Texas candidate filing closes soon

Candidate filing closes in just over a week, on January 4th.

How are the parties going vis a vis recruiting candidates to run in all 32 House Districts?

Below the fold for all the details and hey go check out the 2010 Race Tracker Wiki over at Open Congress for all your House, Senate and Gubernatorial needs.

(Cross posted at Daily Kos, MyDD and Open Left)

The Texas Congressional House delegation is currently split 20/12 in favor of the GOP.

I think we can safely assume that both parties will file candidates (almost invariably the current incumbents) in the Districts that they currently hold.

So onto candidate filings.

First the bad news and there is no way to sugarcoat this – The GOP have a full slate, many with multiple candidates. Yep all 12 Dem held Districts have GOP candidates:

TX-09 (Green) – D+22,

TX-15 (Hinojosa) – D+3,

TX-16 (Reyes) – D+10,

TX-17 (Edwards) – R+20,

TX-18 (Jackson Lee) – D+24,

TX-20 (Gonzalez) – D+8,

TX-23 (Rodriguez) – R+4,

TX-25 (Doggett) – D+6,

TX-27 (Ortiz) – R+2,

TX-28 (Cuellar) – R+0,

TX-29 (Green) – D+8,

TX-30 (Johnson) – D+27,

And for us Democrats the news does not get any better.

We have confirmed candidates in only 8 of 20 GOP held Districts:

TX-05 (Hensarling) – R+17,

TX-06 (Barton) – R+15,

TX-11 (Conaway) – R+28,

TX-19 (Neugebaeur) – R+26,

TX-21 (Smith) – R+14,

TX-22 (Olsen) – R+13,

TX-26 (Burgess) – R+13,

TX-32 (Sessions) – R+8,

And in the other 12 GOP held districts there is not even a rumoured candidate:

TX-01 (Gohmert) – R+21,

TX-02 (Poe) – R+13,

TX-03 (Johnson) – R+14,

TX-04 (Hall) – R+21,

TX-07 (Culberson) – R+13,

TX-08 (Brady) – R+25,

TX-10 (McCaul) – R+10,

TX-12 (Granger) – R+16,

TX-13 (Thornberry) – R+29,

TX-14 (Paul) – R+18,

TX-24 (Marchant) – R+11,

TX-31 (Carter) – R+14,

This is a grim scenario to say the least. At this stage in 2007 we had confirmed and unconfirmed candidates in 12/19; this time 8/20.

I am not suggesting that we will not fill more of these districts but we are a long way behind. Remember that in 2008 we did not run candidates in 6 districts:

TX-01 (Gohmert) – R+21,

TX-02 (Poe) – R+13,

TX-05 (Hensarling) – R+17,

TX-11 (Conaway) – R+28,

TX-14 (Paul) – R+18,

TX-21 (Smith) – R+14,

So hop to it Texas Democrats we need more candidates filing NOW.

** Tips, rumours and what not in the comments please.***

***UPDATE***

We now have a candidate in the 14th!***