Burnt Orange Report

"Strong defense, strong families, and equal rights for all citizens...sounds pretty awesome to me."

--> I don't see what's "awesome" about that at all. This is stupid centrist politician-speak. I can mean one thing and it can mean the other. What exactly is strong defense? A military budget greater than all of our so-called enemies combined, one that robs the poor and needy of assistance?

Plus, I am so tired of hearing about families and family values. Who doesn't care about family? Saying you're a family man means nothing to me; it certainly doesn't qualify you to get elected.

Until Democrats actually say SOMETHING rather than mouthing the same Republicanese pablum, they will fail like the losers they are.

guess when you hit equal rights your blinders went up.

"Family values" and "maintstream values" and "traditional values" all sound a little odd coming from Democrats. Are the Democratic candidates trying to lure Republicans who vote in large numbers or are they trying to get the Democrats who don't to vote again? Catchy phrases mean nothing. Except to Republicans who hear them from Democratic candidates and laugh as the go to the polls and vote for the Republican candidate.

Democrats need to start talking about real issues like deregulation and how it has impacted not only the poor but the middle class or the abominable lack of mass transit in this country that is faced finally with the reality of a depletion of oil reserves. Or the unfair taxation that still exists in this country. Some of which the Democrats themselves "reformed" and ended up once again hitting the poor and middle class while reducing the amount of taxation on the rich. How about some bare bones about the Democrats as well as the Republicans.

We don't need a "new mainstream" in this state or this country. We need representatives, as opposed to politicians, who represent the people. All of the people. Not just some.

Equal rights is not just about civil rights. It's about a fair and just society which ensures basic needs are provided to its citizens. It's about protections as well as rights.

There are thousands of New Orleanians being provided free rent and free utilities for a year in Houston while thousands of Houstonians are homeless.

There is something wrong there.

try reading the candidate bios first BS. None of these three are close to being your 'politicians'.

I was speaking in general terms. Not specific ones. But there does seem to be a trend towards "appeasing" Republicans and conservative Democrats rather than appealing to "mainstream"
Democrats who for the most part are the poor and the minorities. Just reality. People who barely can pay their rent and keep their lights on tend not to vote for a Republican. And if there were some way to really obtain statistics, they simply don't vote. They gave up. A long time ago.

The real problem is not enough Democrats vote!!!!

In the next Congressional Round-up, I think some attention should be paid to Shane Sklar, the candidate taking on Ron Paul in TX-14. His website: http://www.shanesklar.com/

Ugh, how could I forget about Shane! I must not have gotten a press release from them in forever, but count him into my list of people for sure!

I agree that the Democrats need to define specific policies which set them apart from Republicans. But there is also the issue of framing the debate in general terms. There is no reason not to do both, and, indeed, we need to do both.

Can’t we take a minute to catch our breaths here? Does any one think this list of pygmies has a shot at winning in this state next year? Hello did you forget what just took place last week? We got the blue side of our collective asses tanned.

We don’t need Mimi Me Repubs. running around talking nonsense (nor more no sense!). Until we file candidates who can put two sentence together with out either jargon or clichés spilling out and we can get the moneyed interests from the trial lawyers to the DC special interests out of our races we will still end up short on election day.

What happen to being worried about good paying jobs, high tech, education that works for kids and parents? Huh! What about taxing folks out of their homes? Where is the compassion for working families?

Get a grip! There is so much rebuilding which should start in Dallas and get a mayor who can build the party not rip it apart? Where was her Majesty Miller on Prop. 2?

Maybe you should try putting together a couple sentences together first.

I'm not running for anything and that's a nice way to respond just like Rove attack the messenger and avoid the message. Maybe there's hope after all with the thugs hanging around in here.

Lamar Smith had better look out. I saw John Courage Friday night and he showed me the breakdown of the Proposition 2 vote in CD 21. The District as a whole was solidly AGAINST Prop 2. This is really great news for the COurage camapaign and for those of us saddled with Smith in redistricting here in Austin.

Has Chip Staniswalis or Chris Bell endorsed John Courage?

Karl-

Thanks so much for including Dave in your piece. Once anyone has the opportunity to meet him they will not be under the impression that he is a "centrist politician". You can click the "Issues" button on the site and read specifically what we are speaking to on the campaign and what the members of our district feel is most important. We also include a link to an extensive interview Dave did for a local blogger, "District Sixer" that includes tons of questions about a very wide range of issues. Most sites you go to do not post every single issue and the candidates plan to combat those...our site details specifically what is important to us and the members of the district. Dave is running against a 20-year incumbent financed and legislating for big oil and that does not accurately reflect his district members. David is getting support from both sides of the aisle not because he is a centrist, but because he is right.

