George Will says that Dewhurst is good enough. I would take issue with one of Will’s assertions, though: If you read that letter signed by eighteen Texas state senators, it is not “in support of Dewhurst,” but rather a technical description of the various legislative fates of the various bills Cruz said Dewhurst either killed behind the scenes, or else didn’t push hard enough for. It’s not an endorsement of Dewhurst’s candidacy by those Senators. However, Dewhurst did just pick up the endorsement of…
State Senator Dan Patrick. Given the significant differences Dewhurst and Patrick have had over the years (most notably the fate of the anti-groping bill), that’s a good pickup for Dewhurst, though I don’t think it really moves the needle.
Many members of the legislative Tea Party Caucus are not pleased.
Dewhurst’s conservative credentials get examined by Rice professor Mark P. Jones, who concludes that “Dewhurst’s ideological location is somewhere in the moderate or centrist wings of the Republican Senate delegation,” while passing legislation acceptable to “most” Republicans.
Blogger Befuddled by the Clowns says that “Dewhurst because he clearly feels he will be able to swing in and buy the votes. In my mind, this represents the same old arrogance that has existed in Washington DC for decades. This prevailing attitude is the very essence that I want evaporated from our Federal Government…It is clear that David Dewhurst is out of touch with the real working class and will bring his elitist ideals with him. These are the reasons why I voted for Ted Cruz.”
Happy Friday the 13th! The big news this week is Ted Cruz topping David Dewhurst in two separate external polls (none of this internal crap) and Dewhurst not only making a pro-amnesty speech in 2007, but making things ten times worse by trying to scrub mention of it off his website.
Paul Burka believes the poll numbers. “I’m buying. The Dewhurst camp ran a lackluster campaign.” And then the usual Rick Perry bashing. (“From Smitty’s BBQ I stab at thee!”)
Those polls were so good for Cruz, some people are already starting to suggest that Cruz might have coattails.
Now on to what some on Twitter are calling #404gate: In a 2007 speech in Laredo, Dewhurst said “I support a guest worker program for those here today illegally.” If not full-blown Amnesty, I think it’s fair to call that “Amnesty light.”
Pulling the amnesty speech has just drawn more attention to it. I believe in the world of soccer this is what’s known as an “own goal.”
Has no one at Team Dewhurst every heard of “the Internet?” One does not simply remove something from the Internet. There’s always going to be a cache of it somewhere. And, indeed, there is.
Dewhurst has the Texas Republican Senate Caucus issue a letter kinda, sorta denying Cruz’s charges against Dewhurst on sanctuary cities, spending, and TSA groping. But if you actually read the letter, it only details the bare-bones legislative maneuvers, and not what Dewhurst did behind the scenes (which made up much of Cruz’s accusations). But give Dewhurst credit: He did get every Republican State Senator except Brian Birdwell to sign it.
Dewhurst appeared on KTSA:
Also on KSKY:
He also appeared on Fox News I would embed the video of it here, but the video quality is stunningly awful. We’re talking “wouldn’t even be acceptable for online viewing in 1997” awful…
You know, this Dewhurst Facebook Timeline parody attack video on Cruz might almost have been amusing if they could have made it shorter. But right there at 1:14, when it says “DC Special Interest Groups,” it has very legible icons for Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, and Senate Conservative PAC Fund. Guys, for the majority of people voting in the Texas Republican runoff, those are reasons to vote for Ted Cruz, not against him:
And once again, the Dewhurst campaign is slamming Cruz for being…a lawyer.
Even though I’ve endorsed Ted Cruz, I think it only fair to point out that Dewhurst has, in fact, constantly stated that he’s in favor of repealing ObamaCare pretty much since he joined the Senate race. (I even used the Wayback machine to verify it.) However, Cruz has been more fervent and articulate in campaigning against ObamaCare, making the phrase “repeal every syllable of every word of Obamacare” one of his stock talking points from the very beginning of his campaign. He’s also discussed the 10th Amendment reasons why ObamaCare is unconstitutional, something that I don’t recall Dewhurst doing. (Dewhurst has mentioned the 10th Amendment in support of the Texas Voter ID law.)
Cruz’s worry (which I think is legitimate) is that Dewhurst might be willing to compromise on ObamaCare. And I could easily see Dewhurst signing on with some “Group of 14” (or whatever) to needlessly save ObamaCare despite a Republican House, Senate, and White House, rather than push for full repeal.
