Chet Edwards For Senate...'08

by: SADem

Sun May 28, 2006 at 06:21 PM CDT

There's an open discussion thread over at Swing State Project that evolved from a discussion about interest in '06 races to races in '08.  One of the races that sparked several comments was the TX Senate race in 2008.

The first comment started like this:

Texas: There are a number of unemployed Congressman since 2004 maybe we can convince one of them to run Frost, Turner, Bell, or Henry Cuellar even seriously he will vote with Democrats 40% of the time its better than Cornyn isn't it

Then:

In Texas, our 2 strongest candidates would be, in my opinion, Chet Edwards (who would probably win us the Senate seat and lose us the house seat) and Bill White (Mayor of Houston). Chet Edwards basically wins everything, and Bill White's re-election in '05 makes oppressive dictators look bad - he won with like 92% of the vote.

Next:

I'm all for a Chet Edwards senate candidicy: he is one of the smartest politicians out there, and he's popular and well-known in some of the most Republican territory in Texas. Add to that Cornyn's unpopularity (assuming that he doesn't climb out of the hole in the next two years, admittedly a big assumption) and we could have ourselves one hell of a race. And it doesn't seem too far-fetched a possibility, either: it's not as if Edwards has any real job security at the moment, even if he chooses to stay in the House he's looking at a tough re-election campaign every two years. I think a statewide race would be a no-brainer for him, especially if it was against a weak opponent.

Followed by:

On Edwards I think we should wait untill after 2006 to see what the house looks like before asking him to run. If we hold the House by one seat I don't want to send Edwards off to run a senate campaign and risk loseing that House seat. And unless a great candidate comes we lose that seat which is 70-30 Bush.

Then:

I understand what you're saying, but I just don't agree with the logic. We're not guarenteed to win the seat even if Edwards is the nominee, so why should we keep spending hundreds of thousands of dollars defending this seat every two years *and* sacrafice perhaps our strongest candidate for an office that has far more influence, anyway? There are pickup oppurtunities this election cycle that I feel more confident about than I feel about Edward's re-election, and that will almost certaintly be true in 2008, as well.

And then:

What I mean is with Edwards we have a strong shot of holding TX-17 with anybodyelse we lose it. In the TX-sen race it's 50-50 and we can end up loseing both the Senate and the House seat.

And finally:

Which is a good possibility regardless of which seat Edwards runs for. Even if that happened, anyway, it's not like it's the end of the world. On the downside we lose one House seat, on the upside we gain the hundreds of thousands of dollars each cycle that we would have spent defending this incredibly Republican district and get to instead devote it to challengers in Democratic-leaning seats, potentially helping us pick up a seat to counterbalance TX-17, maybe even helping us pick up two seats or more.

Politics can't be all about risk aversion and short-term gain. It's nice having a Democrat in TX-17, but it's by no means neccesary for us to hold that seat in order to gain/hold control of the House. I think it'd just be a waste of Edward's considerable talent to hold him back from running for an office with far more power and influence just because we're afraid of losing a House seat that, in all liklihood, the Republicans are going to eventually take back, anyway (even if they have to wait for Edward's retirement or the next big Republican wave).