TX-Sen: Joining Rick Noriega's quest

Yesterday we added Wyoming House candidate Gary Trauner to our Blue Majority ActBlue page. Today, we're heading south (and a little east) to Texas, where people-powered Fighting Dem Rick Noriega is taking the battle straight into the belly of the beast. As netroots hero Richard Morrison (the guy who almost took out DeLay in 2004) wrote way back when we were working to draft Noriega into the race:

Who is this people powered candidate?  He is a veteran.  He completed his undergraduate education with the help of an ROTC scholarship and was commissioned in the United States Army.  His Army career includes airborne school and service as commander in the infantry.  Now a Lieutenant Colonel in the Texas Army National Guard, he served most recently as deputy garrison commander of the KMTC training facility in Kabul, Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom and as the Laredo Border Sector Commander, Operation Jump Start.

Who is this people powered candidate?  He is Hispanic. While at Harvard getting his Master's in Public Administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, he was an editor of the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy.  His involvement with the community is not limited to the academic. He and his wife are active in neighborhood and community affairs. He has both past and present membership on boards including Catholic Charities, the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, the Houston Holocaust Museum, and Talento Bilinguë de Houston.  In appreciation for his public service to the community, he was voted Hispanic of the Year 2001 by the Houston Fiestas Patrias, which also honored him as Grand Marshal of their 2005 parade.

This people powered candidate is also a dedicated and proven legislator. Significant  legislative accomplishments include an historic bill making Texas the first state in the country to provide in-state tuition rates and financial assistance for certain immigrant children. Today, thousands of them are attending college.   To date eight other states, have passed or proposed similar eligibility programs and, in Congress; first, Senator Orrin Hatch ( Utah) and currently others have brought forward The DREAM Act, to accomplish the same purpose at the federal level.

For his courage and his leadership in shepherding the bill through the legislative process, the candidate received awards from the Texas Association of Bilingual Educators, Texas LULAC, and was selected by the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education (TACHE) and Hispanic Journal as 2001 Legislator of the Year."  National awards included the Legislative Leaders in Education Award from the National College Board (2002) and the Hispanic Caucus of the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) for Outstanding Support of Hispanic Issues In Higher Education (2003); The government of Mexico also honored him with the Ohtli Award, presented to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent who have distinguished themselves in public service in 2002.

This people powered candidate is from a major metropolitan area.  As a legislator he authored or sponsored legislation relating to economic development, emergency repairs for schools, tougher penalties for selling inhalants to minors, regulating automobile title services in Harris County to reduce fraud, financial aid for custodial grandparents, and tuition assistance for some Texas Army National Guard members.

In the fall of 2005, he was the Incident Commandeer for the City Of Houston's Hurricane Katrina relief efforts at the George R. Brown Convention Center. His leadership with the military, as well as his record in community service, was crucial as the GRB was transformed into a virtual city that processed close to 30,000 evacuees, and was then dismantled in the course of less than a month.  At the center, he coordinated medical, employment, travel, housing and food services for more than 2,000 evacuees living on-site.

Whether in Afghanistan, or helping Katrina refugees, or fighting in the Texas legislature, Noriega has distinguished himself not in word, but in action. And now he faces off against an incumbent Republican senator who has also distinguished himself -- by his ineffectiveness.

In the last SurveyUSA poll of Texas, back in June, Cornyn's weakness was already apparent. While his colleague Kay Bailey Hutchison clocked in with a 58-34 approval/disapproval rating, Cornyn limped in at 42/43. Hilariously, even Bush was more popular in Texas in that poll than Cornyn.

In late September, Research 2000 polled the race for Daily Kos,  and the numbers were little better for Cornyn, with a 46/44 favorable/unfavorable breakdown, and with only 40 percent saying they wanted to reelect him to another term in the Senate. 35 percent wanted him replaced, and another 15 percent were open to alternatives.

Finally, a November poll by the Noriega campaign showed that Cornyn's approval/disapproval numbers were at 36/41. Throughout this time, neither Cornyn nor the NRSC have released numbers disputing these results, thus making Cornyn the indisputably least popular senator in the entire United States.

Last cycle's winner of that dubious distinction? Montana's Conrad Burns. And Burns was forcefully retired by the voters of his state. Unpopular politicians have a harder time than most getting reelected.

So we have an unpopular Republican more concerned about protecting Bush's agenda than in helping working class families improve their lives. Go down the list of issues you care about, and Cornyn will be on the wrong side. SCHIP? Check. Iraq? Check. FISA? Check. He literally lives on the extreme Right of the Senate caucus, George Bush's personal pit bull.

Now Noriega is running in Texas, and no one can deny the difficulty of running in the Lone Star State as a Democrat, and one who needs to wage an expensive campaign to raise his name ID and promote his agenda. But Texas is showing signs of purpling, and the GOP's frothing anti-immigration platform isn't playing well with the state's increasingly dominant Latino population.

But aside from that, Noriega is the face of a our modern Democratic Party -- pluralistic and multicultural, committed to national service, and competent. There's a reason that Republican Texas chose Noriega (a Democrat) to run the Katrina relief effort at the Houston Convention Center.

These are the races that define us as a movement. We can shy away from tough challenges, or we can meet them head on and build for a future in which the Democratic Party doesn't just govern, but that it reflects the values all Americans hold dear -- values forgotten by not just Republicans in DC, but the Democrats currently in charge of Congress. In 2006, we took out the frontrunner to the GOP presidential nomination (George Allen) as well as delivered a Democratic Senator from blood Red Montana. We kicked out the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee out of the Democratic Party.

There's no doubt that Texas is our biggest challenge yet, but we don't gain anything by sitting back and looking for the easy calls. We didn't get this far by being timid, and we won't advance by retreating into caution and tenuousness. And the Texas progressive community is working their ass for Noriega. Let's give them moral and material support, no matter where we might live.

So please support Rick Noriega today, and the rest of the Blue Majority slate.

On the web:
Rick Noriega for Senate
Blue Majority ActBlue page

Race tracker wiki: TX-Sen