I apologize if this has been covered.
In Texas Senator John Cornyn (R) is very weak. As a Bush sycophant, he has a –3% approval rating. There are currently two Democrats lined up to face off in the primary to decide who will have the privilege of facing Cornyn in the general election. A few in the Texas net-roots seemed to have decided that Rick Noriega should be the guy and they initiated a draft Noriega campaign, which was generally accepted.
While I can’t find anything about Noriega all that exciting - his campaign literature is very thin on substance and big on the fact that he wants to be tough on the boarder and that he fought in Afghanistan - his opponent, Mikal Watts, is a rich lawyer who appears to be trying to buy his way in and he is anti-choice. But what to hell, this is Texas; it is not all that uncommon for us to have lack luster Democratic candidates.
Unfortunately, it has come out that Noriega’s largest political contributor is Bob "swiftboat" Perry. The very man who financed the swiftboat attack lies against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race. I can only assume that, like most in the Texas sphere, Markos did not know this information when giving Noriega his endorsement. My question is this: would you be willing to retract that endorsement and put a call out for a less tainted Texas Democrat to step up for this crucial race? This important senate seat is very winnable and there are better candidates available in Texas.
One of the problems that we are having is in transforming the old guard, basically blue dogs, to a new party that will better represent the new demographics (Texas is majority minority) and the progressives who left the party in frustration and are returning. The old guard is well aware that Latinos are the new force of the Texas Democratic Party but they are trying to hold on to power as long as possible by encouraging Latino candidates who will bend to them. We can do better than this and Markos can have a big impact in Texas.