Tag: TX-23

• PA-Sen: Seems like Joe Sestak cleared his Senate run with his family, as now he only has to run it by the Almighty: “It would take an act of God for me to not get in now,” he said on Saturday. Meanwhile, the state’s political establishment, led by Ed Rendell, feted Arlen Specter at the state party’s quarterly meeting on Friday (with Sestak in attendance).

• FL-Sen: From sitting Senator to punchline in a few short years: Bob Smith’s announcement that he’s running for Senate again seemed to generate mostly just shrugs and giggles. Of course, part of the problem is that he’s running in Florida instead of New Hampshire, where he looks to be barely a blip on the radar screen in the titanic Crist/Rubio faceoff. This may benefit Charlie Crist a bit by shaving off some of the die-hard conservative vote from Marco Rubio, but Smith in his announcement didn’t even seem to have any ammunition to use against Rubio, saying only that he offers “strong political leadership” in contrast to Rubio’s “wheeling and dealing.” Meanwhile, Crist got hammered in a St. Petersburg Times editorial for his role in gutting Florida’s growth management act, which damages his environmental credentials for the general.

• NY-Sen-B: Kirsten Gillibrand snagged two more endorsements from her former colleagues in New York’s House delegation: Nydia Velazquez and Ed Towns. Rep. Carolyn Maloney continues to staff up for a potential challenge, though, and words comes that she’s looking to hire Joe Trippi as strategist, and Mark Penn’s polling firm (now there’s an odd combination).

• IN-Sen: Indiana Republicans have located a challenger for Evan Bayh: 32-year-old state Senator Marlin Stutzman. While Stutzman probably doesn’t have Bayh shaking in his boots, it seems like a way for him to grow his statewide profile for future endeavors.

• CA-Gov: Another California governor’s poll bubbled up last week, from Probolsky Research for Capitol Weekly. They look only at the primary fields: former Governor Jerry Brown continues to lead the field at 24, while SF mayor Gavin Newsom is at 16 and LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is at 15. On the GOP side, “undecided” is running away with it, with 64%. Among the human candidates, here’s a surprise: moderate ex-Rep. Tom Campbell leads at 13, leading the two more-highly-touted and richer candidates, ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman (10) and Insurance Comm. Steve Poizner (8).

• IA-03: Rep. Leonard Boswell may face a rematch with the guy he barely beat in the 1996 open seat race to take office: former state GOP chair Michael Mahaffey. IA-03 is a very different configuration now, though; it used to be a mostly rural district then, but now is centered on Des Moines (although Boswell still manages to find ways to get elected by narrow margins).

• TX-23: Rep. Ciro Rodriguez may face a primary challenge in 2010, from lawyer and Iraq vet Miguel Ortiz. Rodriguez and Ortiz are both from San Antonio, so Ortiz doesn’t have the advantage of a geographical hook.

• FL-AG: State Senator (and former U.S. Senate candidate) Dan Gelber confirmed that he’s running for Attorney General (against friend and fellow Senator Dave Aronberg). Gelber had also been considered for Lt. Gov., seemingly leaving Dems back at square one to fill that slot.

• FL-16: Speaking of Aronberg, with him out, St. Lucie County Commissioner Chris Craft seems to be DCCC’s person of interest to take on freshman Rep. Tom Rooney. They’ve also talked to Craft’s fellow Commissioner, Doug Coward.

• VA-Legislature: Here’s another interesting look at our best chances of taking control of the Virginia House of Delegates in 2009, this time from our own diaries courtesy of Johnny Longtorso.

RODRIGUEZ DEFEATS BONILLA.

What a wonderful headline.

Update: Taking a cue from CNN, I’ve gone ahead and painted TX-23 a bright shade of blue on the map to signify a Republican-to-Democrat turnover:

Click on the image to see the full, 50-state carnage from Nov. 7 to today.  A big, bright slice of blue in Southwest Texas sure rounds things out nicely, doesn’t it?  Now, if only that troublesome greyish block in Florida could be taken care of…

UPDATE (David): My back-of-the-envelope figures say that Bonilla would need almost 54% of the outstanding vote in order to eke out a win. Doable, but looking increasingly difficult. Meanwhile, Karl says that Ciro is up to 58% in Bexar now.

UPDATE (David): Polls close at 7pm Central/8pm Eastern. And Karl informs me that he’ll be live-blogging the results at Burnt Orange. You can also get results at the TX SoS and the Bexar Co. Elections Dept..

