While PPP's Texas Governor poll may not have produced good news for Democrats, their U.S. Senate poll does not have good news for Senator John Cornyn (R. TX):
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/...
PPP's newest Texas poll finds that John Cornyn is in grave danger of losing a primary next year if a serious campaign is run against him. Cornyn's approval with Republican primary voters is only 46%, with 33% of voters disapproving of him. And 49% say they would like their candidate next year to be someone more conservative, compared to only 33% who say they support Cornyn.
Ted Cruz's star in Texas Republican politics is making Cornyn's life a lot harder. 62% of GOP voters say they have a higher opinion of Cruz than they do of Cornyn, and among voters describing themselves as 'very conservative' Cruz is seen more favorably by a 78/8 margin. If someone challenges Cornyn and is able to effectively present themselves as another Cruz they'll have a very good chance in a Republican primary.
The good news for Cornyn is that he starts out with leads in head to head match ups with some of the names that have been bandied about the most as potential primary challengers. He leads David Barton (who announced he wasn't running this morning) 51/18 and Louie Gohmert 40/31 in hypothetical contests. Of course it's worth keeping in mind that's a function of name recognition to some extent, and in January of 2012 David Dewhurst had an 18 point lead over Ted Cruz.
We also just out of curiosity tested Rick Perry in a primary with Cornyn, and he would lead Cornyn 46/35. We find very little support for Perry for President in Texas or anywhere else for that matter, so if he wanted to continue on in elected office that might be his option for doing it. - PPP, 11/6/13
PPP surveyed 500 Texas voters and an oversample of 388 Republican primary voters from November 1st to 4th. The margin of error for the overall survey is +
- 4.4% and for the Republican survey it’s +-5.0%. PPP’s surveys are conducted through automated telephone interviews.
Now Cornyn still leads potential Democratic opponents Julian Castro (49/35) and Bill White (44/39) but the fact that Cornyn is hated so much by his own party's voters is still stunning. Now if crazy Tea party Congressman Louie Gohmert (R. TX) was the nominee, he would lead Castro 44/39 but he would lead White 40/39. So as Texas Democrats are focusing on pushing the Lone Star State out of the Red category and into Toss Up category, they might want to take a look at this year's U.S. Senate race as another good place to start. So far Cornyn has three Tea Party challengers and El Paso attorney Maxey Marie Scherr (D. TX) is considering running against Cornyn:
http://www.elpasotimes.com/...
If Maxey Scherr decides to run against Cornyn, it will be her first time seeking public office.
Maxey Scherr was born and raised in El Paso and currently practices with the Scherr Legate Law Firm, specializing in personal and workplace injury lawsuits, wrongful death claims and products liability cases.
According to her biography on the Scherr Legate website, Maxey Scherr was appointed to the El Paso County Ethics Commission and also works with several nonprofit and political organizations.
She graduated from the Texas Tech School of Law in 2008, and received her bachelor's degree in psychology magna cum laude from the University of Massachusetts in Boston in 2005. - El Paso Times, 10/30/13
We'll have to wait and see.
