.
Joe Holley profiles James. The most interesting takeaway for me is learning that James has two of Rick Perry’s longtime financial supporters backing him: Houston investor Jim Lee and Dallas insurance executive Roy Bailey. And the fact that James only set up Texans for a Better America in April, after his name was already floated as a potential Senate candidate.
Another Perry supporter, campaign manager Rob Johnson, lands a gig working for David Dewhurst’s Super PAC “Texas Conservatives Fund” to support his Senate campaign. That’s not the only Dewhurst PAC: “Former Harris County Republican Party chairman Gary Polland and San Francisco-based political consultant Bob Wickers recently formed the Conservative Renewal PAC.”
The Dewhurst campaign is crying foul on Cruz hitting them over the Super PAC, pointing out Cruz’s support from the Club for Growth PAC. The Cruz campaign retorts that The Club For Growth PAC has been around for years to help various candidates, while Dewhurst’s PACs exist only to serve David Dewhurst.
James calls for Eric Holder’s resignation, and says that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott should be the next U.S. Attorney General. That’s interesting, because I got the impression that Abbott was pretty close to Cruz, though I don’t think he’s formally endorsed him.
Speaking of which, Paul Sadler appeared on WFAA, they of the crappy video embedding:
Salder raised $5,000 in Q4. Granted, he didn’t join the race until December 19, but that’s still pretty poor for the Anointed Democratic Establishment Candidate.
Even Daniel Boone raised more money, in Q4, raising $5,401.
David Dewhurst loaned his campaign another $2 million of his own money, according to his Q4 report. That’s a considerable chunk of change, but I imagine the Cruz campaign is breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn’t 5 times that much.
Another thing that strikes me about his Q4 report (which I have only given a cursory glance to, given there’s more than 800 pages to it) is Dewhurst’s incredibly high burn rate. He’s already spent $4,397,491. Some examples of what he’s spending money on:
He seems to be spending $500 a day each on Facebook and Google advertising. I’m not sure that’s money well spent at this stage of the campaign. Last two weeks? Sure. Now? Not so much.
Campaign manager James Bognet seems to be pulling down a cool $35,000 a month, plus reimbursement expenses.
Finance director Rebecca McMullin is pulling down a respectable $9,480 a month, plus expenses. Kevin Moomaw, an old Dewhurst hand he lured back from his cushy job as a UT professor, is making about the same, which is a goooooooooood salary. (Inside joke.)
He gave pollster Michael Baselice just over $24,000.
The nice thing about being the “bank” in the race is that you don’t have to worry about funding a top-heavy campaign if you’re getting results. Is he? So far the Dewhurst campaign hasn’t knocked me out with its organizational skill. It’s competent, but I think both the Cruz and Leppert campaigns have been more obviously focused and effective at communicating. But I’m probably not the type of voter the Dewhurst campaign is trying to reach (as far as I can tell, Team Dewhurst reachout to bloggers and new media (beyond the obligatory Facebook and Twitter accounts) is non-existent).