UPDATE (James L.): As mentioned, KT at BurntOrange is all over the results tonight.  A couple of key posts to track as you refresh the TX SoS page include KT’s breakdown of county results for the Nov. 7th election, tallying aggregate Democratic votes to total Bonilla votes.  KT has taken it a step further by tracking the vote tallies as they’ve come in, and comparing the results to 11/7.  So far, not bad–especially in the heavily populated Bexar County.

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Four days, two elections. Tuesday is the run-off between Dem Ciro Rodriguez and Republican incumbent Henry Bonilla. The only poll of the race showed Bonilla with a seven-point lead, but the DCCC has spent close to a million dollars here, which suggests they know something.

I’m not sure what sites to recommend to follow the results, though I imagine that MySanAntonio.com will carry them. (If you have any suggestions, let us know in comments.) And for commentary and analysis,  the Burnt Orange Report is your place to be.

Update (James L.): As noted in the comments, if you have the time tomorrow to do some last-minute phonebanking for Ciro, please do so.  If you want more of an indication that the CW surrounding this distict–that Bonilla is unbeatable, especially by a badly underfunded Rodriguez–has been turned on its head, check out this testimony by converted skeptic Jaime Castillo of the San Antonio Express-News:

Momentum is a fickle thing in politics.

But it has become clear down the stretch of the Congressional District 23 race that one candidate – Ciro Rodriguez – has some mojo, and one – Henry Bonilla – is trying to get some back.

Let me be clear before the guys in white lab coats show up in my office: Momentum doesn’t necessarily mean that Rodriguez will pull a stunning upset Tuesday.

But it does mean that a race many thought Congressman Bonilla would win 56 percent to 44 percent several weeks ago is going to be much closer than that.

The signs of a tight horserace are now too many to discount.

They include:

Bonilla’s late decision to not only go negative in TV and radio ads, but to go with over-the-top spots that paint Rodriguez as having terrorist ties;

The continued involvement of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee with personnel, polls and expensive ads on behalf of Rodriguez;

Bonilla’s decision not to ignore, but to run a response to a critical DCCC spot that says Bonilla voted eight times to give himself a raise (The Bonilla ad says Rodriguez voted four times for congressional pay hikes);

And, finally, President Clinton’s swing through San Antonio on Sunday on behalf of Rodriguez.

Unless this race is close, none of those things happen.

Bonilla wouldn’t go negative. The national Democrats wouldn’t stick around. And Clinton would certainly have something better to do on the Sabbath than stump for a lost cause in San Antonio.

(Hat-tip to BOR.)

Former President Bill Clinton, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and and Rep. Charlie Gonzalez campaigned Sunday for TX-23 nominee Ciro Rodriguez. Clinton’s appearance at the GOTV rally for Tuesday’s special election attracted a large crowd of screaming supporters.

http://bluesunbelt.c…

[Links to videos on YouTube of Clinton and Cisneros speeches]

I’ve been keeping a close eye on the latest independent expenditure reports over the past week or so to track the action in unresolved races like LA-02 and TX-23.  In the Texas run-off race, independent expenditures are especially critical if Democrat Ciro Rodriguez is to have any kind of a shot at knocking off Henry Bonilla: as of November 22, Bonilla enjoyed a 10-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage over Ciro.  Here’s a chronological rundown of the DCCC’s intervention in the 23rd District runoff election:

11/29: $163k (media buy and ad production)
12/01: $43k (direct mail), $9k (media buy and ad production)
12/02: $16k (phonebanking)
12/04: $42k (direct mail), $9k (ad production)
12/06: $497k (media buy), $785 (phonebanking), $91k (direct mail)

This amounts to an $871,000 investment in the district over the past week by the DCCC.  That’s a very decent show of support for Ciro, but unlike most party committee IEs, the DCCC is doing the heavy lifting for a cash-strapped candidate here.  Supposedly, Democratic sources have been leaking the news that Ciro is within three points of Bonilla in the latest internal polling.  Can the DCCC help close the gap here?  I wouldn’t care to wager, especially given Bonilla’s superior organization and financial base, but I think we can interpret tonight’s expenditures as a signal that victory is not undoable here.

Thanks to X-Stryker in the diaries, we get word of this SUSA poll (likely voters, no trendlines):

Rodriguez (D): 46
Bonilla (R-inc.): 53
Undecided: 1
(MoE: ±4.6%)

Perhaps the most salient thing to note is that 59% of likely voters in this sample were white, and just 36% Hispanic. (Hispanics favored Democrats heavily this year, so a high Hispanic turnout is key for Rodriguez.) Meanwhile, census figures show that district is 55% Hispanic and 41% white. The sample isn’t implausible, though. Latino voting-age population (VAP) tends to be lower than the white VAP, and the registered voting-age population (RVAP) lower still.