Michelle Harris
Campaign Director
www.followmetodc.com

I find it almost comical when I read some of these comments. It is quite obvious that most didn't even go to my website and view my issues page but rather did a hip shoot blog without any substance. I have served my coutry for the last 14 years of my life in the military. I have done a combat tour in Iraq and several other "operational" deployments in my time there. I was a county, state, and national delegate. I have a Democratic voting record in 3 states: GA, HI, and TX. I have been an election judge. I am a founding member of the Texas Democratic Veterans and serve as a Finance Council Member for the Texas Democratic Women.

Yet somehow I get called a "political centrist" even after all the things I have done for, and with, the party? To the naysayers and the BS of the world, any time you want to debate me on the issues, just name the time and place. My question in return is: What have YOU done for your country lately? I think my qualifications MORE THAN speak for themselves. I think I have the ability to reach out and get independent or undecided voters to see that I am right on the issues. I am not a Republican that has now decided to jump ship because the iceberg is slowly approaching. I am a Democrat.

If you had taken the time to read what Strong Defense, Strong Families, and Equal Rights for ALL Citizens you would see that for every ideological debate: abortion, healthcare, environment, and education, can fall back to our over-arching themes for the campaign.

A lot of people sit out there and just play armchair quarterback and just bitch about candidates or the issues, or both. Half the time they haven't even been to a rally to see the candidate speak or get to know them personally. I call it the "FOX NEWS" syndrome - people just getting their 30 second soundbite and then make up their minds. So what have you done for your Precinct? Your County party? The State party? I volunteer when I can at the County party, even as a U.S. Conressional Candidate.

I say put up or shut up.

This is why the party in general struggles; because people like you can't stand behind the candidates because they may have a slight variation on the way you might see the issue. This is where the Republican party makes their money - right or wrong, they stand behind their people, come hell or high water. We on the other hand, completely dissect our candidates down to the individual atoms they are composed of. It is ridiculous. This is not the year we can afford to be divided.

We must speak as one. We must run as one. We must win as one, that is the bottom line.

"Political centrist" my ass - my blue donkey ass, that is.

David, that was almost, Paul Hackett-esque. I'd love to front page it if you wanted to. Just let me know.

South Texas Rapid Response, First Edition
November 12th, 2005 | Posted in Blog, My Clients, Ciro Rodriguez | No Comments »
Rebeca Chapa of the San Antonio Express-News writes a fair and balanced piece about the CD-28 race.

Poll numbers are starting to trickle out in the Congressional District 28 race, and incumbent Henry Cuellar is posting comfortable margins over challengers Ciro Rodriguez and state Rep. Richard Raymond, who trails badly.

Ms. Chapa does a fine job of getting quotes from each campaign and an outside observer. My fellow consultant for the Ciro campaign, Austin-based James Aldrete - a man I have no doubt will be a consulting superstar on the national scene soon, just you wait and see - keeps it factual. “At the moment, Richard’s not well known in the least, but Ciro’s name ID is still there…We’re going to be competitive.”

The other campaigns, meanwhile, are in high spin mode. Let’s look first at the Raymond campaign. As I’ve noted on this blog before, I was surprised that Raymond was barely breaking double-digits in the polls. You readers in South Texas can tell me if I’m wrong, but I bet you were surprised, too. Let’s look at how his campaign explains his current showing:

The Raymond campaign scoffed at both surveys. “Henry’s putting this out early because he’s scared,” said Raymond spokesman Chuy Gonzalez. “It’s a waste of money to run a poll right now. It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.”

Gonzalez said the camp has not done any polling, but the candidate is “right on schedule with where he needs to be.”

I’m happy to criticize the Cuellar camp whenever they deserve it - in fact, I’ll do so shortly - but why running a poll 5 months before an election is a waste of money is beyond me. Campaigns & Elections, a trade journal for politicos, recently ran an article about the benefits of early polling. Of course, what the author, Michael Cohen, considers early polling is polling more than a year before the election. Still, it might have been a good article for the Raymond team to read. “Early polling is not only preferred,” Cohen writes, “it is essential to making decisions of whether or not to run, how to run against an opponent, what to say to potential donors, and how to shape the early storyline on your campaign.”

