Senate Race Updates for July 15, 2011 (Including Some Fundraising Numbers)

July 15th, 2011

The candidates have started releasing their fundraising totals for Q2:

  • Ted Cruz came out on top of the fundraising quarter with $800,000.
  • According the the Statesman, Leppert raised $750,000 and Elizabeth Ames Jones raised $313,000.
  • Ricardo Sanchez raised $160,000. Which is about what you would expect the DNC’s hand-picked candidate to raise.
  • The FEC reports aren’t up yet, so we can’t look at the details. In truth, Cruz did a bit worse than I expected him to with all the endorsement momentum he’s been building up, and Leppert did significantly better. Jones managed to raise her quarterly fundraising totals from disastrous to merely disappointing.

    Q2 is usually a slow fundraising quarter the year before an election, but both Cruz and Leppert will need to pick up the pace if Dewhurst does jump in.

    A few more pieces of senate race news:

  • Last week Paul Burka was confidently predicting that Dewhurst would blow away the competition with his money. Now he’s wondering if Dewhurst is too complacent. “There is an enthusiasm gap in this race, and it favors Cruz.” It’s like Burka fell asleep at his desk and woke up in pain, discovering that someone had inexplicably jabbed a sharp clue into his side while he slept…
  • The San Antonio Express-News says that Ted Cruz has the momentum, especially compared to one “Tom Lippert.”
  • Elizabeth Ames Jones has announced that former GM Chairman (and fellow San Antonian) Ed Whitacre would be her campaign manager. If he brings several million dollars in campaign donations with him, this will be a brilliant move. If not? Not so much. Usually candidates like to have someone with, you known, political campaign experience running their campaign. Hiring a guy who is most famous for taking over GM right after Uncle Obama dumped a ton of taxpayer money on them probably isn’t going to vault her into first place. She also named oilmen W.A. “Tex” Moncrief Jr. and George P. Mitchell as honorary chairman.
  • According to Jones’ and Tom Leppert’s Facebook pages, there was supposedly a Ronald Reagan Republican Women Senate candidate forum in Houston last night, but I can’t find reports on it anywhere today…
  • A Sean Hubbard sighting in the local Dallas gay newspaper.
  • Senate Race Update for July 13, 2011

    July 13th, 2011

    There’s two big senate race shoes waiting to drop over the rest of July: The announcement (whatever it is) Dewhurst is going to make on July 18, and FEC releasing Q2 fundraising results. In the meantime, here’s a smattering of senate race news

  • Paul Burka with (another) not very insightful Senate race update, saying Dewhurst will just bulldoze the field by carpet-bombing with money. “Cruz has a great reputation as a lawyer but little else.” Yeah, nothing else except the endorsement of just about every prominent conservative that’s weighed in on the race, most of the Tea Party, and national media buzz. There have been plenty of big-money “sure thing” candidates who couldn’t close the deal with actual voters. Which brings us to…
  • Ross Ramsey at the Texas Tribune on Dewhurst’s long shadow. Best quote: “David Dewhurst might be the safest bet for the U.S. Senate since former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.” Heh.
  • Tom Leppert says he’s in the race for the long haul.
  • Roger Jones at The Dallas Morning News says that history is against Leppert, pointing out that Mayors have traditionally done poorly in statewide races.
  • There was evidently a Texas Senate Candidate Forum hosted by the San Antonio Tea Party on July 9th that included Ted Cruz, Tom Leppert, Elizebeth Ames Jones, Glenn Addison, Lela Pittenger, and Andrew Castanuela, but I can’t find any reports on it anywhere online.
  • Cruz won the San Antonio Tea Party straw poll there.
  • Cruz was also endorsed by George P. Bush, son of Jeb, nephew of Bush43, grandson of Bush41, and co-founder of Hispanic Republicans of Texas. (Cruz is, of course, a member.) That can’t hurt, especially if he can steer some of the Bush clan’s legendary fundraising prowess Cruz’s way.
  • Cruz was also endorsed by not one, not two, but three former Republican Party of Texas chairs: Cathie Adams, Tina Benkiser, and George Strake. Those are all good names to have in your corner.
  • Since I mentioned Glenn Addison, take a look at his campaign schedule. He can’t win this race, but that’s the schedule of a man who’s serious about trying.
  • As if Ricardo Sanchez didn’t have enough troubles running as a Democrat in an overwhelmingly Republican state, the Islamic Republic of Iran wants to try him in absentia for war crimes. They also want to try Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Gen. Tommy Franks, and Gen. David Petraeus, so he’s in good company…
  • Ron Paul to Retire From Congress

    July 12th, 2011

    To concentrate on his 2012 Presidential run. After which, since he won’t be the GOP nominee, he will presumably retire from politics.

