Author: WoodyNYC

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!

The Rick Noriega campaign has sent out a fundraising email citing a recent poll that shows him trailing the incumbent Big John Cornyn by only 2%, among adults and with a large undecided vote.

more below the fold

Link to the source:

http://www.texaslyceum.org/med…

Freshman U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, leads Democratic challenger Rick Noriega in the poll, but the margin is slim and a large number of voters haven’t made up their minds. Cornyn had the support of 38% of the likely voters in the survey, to Noriega’s 36%, with 24% saying they’re not committed to either candidate.

Oh, you were probably wondering about that other race, too.

Republican John McCain would beat Democrat Barack Obama in Texas if the race were held now. But a significant number of Texans said they haven’t picked a favorite yet. Among likely voters, McCain had the support of 43% of those polled to 38% for Obama. Libertarian Bob Barr and independent Ralph Nader had about 1% each. One of every six voters – 17% – said they haven’t decided who will get their vote in November.

Obviously they didn’t lean on the leaners, but that’s O.K. with me this early in the campaign. (It’s from June 12-20, with 1,000 respondents, 8 of 10 said they were registered to vote.)

I’m really excited to see so many voters with an open mind on this race. Lessee, now all Noriega needs is $20 million for a massive media effort. He just might get the money. A poll that shows him trailing by only two points and Obama within five, that makes Texas a real battleground state.

It’s only one poll, I know, I know. But I like it!

Writing on the blog for Democrats in the Savannah area, someone named karen wrote:

Bill Gillespie has been talking to the DCCC … he may have a real chance of unseating Jack Kingston [in GA-01] … The huge increase in voter registration in Georgia this year is key.

The important thing we need to do is to turn out the vote in the primary. If Bill gets more votes in the primary than Jack, the DCCC will come down and do a poll … put him on the list of candidates they support.

The Georgia primary will be June 16 (a Monday? but I’m looking at the SOS page).

Karen, Bill, all the Democrats in Georgia, I wish you good luck. This district went for W by 66.3% and for the incumbent Repub in ’06 by 68.5%. But you never will win if you don’t try.

Other postings make clear that Georgia Democrats expect to benefit from much attention from the Obama campaign, with paid staff and Fellows and other volunteers, of course, working on voter registration all summer.

Looks like they have a great candidate, for this or almost any district.

Bill Gillespie of Chatham County served 23 years in the U.S. Army, retiring last year as a Lt. Colonel. In 2003, he served in Iraq … earning a Bronze Star.

Most recently, Gillespie worked as Army ROTC Program Director, charged with supervising programs at Georgia Southern University, Savannah State University, Armstrong Atlantic State University, Savannah College of Art & Design and St. Leo University. He also ran all of southeast Georgia’s Army Junior ROTC Programs.

Well, there you are. It’s southeast Georgia, from the Savannah suburbs to the Florida border. It’s where we need to win if we are going to purge the reichtwingers from our body politic. It won’t be easy, but it’s worth doing — and this race just may be worth watching this time around.

In a Comment to DavidNYC’s article, Blue Majority Page: Call for Nominations JeremiahTheMessiah raised a point:

**Our dollars can go further in races which, so far, have received less attention and institutional backing.**

So then why is Leslie Byrne on the list? … getting sufficient institutional support, already has Webb doing fundraisers, has a contested primary, etc.

So what’s the answer here?

Much more below the fold.

I grew up in Texas, live in NYC. Never heard nor seen Ms. Byrne nor Mr Connolly. I only know what I read online.

Matt Stoller wrote the intro when she got the nod, so maybe something got him excited. But here at SSP the endorsement got only one Comment, about the competitiveness of the district, not a word about the horse picked in the primary.

Go back to the Comments on Stoller on dKos — I’ve never seen so much negative feedback about a candidate put on the Netroots/Blue Majority list. (Condensed & emphasis added.)

I can only hope that she has learned from past campaigns. She ran very poorly in her statewide Lt Gov race, and does not have a great history as a campaigner.

Not impressed with her. I was her constituent when she was in Congress, heck I was her constituent when she was a delegate & state senator. So I know Ms. Byrne and still cringe over her proposed law to make sleeping in a room in your house other than your bedroom illegal.

Not to pour water on the bonfire … I live in VA-11 and I’m not sure she’s a good fit for this district … a very edgy reputation, comes across as a bit too ideological/partisan for many independents. The voters in VA-11 are VERY moderate and ripe for Dem takeover but not sure if they want someone like her.