Which is why this rings a little hollow to me:
But unlike some of Dewhurst’s other ads, at least that one probably won’t cost him votes…
Here’s the video of last week’s Cruz-Dewhurst debate:
The Dewhurst campaign is pointing to this Cruz appearance on the Dan Patrick show as evidence Cruz is a hothead:
34 minutes? No time to listen tonight…
And here’s still another journalist opining that the mid-Summer runoff date will mean. Memo to the MSM: IT’S TEXAS! IT’S HOT! WE’RE FREAKING USE TO IT!
Grady Yarbrough and Paul Sadler also debated last week. Yarbrough said he supported a border wall, saying that the Berlin Wall was effective. Hmmm, I don’t think I would have made that analogy…
Speaking of things I’m not watching tonight, here’s KERA’s embeddable video of the Democratic debate:
More on the Democratic debate. Another summary. My summary of those two summaries: Yarbrough wants a border wall and legal pot, and Sadler is against both of those. Sadler does actually say the national debt is too high.
Here’s a nifty interactive primary map for the Democratic side of the Texas Senate race. What jumps out at me is less the respective totals for the Democratic candidates than the fact that that there were no votes cast in the Democratic primary for United States Senator at all in 13 counties. Sure, some (like Loving) are sparsely populated. But out of the 13,153 registered voters in Hockley County, not a single one cast a vote in the Democratic Senate primary? Either there’s something screwy with the data collection, or the Texas Democratic Party is even more pathetic than even i realized.
One more tidbit: Sean Hubbard came in dead last in his home base of Dallas County…
I put off putting up the latest Texas Senate race update until the Republican Party of Texas convention in Ft. Worth concluded. Good thing, too, since a lot of news came out of it, almost none of which was good for Dewhurst, but some of this news may be a bit old.
Ted Cruz appears on Fox News:
Dewhurst claims he wants more than five debates with Cruz. Since Dewhurst did extremely poorly in the ones he did have, color me skeptical.
The Cruz campaign says it’s raised a lot more Texas contributors and small donors than Dewhurst does. While I think they’re probably correct, honesty compels me to point out that comparing Cruz’s internal June 4 donation stats with Dewhurst’s May 17 FEC stats is not an apples-to-apples comparison for many reasons, not last of which is that FEC reports only show donations over $200, so the 69 number for “donations under $250” is simply misleading. (When I pointed this out to the Cruz campaign, they noted that Dewhurst is free to release his own small-donor statistics. Which is true.)
A look at various reasons Dewhurst couldn’t win without a runoff. Ahem: “Just about everybody bet on Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to win outright.” yeah, Ross Ramsey, everyone except those of us who were actually paying attention to the race.
And as far as I can tell looking at the stats on his official page, the most people who have listened to any David Dewhurst YouTube radio interview posted in the last month is…35.
It’s been more than a week since the primary, and we’re finally getting a trickle of information about the mysterious Grady Yarbrough, the man who garnered 127,971 votes in last week’s primary and will be face Paul Sadler in the runoff to determine the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate.
We have a picture of him, thanks to the one he provided various voter guides:
This is not the first statewide race Yarbrough has run, but the fourth, since he “ran unsuccessfully in 1986 and 1990 for the GOP nomination for land commissioner, and in 1994 as a Democrat for state treasurer.”
Maybe Grady Yarbrough’s campaign evaded my sight because it was designed to? According to this tidbit from the Texas Tribune’s election night liveblog:
Reached by phone, Yarbrough said he had not been following the results but is not surprised he is running ahead of Addie Allen and Sean Hubbard and only behind former state Rep. Paul Sadler.
“I felt that it would be a runoff and yes, I have a plan for the runoff,” Yarbrough said. “It’s turning out the way I thought it would.”
Unlike his three competitors in the primary, Yarbrough has not reported raising or spending any money with the Federal Elections Commission. Yarbrough said he just hasn’t filed any reports yet but did spend money around the state promoting his campaign. Yarbrough said he advertised in African-American newspapers and had yard signs up in several parts of the state.
“I spent money, you bet I have,” Yarbrough said.
In this interview, Yarbrough says that he “campaigns seven days a week, often up to 16 hours a day.” Also this: “I am doing selective campaigning. When there is a heavy Hispanic and African-American population in those counties, I go directly to those places. That’s how I’ve gotten to where I am now.”
Obviously, a strategy to advertise in black newspapers around the state and do only face-to-face campaigning would fly completely under my radar (and explain last week’s endorsement news). Also, if he was indeed doing events seven days a week, it explains one reason he beat Sean Hubbard for the runoff spot: he out-hustled and out-worked him. Imagine that.
