And here’s your final Texas Senate Race update for 2012! I’ve been covering this race since Kay Bailey Hutchison decided not to run again on January 13, 2011.
I expect Ted Cruz to beat Paul Sadler handily (and here’s my endorsement of Cruz). Later today I hope to have a prediction up on just how well I expect him to do.
I was going to have an insightful, data-filed post on the Texas 23rd Congressional district race, but then I realized that the Los Angeles Times data I was relying on flipped at least one bit of information (NRA-ILA is doing independent expenditures against Pete Gallego, not against Rep. Francisco “Quico” Canseco), which means I can’t trust the rest. Super executive summary: Canseco has a huge cash on-hand advantage, $785,623 to $23,250, but assuming the other LA Times numbers are right, the independent expenditure race is a lot closer to even.
Now on to a LinkSwarm a week before the election:
Lawrence Person’s BattleSwarm Blog endorses Ted Cruz for United States Senator. I believe that Cruz is the best candidate, that he has a long, strong, and deep commitment to conservative principles, and that he will make a great Senator for Texas.
I originally endorsed Cruz on April 30, a month before the Republican primary, and gave extended reasons why Cruz was the best candidate of all those running in the Republican primary, weighing the strengths and weaknesses of each. This post reiterates that endorsement, and explains why Ted Cruz is a vastly superior choice for Senator than Democrat Paul Sadler.
Sadler had a reputation as a “moderate” Democrat in the Texas House, which meant he wanted government to get bigger and spend more at a slightly slower rate than his fellow Democrats, and was reportedly a skilled legislator on education issues. But I don’t want a “skilled legislator,” I want a conservative fighter. I want someone to fight for shrinking the size and scope of the federal government and reign in the insanely bloated federal spending that’s holding down the economy, not manage the bloat. There are quite enough Democrats in Congress who pretend to be moderate until the votes really count (see also: ObamaCare); we don’t need another one.
Like his party, Sadler has moved steadily left over the years. After failing to win a U.S. House seat, Sadler worked first as an asbestos trial lawyer, and then as head of a Texas wind power coalition putting him in not one but two of the biggest recipient groups for liberal big government crony capitalism largess. This suggests that he would try to roll back tort reform and would make a very poor representative for Texas’ vital oil and gas industry.
Further, given the positions Sadler has taken in interviews and debates, there seems to be very little of that old “moderate” patina left on him. He’s for higher taxes, bigger government, green pork, public employee unions, illegal alien amnesty, and ObamaCare. He’d fit right in among the big spenders in a Harry Reid-led Senate.
By contrast, Ted Cruz is not only the unquestioned Tea Party representative for shrinking big government, he has a broad, deep and impressive conservative background. You don’t specialize in 9th and 10th Amendment studies because you want to be rich, and you don’t work at the Texas Public Policy Foundation if you want to be a squishy moderate. Cruz is not only exceptionally sharp, an excellent debater and a gifted public speaker, he’s also a classic fusionist candidate with both strong free market and social conservative credentials. He beat all his Republican opponents despite millions spent to smear him and came out of the runoff not only unscathed, but with a national reputation. He was a great Texas Solicitor General, and I think he will make a great Senator. I urge all my Texas readers to cast their votes for him as the next United States Senator from Texas.
Barring any catastrophic event, Ted Cruz is going to be the next Senator from Texas, but the campaign keeps on chugging along. The official fundraising forms from the FEC aren’t up yet, but the two campaigns have announced the totals raised.
Ted Cruz raised $3.5 million in Q3, $2 million of it after the runoff.
I can’t find any mention of Paul Sadler’s fundraising numbers on his press release page, but according to the Houston Chronicle, Sadler raised “about $358,734” in Q3. In truth, that’s a bit more than I expected him to raise, given that he has about as much hope of being elected Senator than the Cleveland Browns do of winning the 2013 Superbowl.
Oh, and just for the record: Losing Democratic Senate runoff candidate Grady Yarbrough did finally file his FEC report.
Today was dedicated to exercise and fiction, so here’s a quick LinkSwarm:
Ted Cruz pretty much wiped the floor with him, if the reports of our Demophilic media are to believed.
Visibly angry, [Sadler] repeatedly accused Cruz of lying. The Republican largely kept his cool and cast his little-known Democratic rival as “unapologetically liberal” and a big supporter of gay marriage and President Barack Obama’s health care law.
Even Paul Burka wasn’t impressed with Sadler. “Sadler was unrestrained. He called Cruz a liar, repeatedly.”
Here’s the full debate if you want to judge for yourself:
If you couldn’t catch Ted Cruz’s RNC Speech, here it is:
The echos from Ted Cruz’s victory over Dewhurst are still echoing not only around the state, but the nation as well. Here’s just a small sampling of the most important reactions:
“It’s difficult to overstate the achievement of Cruz beating Dewhurst,” said Democratic strategist Harold Cook of Austin. “That Cruz won amplifies the extent to which tea partiers are at war with establishment Republicans, and at the moment, winning it.”
Thanks to his runoff victory Tuesday, Ted Cruz is now a political figure with clout, and, as this video shows, he’s already making the case for controlling spending and limited government to a national audience:
There’s a lot to digest and discuss about Ted Cruz’s victory over David Dewhurst, and I’m sure I’ll have more tomorrow. But here are a few myths that Cruz’s victory laid to rest tonight.
More race analysis tomorrow.