Matthew Dowd, Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-ABC-News-dweeb-turned-Democrat is running against Republican incumbent Dan Patrick for Texas Lieutenant Governor:
Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for George W. Bush’s presidential reelection campaign who later split with the former president publicly, is running for lieutenant governor as a Democrat.
Dowd also has worked for Bob Bullock, who in 1994 was the last Democrat elected as Texas lieutenant governor, and faces an uphill battle to unseat Republican Dan Patrick, the state’s second-highest-ranking official who has steered Texas politics into the far-right fringes of the GOP.
In a two-and-a-half minute campaign announcement video, Dowd said GOP politicians have failed the state, zeroing in on Patrick, who he called “cruel and craven” and denounced as a divisive figure who puts his political ambitions over the needs of everyday Texans.
“Enough is enough. We need more officials who tell the truth, who believe in public services, in common sense with common decency for the common good. … We need to expect more from our politicians,” Dowd says in the ad. “Dan Patrick believes in none of those and that is why I am running for the powerful office of lieutenant governor of this great state.”
In an interview with The Texas Tribune, Dowd said he started seriously considering running for office after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump who were trying to stop the certification of last year’s presidential election. But it wasn’t until after the state’s legislative session that Dowd really focused on Patrick as his target.
Well, that’s certainly a very swampy resume. When we last mentioned Dowd he was lying about jihad terror fatalities. And he seems to have scrubbed his Twitter history:
Matthew Dowd had 180,000 tweets in late May 2021.
Now he has less than 5,000 tweets.
What is he hiding? pic.twitter.com/ToNLumznbF
— Cameron Cawthorne (@Cam_Cawthorne) September 29, 2021
Does this mean that Democrats will have to swallow their pride, crank up the “strange new respect” machine, and embrace a Bushie in order to have a chance to beat Patrick?
Not necessarily. Mike Collier, who lost to Patrick by 400,000 votes in 2018, looks to be running again, has already spent half a million dollars and had over $200,000 on hand as of the last reporting cycle. He also ran ahead of Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke in 171 Texas counties in 2018.
Of course, at last count, Patrick had over $23 million on hand, a substantial warchest for a Republican incumbent in a Republican state in a Republican-favoring cycle that has no primary challengers to worry about.
Patrick seems formidable enough that George P. Bush forwent a primary run against him to run for Attorney General instead. Are we to believe that a turncoat Bush hanger-on has a better chance against Patrick than an actual Bush? I tend to doubt it. Especially since Dowd seems to have gone full Social Justice Warrior:
The thing I admire the most about @matthewjdowd is that he has the courage of his convictions. pic.twitter.com/yrqPyeJZv6
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) September 29, 2021
Good thing there aren’t a lot of white Christian men in Texas. Then again, Dowd doesn’t seem a man with a fine grasp of details:
Uhmm… *Sutherland Springs pic.twitter.com/odnwIObkFa
— Brad Johnson (@bradj_TX) September 29, 2021
Turncoat candidates seldom do well in either party, at least since the Great Red Awakening that swept the south in the late 20th century. There’s no reason to believe a former Bushie is going to waltz into a high profile statewide Democratic Party nomination in Texas just because various swamp creatures are pushing his candidacy.