| When State Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Plano) first announced her U.S. Senate exploratory committee in July 2008, she had the support of twelve other Republican state senators. At the time, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst had made no public comment on whether he would consider entering the possible special election to fill Kay Bailey Hutchison's senate seat. Fast forward almost a year and a couple things have changed. First, Dewhurst recently finally did make a statement leaving the door open to a run for the U.S. Senate, in an interview with the Austin American-Statesman. "If the Senate job came open, I would probably give it a hard look," [Dewhurst] said. "I think that seat needs to stay in Republican hands." As Dewhurst, the presiding officer of the Texas State Senate and a two term Republican statewide office holder with deep pockets, made his possible interest in the Senate seat known, you might have expected some of the Republican state senators to begin to waffle on their early committments to Shapiro. Instead, the opposite happened. Shapiro picked up the endorsements of Sens. Kip Averitt and Mike Jackson, leaving Steve Ogden, Dan Patrick, Jeff Wentworth and Tommy Williams as the only Republican senators not publicly backing Shapiro's candidacy. Given that Wentworth has been telling that newspapers that Dewhurst should not "abuse that power we give him," it is probably safe to say the San Antonio Republican is not eagerly awaiting a Dewhurst Senate candidacy, either. So either (1) David Dewhurst has so little respect among the members of the legislative body he has presided over for two terms that nearly none of them want to support him for higher office or (2) he is not running for the U.S. Senate. Of course, if not the former, it certainly could be both. |
