Does this mean Maine might actually elect a Republican who actually votes, you know, Republican? I doubt it. Maine is pretty liberal, and even someone like Scott Brown might find it difficult to win there. I think you could still potentially elect a Republican more conservative than Snowe (which is, lets face it, not too hard), but the differences will be more in degree than in kind. But it might be possible to elect someone who wouldn’t vote for Obama’s pork-laden stimulus.
Will this make it more difficult for the Republicans to take the Senate? Maybe, but I still think a Republican takeover is more likely than not.
(Hat tip: Ace, who thinks “there’s something we’re not being told yet.” Illness? Obama making her Ambassador to Canada? Who knows?)
The Right Side of Austin offers up reassurance for those anxious over the fact they haven’t received their voter registration cards: Relax.
Because Democrats and liberal special interest groups like LULAC and the NAACP want to achieve in courts what they couldn’t at the ballot box, voter registration cards can’t be sent out until the legal redistricting battle has been settled. But if you were a registered voter last year, your new voter registration card will automatically be mailed out once the redistricting fight is settled.
So if you’ve been worrying, don’t. Once a date for the primary is set, everything should take care of itself…
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.
Today Instapundit Glenn Reynolds asks: “Back in 2008, the social-cons were all-in for Romney, to the point where Hugh Hewitt’s take became a running tagline (“You know who this is good for? Mitt Romney!”) that’s still used by by bloggers from time to time. Now, not so much. So what changed about Romney since 2008 to make him un-conservative?”
A good question, even though I wasn’t a Romney guy back in 2008. But three obvious answers occur to me:
The Tea Party Happened: The election of Obama and Obama’s extreme big-spending, big-government ways have “radicalized” Republican voters to the point that it’s no longer acceptable to campaign like a conservative and vote like a liberal. As the 2010 primary defeats of Charlie Crist and Mike Castle proved, Republican primary voters are no longer willing to give establishment Republicans a pass on their own free-spending, big government ways, and Mitt Romney is as Establishment as they come.
ObamaCare Happened: Before ObamaCare, Republicans might have been willing to downplay the socialistic, anti-freedom aspects of RomneyCare and its own individual mandate under the guise of state rights and the 10th Amendment. But after the passage of ObamaCare, RomneyCare has become a far greater political and ideological liability to Romney, and one that largely negates one of Republicans’ greatest attack issues against Obama, thus making it a much greater problem than it was in 2008.
Romney Isn’t Running Against john McCain: Despite John McCain’s many personal virtues, his voting record is far more that of an establishment Republican than a rock-ribbed conservative. Be it McCain-Feingold or the Gang of 14, McCain has constantly flirted with RINO-hood in his Senate career, making himself a media darling and infuriating the base. In 2008, there was a solid case to make that Mitt Romney was more conservative than McCain. It’s much harder to make the case that Romney is more conservative than Rick Santorum.
Bottom Line: Romney had flaws that were easier to overlook in 2008. You know whose conservative reputation the last four years have been bad for? Mitt Romney!
While it may be unseemly to kick someone when he’s not only down but actually out, the FEC report for now-withdrawn Democratic Senate candidate Ricardo Sanchez tells why he had to drop out of the race (even apart from his unfortunate house fire) in stark detail.
For Q4, Sanchez pulled in a paltry $40,317. So the anointed Democratic candidate pulled in about one twenty-fifth the amount in contributions serious Republican candidates like David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz received during the same period.
During the same quarter, the Sanchez campaign laid out $133,210 in operating expenditures. Even deducting the (by my quick count) $32,600 in refunded contributions at the end of the quarter, that’s a ruinous burn rate given how little he was taking in. Like the blue model welfare state, this sort of mismatch between receipts and spending is unsustainable.
If he were still in the race, I might wonder why Sanchez was not only paying a Jennifer Lehner $11,864 in payroll between October 1 and November 26, plus a $4,000 housing stipend (for San Antonio? That seems reasonable…if it’s for six months), but was also ponying up $2,500 consulting fees for a “Mrs. Ada B. Lehner” residing at the same Carmichael, California address as Jennifer. (“If you hire me, you also have to hire my mom.”) But since he’s dropped out, what’s the point?
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).
To make it easier to see how the fundraising race has progressed, I made a chart tracking donations to Ted Cruz, David Dewhurst and Tom Leppert:
Since this just tracks campaign donations, it doesn’t include self-funding, which both Dewhurst and Leppert have made extensive use of. After Dewhurst’s full Q4 FEC report is up, I’ll do another chart on those numbers.
