Looks like the Noriega campaign didn’t send an e-mail blast to us donors with the Oct 21 Rasmussen poll
🙁
and I missed the news.
James L. let me know that Rasmussen calls it John Cornyn 55, Rick Noriega 40.
This particular poll is probably not gonna hold up too well. It won’t be a 15 point margin, more likely less than 7 points.
In 1996, a high school government class teacher, with a pick-up truck gimmick and the same last name as the state’s Democratic Attorney General, won the Senate nomination to lose to Phil Gramm. But despite being all but ignored by elected Democrats and most Hispanic leaders in the state, Victor Morales got 44% of the vote against Phil Gramm, a seasoned politician riding the Repub growth in the state.
So 44% could be the floor for a Hispanic Senatorial candidate in Texas.
Then in 2002, after 9/11 changed everything — for that election, at least — the African-American former Mayor of Dallas was part of the Democratic Dream Team of one black, one brown, one white in the state’s three top races, er, contests. Despite spending about $10 million, Ron Kirk got only 43% of the vote against then-Attorney General John Cornyn.
So 43% could be the floor for a minority Senatorial candidate in Texas.
Rick Noriega is a much more solid and respected candidate than Victor Morales (although a bit duller!), and he’s not from Dallas (Dallas is to Texas as New York City is to the US), so his floor is probably a bit above 45%.
Add in strong Hispanic population growth. Top it off with the Obama campaign energizing the black voters, the youth, and the Presidential-primary-organized Anglo Dems, and it began to look like there was a chance.
Of course, the needed money was still missing. Cornyn has owned the airwaves while Noriega remains broke.
BTW I am borrowing heavily from an analysis of the race by Prof Richard Murray at the University of Houston, who blogs for TV13. http://prof13.abc13.com/
But it’s the economy, Woody. The state’s economy has been propped up by high oil & gas prices, the associated exploration activity, strong employment, and earnings. (No oil money in my family, alas, but 20 miles from my mother’s house you can drive through a town where the air smells of sulfurous petroleum. It’s said to stink — unless the well is in your yard. Then you collect a royalty check for the rest of your days, and the figures go up when the price of a barrel of oil goes up.) Texas also has protections for homesteads written into its Constitution and laws, which may have limited the degree and amount of funny-money mortgage lending compared to most other fast-growing states. So Texas is not yet feeling the pain too much.
In conclusion: Cornyn will get less than Rasmussen’s 55%, more like 52%. A Libertarian will get a point. Noriega will outperform Morales, Kirk, and his own earlier 43 and 44% showings in the polls, coming in around 46 or 47%.
It will be close enough that I’ll be joined on the morning on Nov 5 by others exclaiming, Damn, if only the Democrats would have put a few million into that race back in September, we could have grabbed that one!