The Texas netroots is working hard to draft State Sen. and Lt. Col. Rick Noriega into the Senate race against unpopular incumbent Republican (and Bush sycophant) John Cornyn. Well, apparently those efforts are supposedly irking some beltway forces.
But the draft movement apparently isn’t going over too well at all with some Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee insiders. It seems they have a more prominent candidate – with a Fort Bend connection – they’re backing to run against Cornyn.
Rock-Paper-Scissors: Can Texas grassroots beat the Big Beltway Wallets? You’ll know the answer to that question if Morrison’s web site goes blank a few days before a surprise political announcement.
First of all, the DCCC has nothing to do with Senate races, and given that the mystery candidate they're talking about is Nick Lampson in TX-22 (where Fort Bend is located), the last thing the DCCC wants is to make that tough seat even tougher by vacating it from its incumbent. Is it the DSCC? Could be. Or it could be a few people within the establishment (the likes of Carville) making noise.
Lampson barely won a race against a write-in candidate with a difficult hyphenated last name. He lost his previous House seats after the DeLay redistricting. Now he's supposed to win the state? I suspect this is much ado about nothing.
More interesting is new speculation that another political figure beloved in the Texas netroots -- Hank Gilbert -- is mulling a bid. Gilbert ran unsuccessfully for Agricultural Commissioner last year and ended up winning more votes than any other Democrat in the state. While all indications are that he never stopped running for Ag Commissioner, gunning for the post in 2010, Cornyn's popularity problems and a favorable Democratic wind brewing apparently have him giving the Senate race some consideration.
Annatopia has more.