    More about Paul’s somewhat-mixed legacy, and the nature of his supporters, at a later date…

    This Month in Jihad

    July 11th, 2011

    Well, I’m not really updating it weekly anymore, am I?

    So here are some notable Jihad-related stories from the last month or so:

  • Geert Wilders acquitted.
  • Pakistani generals helped sell nuclear secrets to North Korea. Lovely.
  • Christopher Hitchens, who is probably considerably more pro-Palestinian and skeptical of Israel than I am by a good measure, questions the motives of the “Gaza Flotilla,” noting the many ties of the organizers to Hamas, and of Hamas to Assad’s Syria and the Islamic Republic of Iran. “The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians.”
  • Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan will face the death penalty. Good news, but why did it take a year and half to get to this point?
  • Al Qaeda leader Ilyas Kashmiri is dead.
  • At least 29 women in Leeds have UK courts to thank for preventing forced marriages.
  • Baby’s first jihad.
  • Robert Spencer on the possible Hindu roots of Islam.
  • Tom Leppert’s Campaign on Programs He Cut as Mayor of Dallas

    July 10th, 2011

    At the Texas Tribune Senate Candidate Forum back on June 8th, Tom Leppert said that he could be counted on to be a staunch budget cutter in the U.S. Senate, and for supporting evidence claimed that he had cut or eliminated several government programs as Mayor of Dallas.

    Since I have been somewhat skeptical of Leppert’s conservative bona fides, this claim piqued my interest. So i wrote his campaign to see if they had a list of programs he had eliminated as Mayor.

    It took a couple of reminders, but i was finally able to get a reply from Leppert’s Communications Director Shawn McCoy. Below is his reply verbatim, save for some WordPress list formatting and removing his phone number and email address:

    Lawrence,

    Sorry, it has taken a while to pull all of this together.

    One of Tom’s greatest accomplishments as Mayor was working to make substantial cuts to the civilian budget in order to increase the size of the police force. He did this without raising taxes. In response, the crime rate dropped by double digits, with violent crime plummeting 30 percent.

    Tom’s trimming of the civilian payroll led him to eliminate over 1400 positions. Pay was also reduced for the remaining civilian employees.

    Tom’s consolidation or elimination of city departments took the city from 31 departments down to 23.

    This included:

    • Sustainable Development and Construction
      • Development Services
      • Building Inspection
    • Housing & Community Services
      • Housing
      • Environmental & Health Services
    • Management Services
      • Public Information Office
      • Intergovernmental Services
      • Strategic Customer Services
      • Efficiency Team
      • Office of Emergency Management
      • Fair Housing
      • Office of Environmental Quality
    • Trinity Watershed Management
      • Trinity River Corridor Project
      • Streets/River Levee Operations
      • Public Works/Floodplain Management

    Additionally, the zoo was privatized.

    Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

    Best,

    Shawn

    Shawn McCoy
    Communications Director
    Tom Leppert for Senate

    Thanks to Shawn McCoy and Tom Leppert for providing this information.

    I am very far indeed from an expert on Dallas’ budget process, but I hope to take a look at the official budget numbers over the next few days to confirm the information above. My first impression from the FY2011 budget suggests that they may very well be credible, as official numbers show Dallas budget was cut by just 1.5% between FY2010 and FY2011, showing at least fiscal restraint here in the midst of the Great Obama Recession.

    At some point I also hope to take a look at the mentioned Trinity Watershed Management, a subject that includes the controversial Trinity River Toll Road project, a complex subject on which I don’t feel I yet have a firm handle.

    Blogrolling In Our Times

    July 8th, 2011

    Today Matt S. Dowling named BattleSwarm his blog of the week. Thanks!

    This inspired me to finally get up off my lazy ass and add two of the three blogs I’d been thinking about adding to my blogroll anyway:

  • Matt S. Dowling (wow, I bet you never saw that coming), who has been doing a lot of good pieces on the Texas senate race (including some of the Tom Leppert-related stories I’ve posted here).
  • Merv at Prairie Pundit, who’s been blogging up a storm from the wilds of Washington, Texas for several years now.
  • And the third blog I was thinking about adding, but won’t right now? That would be The Race to Replace Kay Baily Hutchison, a blog focused on the Texas Senate race that I used to check every day for updates…but there hasn’t been one since June 2. I’d be happy to add it if posts start up again, but a month’s silence isn’t getting the job done…

    Pat Buchanan 1, David Brooks 0

    July 8th, 2011

    Since leaving the Reagan Administration, Patrick Buchanan has been, at best, an erratic conservative, on any number of issues (Israel, Iraq, Free Trade, etc.), flogging a philosophy (“paleoconservatism”) that failed to catch on with any but a tiny fringe, and carried out political adventures ill-advised at best and amazingly stupid a good portion of the time. (I mean, why would you even want to take over the Reform Party? That’s like stealing a half-chewed bone from a blind dog; even if you succeed, you’ve disgraced yourself for a worthless prize.)