Moreover, according to the census, Latinos comprised almost 35% of the state’s population in 2004. However, exit polls this year in the Texas gubernatorial and senate races say that Latinos made up only 15% of those who went to the voting booth on election day.

If the exit polls are accurate, then only some 43% of Hispanics statewide turned out to vote. If the SUSA sample is right, then Hispanics are showing up at a 65% clip. That’s quite an improvement – but it looks like it may not be enough. Don’t forget that despite the big changes redistricting wrought here, the new 23rd CD went for Bush by a hefty 57-43 margin in 2004 (it had been 64-35 – though I should note that Al Gore only lost by about 7 points).

So I really don’t know if Ciro can do much better among Latinos than he’s already doing. However, he could still pull it off if he can increase his margin among independents (who favor him by just three points).

And if you’re outside of the district and want to help, the best thing you can do is sign up for online phonebanking.

Update (James L.): As noted in the comments by blank, the 55% figure for Hispanic population in this district does not reflect the district’s make-up after the 2006 redistricting process.  The current Hispanic population of TX-23, therefore, is 65%, meaning that the Latino turnout rate on November 7th in this district was around 55%.  We’ll have to see if that can hold for the special election.

SurveyUSA has poll numbers out for the runoff election in TX-23. GOP rep. Henry Bonilla leads former Democratic rep. Ciro Rodriguez by a 7 point margin, 53-46.

The district as it was sampled is 59% white, and 36% hispanic. Bonilla takes 70% of the white vote and Ciro gets 72% of the Hispanic vote. You can look at the rest of the crosstabs in the link above, but I think that one says it. The majority is composed of white rural Texans who vote mostly for the GOP, and a Hispanic GOP incumbent captures a significant portion of the Hispanic minority. As for what would change this result, the crosstab to look at is party ID. The GOP has a small advantage here (43-39), but the incumbent captures 10% of Democrats and the challenger only 5% of Republicans and wins indepents (18%) by only 3%. A competent incumbent untainted by a major scandal is likely to produce similar numbers among partisan voters, so Ciro most likely will need to close the gap by appealing to independents. In the current electoral climate, a good Democratic candidate should be able to win the independent vote by more than 3%.

It ain’t the prettiest commercial in the world, but it’s a good sign that Democrat Ciro Rodriguez may have a shot in the upcoming (December 12) special election in Texas’ 23rd.  Why?  Because from what I’ve heard, the DCCC commissioned an independent poll last week that would determine how heavily involved they would be on Ciro’s behalf.  The poll must have shown promising results, because otherwise the DCCC would have been a lot more low key about this race.

If you want to help expand the Democratic House Majority, there is an online phonebank that you can use to help Ciro and the DCCC get out the Democratic vote in TX-23.  If you habla español, your efforts would be even more valuable here.

(As long as they’ve got special run-off elections going on in Texas, I think the SSP is gonna be Karl’s home-away-from-home. – promoted by DavidNYC)

TrueBlueAction.com announces ciro.onlinephonebanking.com is up and running!

OnlinePhoneBanking the most efficient and effective way for folks anywhere in the state (or country) to help Democrat Ciro Rodriguez defeat Republican Henry Bonilla. The netroots worked hard for Ciro last time, and with this new tool, we can turn netroots passion into grassroots action!

Learn more about TX-23: Democrat Ciro Rodriguez v Republican Henry Bonilla

Make simple calls to voters in any precinct in TX-23 to identify Democrats for GOTV, from the comfort of your home, right now, using OnlinePhoneBanking’s tools. Choose any precinct, and if you want, choose any demographic in that precinct – women, men, seniors, youth, anyone, and more. TrueBlueAction provides tools, scripts and data, you provide the volunteer effort and the data that helps Democrats!

Click here to make calls at Ciro.OnlinePhoneBanking.com

More info at LatinosForTexas.com, and TrueBlueAction.com

The election date has been set for Tuesday December 12th for the District 23 Congressional Runoff between Democrat Ciro Rodriguez and Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla. Early Voting is set to run for just one week from December 4-8. It is the earliest day possible that it could have been called with the intent of giving the advantage to Henry Bonilla.

That’s 3 weeks folks- 2 weeks until people start voting. As soon as ciro.onlinephonebanking.com is up and running, that will be the best way you can help us win in this tight electoral frame. Thousands of people making GOTV calls through this innovative new Texas tool can make a huge impact, especially if you cannot donate or come to the district. Otherwise, you can still donate to Ciro online or sign up to volunteer online.