A testy exchange between Ted Cruz and Tom Leppert at last week’s Texas Republican Assembly Biennial Endorsing Convention Biennial Endorsing Convention on Leppert’s gay rights parade and ACORN baggage that I, Matt Dowling and whoever was behind the now-silent Race to Replace KBH dug up.
Last week Ted Cruz was on the Glenn Beck Show:
Glenn Beck: “There’s no way you’re ever going to get elected. You make too much sense.”
Craig James appeared on WFAA (again, apologies for their crappy, non-YouTube video embedding):
Ted Cruz, Lela Pittenger and Ben Gambini all appeared at the North Shore Republican Women’s forum in Montgomery County.
Craig James is just fine with a later date for the primary. That piece isn’t particularly information, but I thought I would put it up since they do actually manage to mention all the Republican and Democratic candidates filed for the race, a sharp contrast with other news stories I could name…
The Texas Association of Business will have another Senate candidate forum in Austin tomorrow from 200-3:30 PM. Scheduled to attend are Ted Cruz, David Dewhurst, Tom Leppert and Craig James. I’ve been sending email back and forth with the James campaign to try a find a time to interview him while he’s in town, but it doesn’t look like we’ll find one that matches both our schedules. (It’s a busy time for my day job.) So we might end up doing an email interview instead.
The National Association of Realtors endorses Dewhurst. I’m sure this is a shocking turn of events completely unforeseen by anyone following the race.
Texas Sparkle lends her blog to Kevin Jackson so he can make the case for Craig James. His upshot seems to be that James is a tough competitor. Well, great. But getting your chin stitched up without anesthetic is probably a skill that will never be needed on the senate floor, and Mr. Jackson’s piece seems to be devoid of any actual discussion of political positions.
Of them, Paul Sadler gets endorsed by the AFL-CIO. So that’s a second traditional Democratic interest group Sadler has in his corner along with the legacy news media.
Profile of Democratic candidate Jason Gibson. “Gibson considers himself a mainstream Democrat who believes in lower taxes and efficient government and who supports the Second Amendment. He’s pro-labor, he said, with an abiding interest in worker safety, but still is working to fill in the blanks on most issues. Jobs and the economy, he said, are key. He has hired several well-regarded campaign consultants and has said he is willing to spend into the seven figures.”
I had both a wedding and a book release party to attend this weekend, so I haven’t had time until today to note that David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz have followed the lead of Craig James in releasing their tax returns.
The Dewhurst campaign announced they were releasing two years of tax returns (plus estimates for 2011)…and then failed to link to the returns from the announcement. (Perhaps it’s up somewhere on the Dewhurst site, but the lack of a press or social media contact listing makes such information difficult to ascertain.) They can be found at this Texas Tribune page. The Dewhurst campaign seems entirely too comfortable with letting the MSM continue in their role as information gatekeepers rather than allowing voters to access information directly.
And here’s the Tribune’s summary of those documents: “Dewhurst reported a total income of $1.01 million and tax payment of $281,188 in his 2010 report, and a $1.4 million loss and tax payment of $443,646 reported in his 2009 report.”
The Cruz campaign followed suite by releasing five years of tax returns, which can be found here. And here are links to the individual years:
(To be fair to the other candidates, I must note that there seems to be no way to find this from the Cruz website itself. However, unlike Dewhurst, the Cruz campaign is much better at giving contract addresses for the campaign team.)
Once again the Texas Tribune provides the too-lazy-to-flip-through-tax-forms overview: “Over the past five years, Cruz has increased his earnings with every filing. In 2006, he reported an income of $347,716. In 2007, that increased to $395,494. It jumped to $780,198 in 2008, and to $1.5 million in 2009.” Good for him. They also go on to note “With Cruz’s disclosure, this leaves only former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert among the major Republican U.S. Senate candidates who has yet to release his tax returns.” The Leppert campaign has promised to do so, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it takes a few days to dig out and digitize his tax returns.
If I have time (a commodity in short supply right now), I’ll try to dig through the James, Dewhurst, and Cruz returns for nuggets of insight. Kudos to all three of the candidates for releasing their tax forms, and especially to James for getting the ball rolling.
No word on whether any of the Democrats in the race will follow suit. Maybe no one has asked them yet…