    But on the debt limit debate, Buchanan has penned an essay that is coolly rational in articulating why House Republican must stand firm aginst Democratic promises of future spending cuts in exchange for tax hikes now.

    Behind the GOP opposition to tax hikes is the party’s word given to the country that elected it in 2010, its political principles, its traditional view of what not to do when the nation is in a slump, and party history.

    Fully 235 Republican House members signed a 2010 pledge not to raise taxes. And by giving their word they were rewarded with victory.

    Should they now dishonor that pledge, what would differentiate them from George H.W. Bush, who famously promised in 1988: “Read my lips! No new taxes!” then went back on his word and took the party down to defeat with him?

    It also does a fine job dissecting David Brooks’ panicked appeal for them to take Obama’s handful of magic beans in exchange for their good word:

    In 1982, President Reagan agreed to the same deal being offered the party today: three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in tax increases to which he assented. As he ruefully told this writer more than once, he was lied to. He got one dollar in spending cuts for every three in tax increases.

    Buchanan at least has learned the lesson Brooks hasn’t: Future budget cuts are non-existent budget cuts, and only a sucker believes they’re real. The only budget cuts that count are the ones to this year’s budget. Democrat promises of future spending cuts are always lies to be taken back in the next budget session. Even ironclad budgetary mechanisms to limit spending (i.e. Gramm-Rudman) will be jettisoned at the first opportunity.

    No one should mistake Buchanan for a reliable mainline conservative these days, but he’s dead right on this issue. But given David Brooks’ swooning over Obama and his heresy on tax hikes, perhaps we should stop mistaking him for a conservative at all.

    Ezell vs. Chicago: An Extremely Lazy Blogger’s Roundup

    July 6th, 2011

    So Ezell vs. Chaicago has been decided, and the three-judge panel basically bitchslapped Chicago into the 21st Century. Basically, Chicago was saying 1.) You have to get firearms training at a licensed firing range to own a gun, and 2.) We don’t need no stinking firing ranges within the city limits, and the court tore them a new asshole for blatantly disregarding DC vs. Heller.

    Even more dramatically, the ruling makes explicit parallels between first Amendment and Second Amendment restrictions, which the Brady Bunch and their liberal Democratic co-conspirators have been denying for years.

    I think any decision where the gun-grabber ordinance in question is actually derided in the decision as “thumbing of the municipal nose at the Supreme Court” has to count as a pretty overwhelming victory for the Second Amendment.

    If I were a hardcore gun blogger, I’d read the entire judgment, quote chunks from it and offer closely reasoned, pithy insights.

    If I were a semi-hardcore gun blogger, I’d skim the decision and offer some quick insights.

    However, because I’m feeling very lazy tonight, I’m merely going to link to the writeup over at Snowflakes in Hell, since Sebastian has provided a far better, and more insightful, post than I could on the subject.

    As a bonus, in the post just below that, he tears into Rahm’s ridiculous shooting range ordinance, another blatant attempt to deprive Chicago residents of their Second Amendment via absurd regulations, such as:

  • Requires that range operators inspect every gun brought into the range for safety, and that the caliber is appropriate for an indoor range.
  • You must have a range master for every three shooting patrons. That range master must be on duty at all times. [Even by the standards of Chicago union featherbedding this is outrageous.]
  • Ranges may only sell ammo for use onsite, and must ensure no one leaves the range with unauthorized ammo.
  • Et Freaking cetera. “Rahm’s ordinance is basically a joke, and an insult. I can’t imagine anyone would even try to operate a range under these ridiculous standards, and I suspect that’s the whole idea.”

    Read the whole thing, on both posts.

    Sen Dan Patrick on the Legislative Session and the Senate Race

    July 6th, 2011

    First here’s an extensive piece on State Senator Dan Patrick’s work in the 82nd Legislative session. There’s the usual minimum of liberal bias, including the now requisite “drastic cuts in public education” lie the MSM feels a need to trot out in every roundup, but the piece is otherwise information.

    In this companion piece, Patrick talks about the possibility of running for the Senate, and not a little bit about David Dewhurst’s financial resources. He’s non-committal in the piece, but it does sound more like he’s leaning toward a run in the Lt. Governor’s race in 2014 than the Senate race.

    Portugal’s Bonds Downgraded to Junk

    July 5th, 2011

    By Moody’s.

    Between strikes in Greece, constitutional challenges to the Greek bailout in Germany, and other agencies rating the latest Greek bailout as tantamount to default, efforts to prevent a Euro-default contagion may fail sooner rather than later…