| Before we got the first peak into Bill White's new fundraising numbers, John Sharp possibly gained his largest single endorsement yet. Senator Leticia Van de Putte endorsed John Sharp, saying, "it's time to make sure that Texas has at least one U.S. Senator in the room when the critical decisions that affect our working families and small businesses are made. John Sharp is uniquely qualified to get that job done."
Van de Putte is a legislator and politician that we all respect here at the Burnt Orange Report, and she is someone we all wanted to run for a statewide office. That said, I take her opinion on John Sharp seriously as a reason not to rule him out, despite KT's convincing Special Comment,
That said, the Van de Putte announcement elicited a few reactions for me:
- I hope Senator Van de Putte is thinking purely about policy ability rather than campaign ability. I think in policy, one can easily flip a coin between Sharp and White as to which man is distinctively better. On campaign ability, though?
- Is John Sharp trying to cover for another bad fundraising quarter? We will see in due time, but it's hard to imagine a getter reason for the announcement's timing.
- The two thoughts above, though, assume John Sharp's fundraising successes will continue the negative trend that we saw the last quarter. Instead, John Sharp could be leading us to a surprise with a strong fundraising quarter. I doubt this, but if he reports high numbers, he could make a solid case for momentum.
Meanwhile, Bill White isn't leaving us waiting for his money reports as if that's all he has going for him. Besides the revelation that Warren Buffett is among his donors, he recently announced the endorsement of nine members from the Texas Legislative Black Caucus. The group includes Alma Allen, Garnet Coleman, Dawnna Dukes, Harold Dutton, Helen Giddings, Barbara Mallory Caraway, Ruth McClendon, Sylvester Turner, and Marc Veasey.
It was useful to group them together so White could use the Black Caucus' name in a press release, but observers should note that most of this is not new. His page of endorsements from Texas representatives listed most of these names before the announcement was made earlier today. In reality, it seems only Representatives [Turner,] Dutton and Giddings can be counted as "new" endorsements.
Either way, both Bill White and John Sharp have added names to their endorsement lists. As lackluster as Sharp's campaign has looked, he has faired alright in gaining names for that list. Unfortunately, endorsements are not all that matters.
We will learn more when we see fundraising numbers.
Update: I messed up with some of the Bill White endorsements. Chris Turner had previously endorsed White, but Sylvester Turner had not. So add Sly Turner as a new endorsement. Bill White spokesperson Katy Bacon also pointed out to me that the new endorsements mean that Bill White has received endorsements from a majority of Democratic State Representatives. That in itself is an accomplishment. |