She’d be a better rep than Connolly, but I have my doubts she can win. She lost the Lt. Gov. race, and that was not a race we should have lost.

Andy Hurst (the ’06 Dem candidate for the 11th) endorsed Connolly

Hate to be a wet blanket. But Byrne … tends to be abrasive and obnoxious. She lost a number of legislative elections, including a recent contest for the VA State Senate. Connolly is a shoo-in. Moreover, he’s a fine progressive Democrat.

Just before the VA primary, I got either an Email or a flyer with Byrne’s picture and statement in favor of HRC. Can’t find the original. Ms. Byrne now claims not to have endorsed (her husband works for HRC, as she did during the Clinton years).

Gosh, no … my congresswoman growing up, one of the worst attendance records in the VA State Senate … a competitiveness that many find abrasive, a history of alienating colleagues. I voted for her in 2005, but that doesn’t mean I believe she is the best candidate.  Not by a long shot.

I’ll say this: The hope is Leslie Byrne has learned something over the last 15 years. In 1992 my wife and I volunteered for her campaign – worked the phones, licked the envelopes, walked the neighborhoods. She won! In 1994 we called to offer our help: “We don’t need you” we were told …

Altogether only 50 Comments, very few for a frontpage article on dKos. And 5 or 10 were sort of off-topic. Above I tried to avoid quoting anyone more than once. So a huge share of the Comments were decidedly negative.

Oh, yeah. About her bad guy opponent. Gerry Connelly’s website, on the Issues:

“I bring a passion for progressive values, and an ethic of getting things done. I want to bring that same ethic — the expectation that government will work for its citizens — to Congress.”

End the War in Iraq

For 10 years, Gerry Connolly was a senior staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has the experience to work with the new administration to end the war in Iraq and restore American credibility around the world.

Enact Comprehensive Health Care Reform

The next President and Congress must act boldly to control rising health care costs and provide quality, affordable care for the 47 million uninsured Americans. Connolly will work with a broad coalition to design a plan that emphasizes preventive coverage and makes it illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage for preexisting conditions.

Provide Strong Environmental Leadership

Connolly worked with the Sierra Club to champion the “Cool Counties” initiative to combat global warming. In Congress, he will lead the effort to promote energy conservation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

They say Connolly is pro-business and pro-developer. Well, I hope it takes more than being “pro-business” to get your opponent endorsed around here. And “pro-developer.” Dayum, I thought that was a job requirement for his current position. Somebody wanna work up a short list of all the anti-development county execs elected in the last few decades?

I was very disappointed to see this intervention in a hotly contested primary where for the life of me I cannot see national implications.

This endorsement runs the risk of diverting thousands of dollars from candidates and races that clearly meet the declared standards of the Blue Majority page. When you put Gary Trauner or Joe Garcia on the list, I get excited. Leslie Byrne, not so much.

VA-10 is one of the richest districts in the U.S., part of the extremely costly Washington-Baltimore media market. Now precious Blue Majority dollars will be poured into a big spending primary against a well-funded and popular Democrat, a self-described anti-War progressive. To me that’s a wanton waste of our resources.

(Our dollars can go further in races which, so far, have received less attention and institutional backing.)

Less attention than a costly open-seat race in a newly competitive battleground state?

How blue is the district or state?

Well, how blue is VA? How blue is this district? Is this the one where Blue Majority can make the most difference? Or would that have been Tom Perriello, VA-5, against Virgil Goode? Or even Judy Feder against in VA-10 against Frank Wolf?

In conclusion [insert roar of applause here] the standards for endorsing in a contested primary should be extremely high. If the high hurdles aren’t met, hold off until a nominee is chosen.

Meanwhile put the emphasis back on races like Steve Sarvi in MN, Sam Bennett in PA, Tom Perriello VA-5, Kay Barnes in MO-06, Vic Wulsin in OH-02, Jane Mitakides in OH-03, Anne Barth in WVa-02, Annette Taddeo in FL-18, Betsey Markey in CO-04, — either Ann Kirkpatrick, the front runner, or Mary Kim Titla, a Native American, AFTER the primary — in AZ-01, Jill Derby in NV-02, Debbie Cook in CA-46, or even Chris Rothfuss (WY-Sen).

DavidNYC, you guys need to keep a closer eye on Matt Stoller. Sometimes over there those guys go off and see Bush Dogs where there are none, ya now what I mean?