| Coming back from Netroots Nation, we've had an extremely busy week talking about statewide candidates. We wanted to take some time this morning to look back at our major stories, both to give everyone a chance to catch what they may have missed, and to put some context around larger stories that have developed recently: TX-Gov, Republican Edition: Kay Bailey Hutchison Stumbles Into the Governor's Race Yes, Senator Hutchison's campaign announcement was the most dominant story of the week. But did anything get through? Rick Perry -- who has previously been described as a "cyborg" here at Burnt Orange REport -- stepped on every day of her campaign announcement. Moreover, it's hard to get excited about a candidate announcing, for the twelfth time, that she is going to run for Governor. Even the press started getting nit-picky this week with Senator Hutchison, proving her initial roll-out to be highly ineffectual and raising the question: does she even stand a chance against Rick Perry? Whether it was her longing for segregation, her possible violations of the Texas Elections Code, or her out-and-out inability to do much more than appeal to the far-right arms of the Republican Party, Senator Hutchison waited for August to do little more than crap out. TX-Gov, Democratic Edition: Tom Schieffer & Ronnie Earle Michael began the week discussing an issue with the Tom Schieffer that goes unnoticed among the general uneasiness of his support for former President Bush -- that is, his actual stances on policy. From Michael's well-written post: The rate of current events convince me that the basics of a campaign infrastructure will materialize and improve. But I'm not convinced that this will happen with all of the campaign. I worry that a full-blown Schieffer campaign will not offer any true policy proposals to the people of Texas. Meanwhile, another possible candidate -- Ronnie Earle -- met in Austin with the Texans for Obama group. Katherine was in attendance, and wrote strong reviews of Earle in her post -- going so far as to say that "it appears that he's already considering the shape of a potential bid: a strongly-grassroots, supporter-driven campaign with an emphasis on personally connecting with the voters." However, that didn't make him immune from the same policy concerns Michael had raised about Schieffer, as Katherine wrote: Earle enumerated several key issues on which this prosperity-push would focus, namely education, jobs, health care, transportation, and the environment. However, he demured from offering specific policy proposals, repeatedly stating that he wasn't a candidate yet.
No one really likes to talk about policy specifics in August of an off-year, and if given the choice, we'd prefer -- right now -- a candidate with a strong narrative that was able to go out and persuade donors that his or her campaign is serious enough to be investing in. But speaking broadly about public education and law enforcement isn't going to be enough -- and we encourage our candidates, our progressive organizations, our readers, and ourselves to begin forcing more specific discussions on policy in the coming weeks and months leading up to the filing deadline. TX-Sen: Bill White & John Sharp
The U.S. Senate race is about to get serious -- especially now that Hutchison is officially in the Governor's race, and that she's announced her semi-sort-of-maybe-waffle-not-sure-can-I-take-a-rain-check-on-ever-making-a-decision candidacy, we are going to turn our attention not only to exposing her and Perry's horrific records as politicians, but also to the U.S. Senate race. This week, that conversation centered predominantly around Bill White. Last Friday at Netroots Nation, White met in Pittsburgh with Texas and national bloggers to discuss his candidacy. Katherine's report on the event included the following positive outlook on the race: Texas should take pride in having sent one of the most engaging and motivated Democratic candidates to Netroots Nation this year. That would be Houston Mayor Bill White...The Mayor came up to Pittsburgh during the annual gathering to address national bloggers and make the case as to why Democrats can and will win statewide in Texas.
David also wrote about the efforts of each candidate in the El Paso area (where White has won an impressive number of endorsements), and Todd raised a counter-challenge to one press narrative, suggesting that it should be John Sharp (and not Bill White) that should move to another race. |