Maybe if Raymond had done a poll, he wouldn’t have marred his promising career by jumping into a race against two such well-known politicians who do not share a base. I mean, with Raymond in the race, all Ciro and Cuellar have to do to get in the runoff is consolidate their own base - the counties in which each got 80 percent of the vote in 2004. It’s not like Ciro and Cuellar will be bashing each other and Raymond can run the gap. The one that has a gap here is Ciro, since it is Raymond and Cuellar that need to bash each other in order to deliver the votes in their hometown of Laredo.

Chapa uses a political science professor to put the polling results in context:

“Early polls typically measure name recognition,” said Richard Gambitta, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“Raymond has been a state legislator in a much smaller district while the other two have served in a full congressional district. They would naturally have more name penetration.”

Which is true enough as far as it goes, but let’s have a closer look. Who do voters prefer when they not only know Raymond and Cuellar, but have positive feelings about them both? Nineteen percent of the voters in my survey fall into that category - mostly in Webb County - and here’s the scary part for Raymond: of the voters that know and like the two of them, 61 percent would vote for Cuellar if the election were held today and only 19 would vote for Raymond. A similar result holds true for Ciro vs. Raymond, but not enough voters in Bexar County know Raymond to make the finding statistically significant.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disagreeing with Dr. Gambitta. As I have mentioned in previous posts and will mention again below, Raymond has the material to use against Cuellar in order to peel away Cuellar’s votes. But a.) it will be an expensive process, b.) Raymond can’t expect to keep all the votes he peels away, and c.) both of the candidates he is running against have big head starts. He really should have done a poll before he got in. Though I suspect he was convinced he would be able to keep Ciro from running. If so, he was convinced wrong.

And now for Cuellar:

“Right now we expect Congressman Cuellar to win without a runoff,” said Cuellar spokesman T.J. Connolly.

Give me a break. The only way Cuellar is avoiding a runoff is if either Ciro or Raymond drops. And even then, Cuellar might not survive the primary. There is no question that Cuellar looks very strong right now, but that’s only because voters have no idea what he’s been voting for since he’s been in Congress. Once these Democratic primary voters find out that he has voted with President Bush more than any other Texas Democrat, they’re not going to be happy. Let’s just look at the example of Medicare.

Seniors make up the lion’s share of voters in this and most any primary election. Fully 81 percent of the district - not just seniors, but Democratic primary voters as a whole - thinks that the federal government is falling short when it comes to dealing with the cost of prescription drugs. So how did Cuellar respond to this critical concern? By supporting the Bush Medicare plan. Is this plan helping seniors? A recent poll by the studiously non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation shows that only 1 in 5 seniors nationwide (20 percent) plans to enroll in a Medicare drug plan. When the seniors of South Texas learn that Cuellar put the big drug companies ahead of them, they will run back to the candidate who has a proven track record of protecting seniors in Congress: Ciro Rodriguez.

As Chapa points out, this is only one of many issues where Cuellar sided with Bush and DeLay. “A common criticism of Cuellar is that he is too cozy with the Republican leadership in Washington, voting with the GOP on issues like the Central American Free Trade Agreement and Social Security.”

How does the nominally Democratic congressman explain his behavior? “Cuellar contends that he reaches across party lines when necessary in order to be an effective representative for the district.”

Chapa quotes me explaining why this rationale won’t fly:

Rodriguez pollster André Pineda of Pasadena, Calif., said it’s noteworthy that according to his research, more people said they prefer a congressman who will fight for South Texans “even if it means losing lots of votes on legislation” over a congressman “who can work with the Bush administration to get legislation passed that will benefit South Texas.”

Democratic primary voters in South Texas don’t care about bipartisanship. They want a real Democrat in Congress. Richard Raymond will spend all the money he has loaned himself arguing that he is the real Democrat, his Prop 2 vote notwithstanding. The problem for Raymond is that his money has not only to tear down Cuellar, but it also has to introduce himself. All Ciro Rodriguez has to do is remind these Democratic primary voters that there is one candidate with a proven record of representing them in Washington DC. Once he does that, the voters will send him back to Congress.

"The real problem is not enough Democrats vote!!!!"

How is that a problem? I think it's about time that Democrats stopped voting.

othniel:

"Lamar Smith had better look out. I saw John Courage Friday night and he showed me the breakdown of the Proposition 2 vote in CD 21. The District as a whole was solidly AGAINST Prop 2. This is really great news for the COurage camapaign and for those of us saddled with Smith in redistricting here in Austin."

That's it get your hopes up! Hee-hee-hee.