Could voters be confusing him with long-dead liberal Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough? (Ralph Yarborough was probably the single most influential figure in turning the Texas Democratic Party from a conservative majority party to a liberal minority party.) Given that Ralph Yarborough hasn’t been on the ballot in 40 years, I tend to doubt it. (Also, it seems to me that some of the media outlets pushing this theory are the same ones who keep telling us that people today have the attention spans of meth-addicted gnats.)
I sent an email request to Grady Yarbrough through his Facebook page asking for an interview. I’ll let you know if he agrees to one (or even replies).
Even Paul Burka has has wised-up to fake Dewhurst internal polls. “Well, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twenty times, shame on me. The Dewhurst campaign has made too many claims about why a Dewhurst victory was inevitable without backing them up. The only poll that matters is the one that will be taken on July 31.”
Speaking of polls, both PPP and UT/TT polls were in the ballpark for the Republican race, but horribly off for the Democratic side. Any ideas why?
Now put your hands down, because you’re all damn liars.
Yarbrough has no website, no Facebook page, no Twitter feed. (I looked. Repeatedly. Hell, I even looked on Bing, just to be sure, such is my dedication.) He might as well be Keyser Soze. And yet he’s in the runoff? Did they think they were voting for the guy from Sanford & Son?
Can anyone explain this to me? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
(One possibility: He’s the only Democratic candidate who bothered to fill out the Texas League of Women Voter’s Questionnaire.)
And Sean Hubbard, the guy who’s been running the longest, who stayed in the race when Ricardo Sanchez was The Anointed One, the one who was participating in debates and finally getting press as Sadler’s biggest challenger, came in a distant 4th with 16% of the vote. Ouch!
Since tomorrow is election day, here’s a final Senate race roundup. You might want to take time today to find your voter registration card, locate your polling place, and figure out who you want to vote for.
Since it’s possible people who haven’t been following the race until now are tuning into this blog, you might want to take a look at:
Peggy Fikac’s roundup of the race. Including this: “Retired teacher Addie Ratliff tossed a verbal grenade at Dewhurst. ‘He’s trash,’ said Ratliff, 74. ‘I just don’t like him. I think he’s a RINO,’ a Republican-in-name-only.”
Somehow I missed the fact that Dewhurst picked up the endorsement of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma back on May 18. I think they would have trumpeted that more, since it brings the total of sitting Senators who have endorsed Dewhurst to [long pause while Your Humble Narrator counts on his fingers for dramatic effect] one.
One source familiar with Texas politics who supports Cruz says that he knows “a number of significant donors” who also have business interests in the state and have been “told by their lobbyists in Austin, ‘Don’t dare give money to Ted, don’t endorse Ted . . . because if you do you’ll never get anything else through in Austin.’”
Dewhurst says Cruz hasn’t met a fighter like him before. Maybe, but when was the last truly competitive race Dewhurst ran? 2002? And his last contested Republican primary fight was against Jerry Patterson for Land Commissioner in 1998.
Speaking of candidates with one notable sitting congressman supporting them, here’s Rep. Michael Burgess on Tom Leppert:
Paul Sadler cements his standing as the MSM anointed Democratic candidate, snagging the endorsements of The Austin American Statesman, The Dallas Morning News, The Austin Chronicle, and The San Antonio Express-News.
The Democratic Senate race is a much more low-key affair. “Sadler has raised less than $80,000, Hubbard less than half that with $30,000.” Also this: “‘I’ve talked to people who have said, “Get through the primary and we’ll make sure you have money to work with,”‘ Hubbard said.” Psst, Sean, hate to tell you, but those people are lying to you. Chances are good they said the same thing to Ricardo Sanchez, and look where it got him…
Both Ron Paul and Rand Paul have endorsed Ted Cruz. Rand Paul, of course, has been in Cruz’s corner a while. Not as big as the Sarah Palin endorsement, but not chopped liver either.
I still don’t see how highlighting his father’s World War II service is supposed to convince me to vote for Dewhurst. (Cruz’s story of his father (who was at Sunday’s rally) at least dovetails nicely with his campaign themes.)
Any new information in the Texas Tribune round-up of the race? (scans it) Nope.
Even by the previous lame standards of Team Dewhurst leaks, this “internal poll leak” that shows Leppert about to overtake Cruz is lame.
Heh. Team Dewhurst has that “Ted Cruz on Chinese currency ad” appearing on the sidebar of National Review Online. You know, the magazine that just endorsed Cruz. I don’t think that ad will be winning Dewhurst any new supporters…
