Texas has not voted for the Democratic candidate for President since 1976, when it was still largely a Democratic state. In 2002, the Democratic Party tried a "Dream ticket" trio of wealthy businessman Tony Sanchez for governor, African-American former mayor of Dallas Ron Kirk for U.S. Senator, and popular moderate to conservative white-bread John Sharp for Lieutenant Governor (arguably the most powerful state office).
That didn't work. Sanchez was a lousy candidate, Kirk ran as Bush Lite
(and backed down from his originally courageous stand against the proposed Iraq war), and it was probably hopeless anyway in that year of fear-mongering and flag-waving. The GOP candidate for Lieutenant Governor, David Dewhurst, won even though Sharp was endorsed by Nolan Ryan.
But this year we have another chance to get a coalition together in Texas. If the early polling is correct, Obama is getting about 60% of the Hispanic voters nationally, and that should rise as McCain continues to flip-flop on issues like immigration. Texas has a huge African-American population in the big cities. Texas is a state like Florida and Ohio; the GOP cannot win without it. There is a lot of enthusiasm here.
I acknowledge that there are a handful of us posting about Noriega. And that this post may be duplicative of other posts about what we think is a winnable Texas Senate race here. Or even that I have posted about it before in a diary or two. To any criticism of my re-posting about it, I say, "So what?". Just because something has been discussed before does not make it not worth discussing again. And lots of really good diaries on this site don't get much attention and disappear after a few hits.
I think this state is winnable for Obama and Noriega amd that the key issue is the GI bill opposed by McCain and Noriega's opponent, incumbent John Cornyn. And the key to putting Texas in play is getting Obama and Noriega down here once or twice, maybe with Hillary in San Antonio and the Rio Grande valley on the way to a visit to New Mexico.
Cornyn is or should be as vulnerable as any GOP incumbent. He's a boring and bland stooge of big insurance companies. He's from San Antonio, where there is a big military and retired military population, and he's on YouTube with Pastor John Hagee. Cornyn started the Texas Supreme Court's tilt toward big corporate and insurance interests in a workers' compensation case years ago. That case revolutionized insurance law here and what were once some of the strongest consumer protection laws in the nation are now pretty weak through judicial activism on the right. If your insurance company denies your claim, about the worst thing that can happen to it is that they will have to pay it.
There are plenty of rich lawyers in Texas. Unfortunately, I am not one of them, but I'm contributing what I can to help the Noriega campaign and urging those I know close to the Obama campaign to consider bringing Obama down here to campaign with Noriega. Maybe the best timing is after Obama chooses Webb or Clark as his running mate. Those are probably my two top choices for VP.
If the polling starts to get close in Texas, McCain might be forced to consider Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson as his VP choice to try to get disaffected women voters and to hold the state. For whatever reason, Hutchinson is popular here
Paul Rieckoff was on Tavis Smiley's show last night talking about this GI bill issue. Riekoff is with a group of Iraq war veterans, and I'd like to see him come down here to campaign with Noriega.
Here is his website:
http://www.paulrieckhoff.com/
This GI bill issue is and should be a winner against McCain and Cornyn and anyone else who opposes it. Like, we're spending money to rebuild Iraq and we can't afford to spend money to help those who risked their lives in that effort? Give me a break. It's bad enough that we are spending money to rebuild Iraq while we supposedly cannot afford to re-build crumbling infrastructure here.
I've probably also mentioned here before that in Houston, Harris County GOP officeholders are in near-panic mode and have been since Obama started gaining strength. We had a clean sweep of Republican judges in Dallas a few years ago.
Here is what I said before about this race, and I think it would be the upset of the year, comparable to Jim Webb's victory in VA and Nancy Boyda's in KS-02 (which I predicted).
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Finally, here again is Rick Noriega's website:
http://www.ricknoriega.com/