Many Democrats have written off Texas, just like other Southern, right-wing enclaves, such as Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia.
But Texas has a history of progressives from Jim Hogg to Jim Hightower,
Ma Ferguson to Molly Ivins, Ann Richards to well, there is no parallel to Ann Richards.
Precinct by precinct, pockets of progressive thought popped up in unlikely places in 2006.
Dallas, for example, where the Dems swept the ballot.
Pundits are saying the Republicans have all moved to the suburbs and the exurban areas, and abandoned the city and county. To that I say, Godspeed.
But other unlikely places include West Texas, where a Democrat took a Texas house seat.
In Ft. Worth, there is a Democrat Dan Barrett in a run-off for a Texas House
seat, and the Mid-Cities Democrats are energized and working toward rebuilding the Democratic party in Tarrant County.
www.danbarrett.com
www.midcitiesdemocrats.com
Used to, (as we say here) Tarrant County was the Democratic County and Dallas County was the Republican County, so there are some dusty roots of legacy there.
If Republican Dallas went Democratic in '06, Ft. Worth Dems need to be running candidates in all races. Many felt they might have been asleep at the wheel and underestimated the Democratic wave in '06.
Not in '08.
If Barrett wins, it's an important first step in taking back the Texas House from the GOP who assisted DeLay in his gerrymandering of Texas Congressional seats for the GOP.
Other Texas Democratic news this week:
Rick Noriega, a five-term Democratic state lawmaker, formally began his bid to unseat Senator John Cornyn, making it clear that he would use his stature as a National Guard officer to criticize the Iraq war. "We are in an occupation of a country currently," Mr. Noriega said. "The American people are tired of being misled and misinformed." Mr. Noriega, a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army National Guard, spent 14 months in Afghanistan.
Noriega doesn't have much money, $565,000 to Coryn's $6 million, and he is the ultimate David vs. Goliath candidate. Many have already written him off before he started. In fact, most of the newspapers in West Texas didn't even run the wire story of his announcement.
Here's what you can do, if you live in Texas, and your paper hasn't run the story, send them an email, reminding them of their civic duty to cover both sides of the Senate election story.
And check out Barrett, the Mid-Cities Dems, and Noriega.
Noriega's doing pretty well on Act Blue, and Coryn's unfavorables are fairly high.