Burnt Orange Report

One Tough Spoiler Candidate!

The big R donors were going to side with Perry anyways, that's sort of the point. She'll raise money from the people who would typically back the democrats, trial lawyers, etc. Maybe a few R types., but this move mainly hurts Kinky, and all of the D's. the D campaign, whoever wins, will be really embarassing because they will have no money to speak of. So Carole will become the D candidate ispo facto...

Perry is spitting nails right about now. He'll have to spend LOTS of $$ to win in November....

Texas Republican candidates. Presumably Culberson is going to file today, it'd be pretty freaking embarassing if he didn't.

Oh yeah, the score for filing stands at..

Democrats: 28 (11 incumbents)
Republicans: 24 (21 incumbents)

Districts without Democrats: The 2nd, The 11th, The 24th, and the 26th. Rumors suggest the Democrats could get up to 30 candidates.

Districts without Republicans: The 9th, The 15th, The 16th, The 18th, The 20th, The 25th, The 28th, and the 29th. The 9th and 18th aren't stunners. Bush actually won the 15th and 28th, but neither Thamm or Hopson got over 41% in 2004. I think that the Republicans had somebody filed in the 20th a few days ago. They could get the guy who wants to run against Gene Green to file soon.

The split was 27/24 in 2000 (when Texas had 30 seats), but the partisan split was 17/13 for the Democrats at that time.

Not that i'm suggesting that people don't want to run for office as Republicans or anything. :D

All the Dems should rush to her aid if they want to have any chance of influence with a statewide officeholder.
In particular all Austinites should consider helping her out.
She is relatively a Moderate and a former Austin Mayor.

Anybody who thinks Carole Keeton McClelland Rylander Strayhorn owes less to the hard-right wing donors (like Leininger) than Rick Perry does needs to take "Remedial Texas Politics 101" or practice their spin on a Democratic blog with fewer Democrats and more Republicans.

Dems aren't usually that naive.

Moderate? Stayhorn is an opportunist. Always has been, always will be.

So, Paul.... are you saying that Strayhorn expects to sell access to herownself if she's elected Governor like she did as comptroller?

You wrote:
"All the Dems should rush to her aid if they want to have any chance of influence with a statewide officeholder"

Last time I looked that was a Republican philosophy, not a Democratic value. Buying and selling influence is what's gotten Texas in the mess it's in now.

You need a new talking point.

Republican blogs must think this is a winning spin. Sheesh!

Glad that we'll see Strayhorn on the ballot in November. Otherwise, we might have missed the best choice for a good leader.

Yeah! A woman (and a strong independent one) on the ballot in November.
Texas needs another woman governor to save this state.

Madness.

Sorry. I can't forgive her for what she tried to do to the Unitarians.

It sounds like another Republican maneuver. "They" are all tricky devils who use all sorts of strategies to make the masses believe that they are the only ones with any real solutions. This woman suffers from an identity crisis. She can't make up her mind what group to identify with. She could not convince those running as democrats to step aside so she could run as a democrat (one point for real Democrats!). She knows she can't beat Perry as a Republican, so she figures this is her best shot. If she admits she's a Republican and talks like a Republican, huh! She must be a "republican" (All real Democrats, please stand up!). Wow! the emperor still has no clothes on! No matter what group she identifies with, she is still part of the bigger problem, and the bigger problem is what needs fixing.

I will never believe she ever entertained the thought of running as a Democrat because it would have had the same effect as running as an Independent will - she will lose her core base of moderate Republican support. And without that, what does have? Nothing.

If anything, the Democrats who have "quietly" supported her run probably convinced her to run as an Independent. Because they knew she would commit political suicide if she switched parties and they are afraid of Kinky Friedman, don't support Chris Bell and aren't sure Bob Gammage can build enough momentum at this point. But she has raised a lot of money and most of that money came from Republicans. You have to wonder how they reacted. No doubt they will throw their support behind Rick Perry.

The end result may be a split among Democrats between the Democratic candidate, hopefully Bob Gammage, and Kinky Friedman and now Carole Strayhorn. She certainly is a spoiler. Even if she doesn't realize she is. Which is music to the ears of the hard-core right-wing Republicans who want to keep Rick Perry in office.

Bob Gammage probably can build enough momentum and probably can run a very close race but with Democratic votes potentially being split off to Kinky Friedman and Carole Strayhorn, it looks less likely that he can win.

Of course Kinky Friedman and Carole Strayhorn have to get on the ballot first. Getting the signatures is one thing. Having them certified and getting on the ballot is another. I suspect some Republicans and some Democrats will do everything they can to see that doesn't happen.

That may be the only thing the Democrats at this point can do. And hope everyone casts the finger at the Republicans.

But then so many are so fed up with all of this behind-the-scenes melodrama that Kinky Friedman, if he manages to get on the ballot, might win by a landslide.

If I was a moderate Republican, I would be spitting mad. My take is that Strayhorn is out because she has no chance of getting any support from GOP support groups because she won't tow their extreme philosophies. They have taken the choice of Republican candidate for governor out of the hands of the mainstream Republican voter. The problem is, the mainstream Repub voter probably can't bring themselves to vote Indy or Dem.

Strayhorn is a Republican through and through. She is the same as Perry, Condoleeza Rice and all those others that jumped parties when the NEW Republican party was born in the 80's. Just being the mother of Scott McClelland should be enough of a reason NOT to support this woman. All we will be doing is replacing one opportunist (Perry) for another (Strayhorn). We need to be voting STRAIGHT DEMOCRATIC TICKETS IN 2006 & 2008.

I actually read a psoting elsewhere from a woman who said "many liberal women" would vote for Carole solely on the basis of her being a woman.

I responded by saying that those women had a ready-made bumber sticker: "CKS for Guv: Abandon Your Principles and Vote Your Genitals".

I also pointed to Baby Sn -- err, this other person, that those women would be vastly outnumbered by the number of women who are given instructions on whom to vote for by their husbands.

And more than likely outvoted by the men in Texas who will never vote for a woman again.

Carole, we hardly knew ye. Thanks for kicking Rick Perry and Kinky Friedman in the nuts on the way out, though.