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Hank Gilbert has just announced via conference call that he will not seek the Democratic nomination for Governor of Texas. He will instead file for the office of Agriculture Commissioner, returning to the office he was nominated for in 2006 where he received the most votes of any Democratic statewide executive office seeker four years ago.
In departing from the Governors race, GIlbert offered an endorsement of Farouk Shami over Bill White. Personally, I feel that endorsement serves as a distraction from what I view as encouraging and exciting news that Gilbert will remain a strong candidate for an office in which he will excel in running. It remains to be seen if it will have much impact on the race if any, especially given the rumors I've heard that Shami may not be sticking around in the Governor's race through the primary.
Update: From the Statesman on Gilbert's reasons for endorsing Shami.
Gilbert said that on two separate occasions, White "gave me his word" that he was going to stay in the Senate race. "To me, that's a trust issue," Gilbert said.
Gilbert, a Tyler-area rancher, said that he never would have run for governor if he knew White would be in the race.
I don't really think Bill White's openness to running for Governor is a surprise to anyone and I don't think that White proactively lied or broke anyone's trust given we all knew that his situation was dependent upon Sen. Hutchison's indecisiveness. Gilbert was just as prone to attack Shami as Schieffer prior to today on his opposition research site "The Scoop".
Practically, this endorsement does nothing for Shami as it's unlikely that Hank's activists are going to divert their time from working to elect Gilbert Ag Commissioner to donating or volunteering for a multi-millionaire. Shami's not going to get or need any financial support as a result of this endorsement- if anything, it's more plausible that Gilbert could receive financial support from Shami for his Ag Commission race. But even that is a stretch and would be counter to the sort of politics in which Gilbert believes.
End result- this is a temporary head scratcher that confuses the people that would have been instantly supportive of GIlbert's switch and otherwise seen it as a good faith effort to move the Party and ticket forward.
In any case, I agree with the commenters that I look forward to supporting and donating to Hank's Ag Commissioner bid, which should be the real focus of today's announcement rather than the distraction of the Shami endorsement. Todd Staples is weak and can be beaten. Today we've gained a stronger Ag Commissioner candidate in Hank Gilbert and a stronger Gubernatorial candidate in Bill White.
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