TX-Sen: Noriega to Join Watts in Senate Race Next Week

According to Todd Hill at the Burnt Orange Report, State Rep. Rick Noriega is set to form an exploratory committee in one week to challenge Republican Sen. John Cornyn.  This move would put him up against trial lawyer Mikal Watts for the Democratic nomination.  Watts has already shown an early hustle, helping raise $1.1M for the DSCC back in April, and injecting $3.8 million of his own funds into his Senate campaign a few weeks ago.  Noriega, a Houston Democrat who has been the target of a draft campaign, didn’t appear daunted at the time, and has been busy preparing for a run after his wife’s recent election for the at-large Houston City Council district formerly held by the one and only Shelley Sekula-Gibbs.  According to the Austin American-Statesman:

Noriega, a fifth-term Democratic state representative from Houston, said he won’t finalize plans until he and his wife, Melissa, settle their finances, partly by selling property in East Austin. But he has already committed to a year’s leave from his job as a manager for CenterPoint Energy. (Emphasis added)

And while Watts will still have his impressive financial prowess, Noriega will have the support of many of his colleagues in the state legislature: 49 of his 68 fellow Democrats in the Texas House have signed a public letter supporting the draft efforts.

The Statesman gives a better taste of the upcoming Noriega candidacy:

Watts and Noriega paint Cornyn as weak and obedient to President Bush, a critique that Cornyn disputes.

Noriega, whose great-grandmother crossed into Texas from Mexico in 1916, is author of a law permitting in-state college tuition rates for illegal immigrants.

He said Senate inaction on immigration showed Cornyn’s inability to work across party lines. Cornyn, like many Republicans, did not go along with what had been pitched as compromise legislation bringing Democrats and the White House together.

Noriega favored the bill.

Noriega accused Cornyn of pandering to a “fringe ideology” by voting to have a fence built on stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border. Noriega called the fence a waste of money unlikely to stem illegal immigration.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Noriega said of Cornyn’s position. “It’s a function of a lack of understanding, inexperience, not listening to the professionals on the ground.”

Noriega favors removing U.S. troops from Iraq. He doesn’t want to see more friends coming home in boxes.

Noriega said that if he runs, he’ll talk up the idea of Americans committing to public service: “The question becomes: What do we do individually to ensure that we as a nation are on the right path?”

As long as this primary remains “good clean fun” (a tall order, but it is my understanding that both candidates have pledged to run positive campaigns), a Watts-Noriega battle could do a lot for raising the profile of this race and energizing the grassroots across Texas. 

Let the games begin.