Here is a look at the three biggest federal races. We'll include more races later on, if they're close, as the night develops. The Republican primary race in CD-22 to run against Congressman Nick Lampson is below the fold.
While all the national pollsters are finally paying attention to Texas because of the presidential race, polling on the Texas senate primary has been limited. That said to following poll is from Public Policy Polling (PPP) as conducted as part of a presidential poll in the Texas primary.
PPP surveyed 434 likely Democratic primary voters on February 23rd and 24th. The survey's margin of error is +/- 4.7%.
32 Rick Noriega
15 Gene Kelly
08 Ray McMurrey
03 Rhett Smith
42 Undecided
State representative Rick Noriega has the lead in the Texas Democratic Senate primary but many voters remain undecided a week out from the primary. Gene Kelly, a perennial candidate for office in Texas who benefits largely from a good name, is in second place.
Noriega is doing very well with Hispanic voters, among whom he leads 53-12. With white voters and black voters he has just an eight point advantage, 25-17 and 22-14 respectively. He is strongest with voters whose top issue is the economy, health care, or the war.
Noriega needs to get about 45% of the votes of the undecideds to avoid a runoff.
The high undecided share is not surprising in the context of the presidential primary seeing as about only 1 in 3 voters are the typical electorate that pays rapt attention to the rest of the ballot.
If you distribute the undecided vote in the same proportion of the decided vote you get....
55% Rick Noriega
26% Gene Kelly
14% Ray McMurrey
05% Rhett Smith
I've spent the better part of the last month keeping an open mind on the U.S. Senate Democratic primary race between Ray McMurrey and Rick Noriega. What I've found in the last month is that I'm repeatedly asking myself, "why is McMurrey doing that?"
I'm trying to be as fair as possible in this race. I'm not employed by Noriega, and never have been. So what I did was look at Mr. McMurrey's official press releases to see what he's been talking about -- and here's what I found:
There are a total of 17 releases from McMurrey on his website, including:
5 positions papers: foreign policy, environment, health care, military pay, and immigration. Not once in these policy papers does he attempt to draw a contrast with Cornyn.
9 process releases -- Either about filing or someone else filing. 5 of them mention Noriega negatively, and only 1 positively. Two mention Cornyn negatively, and a few don't even mention anyone at all.
8 of 17 releases negatively speak about Noriega.
3 of 17 releases negatively speak about Cornyn.
Why is McMurrey focusing so much on Noriega, and barely mentioning Cornyn? The easy answer, of course, is that McMurrey is running against Noriega right now, and not Cornyn, and he needs to draw a contrast between himself and Noriega. So what is he using to draw a contrast -- the process or the policies? Looking at the numbers above, it's the process.
The policies are important -- I don't doubt that McMurrey is running a campaign based on policies -- but McMurrey has spent half of his press time not discussing policies, but instead discussing the process. Therefore, the process must be important to his campaign. Let's look at those times when he's made a strong effort to draw a contrast:
1) McMurrey Asks for Noriega to Release His Military Records
Longshot Democrat Ray McMurrey, a teacher, said today he'll disclose all his employment records from 17 years with the Eagle Pass and Corpus Christi school districts. And he'll do it before the March 4 primary, he said, urging opponent Rick Noriega to act just as quickly in releasing military records.
Noriega had already agreed to release these records prior to this "urging." The releasing of records is not the issue -- Noriega's making a reasonable push about how Republicans want a look at these records to try and distort his military record. They've done it before. This was a point we raised not only on Burnt Orange Report, but on the front pages of Daily Kos. In a national race, Democrats realized -- strategically -- that it was right to stand up to Republicans and call them out early and up-front for this kind of ridiculous stunt. So why would McMurrey join with the Republicans with the stunt?
Update: go here for audio of the debate! Thanks to Mike Heidenreich at UT's Liberal Arts ITS.
First off, let me apologize to Trey for my earlier insinuations that the questions might be filtered. The questions were fantastic ones for McMurrey, and I was very pleased to see that the candidates had a good deal of time to speak on the most important issues.
Burkablog has a decent rundown of the candidates positions, question by question, and I've posted a comment that adds some things to his list. Burka called the debate for McMurrey, and I agree 100%. McMurrey played to win, while Noriega played not to lose.
I agree with Phillip that both candidates did well last night, but for different reasons. For McMurrey, this was his big chance to inform people about his progressive platform, which he did a fabulous job of. He addressed the crowd directly, listed specific policies that he would support, and showed a broad knowledge of the various topics. McMurrey was energetic, challenging Noriega on a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq and on his commitment to national health care. Noriega took a more cautious approach, avoiding direct engagement with McMurrey and declining to move beyond generalities about his policy positions. This was smart strategy for the front-runner, just get through without any mistakes, and Noriega did just that. Noriega was also fairly good at delivering jokes - both of his laugh lines about not hunting with Dick Cheney and wanting public funding of elections because John Cornyn has such a big lead in fundraising went over well.
Commenting on the health care question, there is a big difference between McMurrey and Noriega on this issue. Noriega supports "guaranteed coverage," according to his website, and said last night that he would support Hillary's proposal to mandate that everyone go out and get coverage. But Noriega still envisions a major role for private insurers, which will leave us with many of the same problems of the current system - playing the deductible/copay game, dealing with red tape, doctors having to deal with these companies, and most importantly, the insurance companies will still decide what get what gets covered and what doesn't, and will still be able to leave doctors off their lists on a whim. This plan is similar to Cornyn's plan in all of the above ways. It is a step in the right direction in terms of affordability, but it is not nearly enough.
On the other hand, the single-payer system that McMurrey is touting will allow everyone to be insured by the government. This way, the people will have a say in the type of coverage they have, the system will be streamlined through one processing center, we will cut costs far more effectively by cutting bloated executive salaries and corporate profits out of the system, and best of all, we won't have to deal with the insurance companies. When we need care, we'll simply go get it, secure in the knowledge that the national health care system will provide that care. There is a huge difference between Noriega's corporate-centric plan and McMurrey's people/government-centric plan, and McMurrey is right to draw the distinction here, and to point out the similarities between Noriega and Cornyn on this issue.
Another big difference between the two candidates was on Iraq - McMurrey took the lead on this issue, not simply saying it's time for us to leave now, but that he has gone on record opposing the war at the time we invaded Iraq. He called the occupation illegal and immoral, and set a clear timetable for withdrawal - 15 months. Noriega agreed that it was time to go, but did not talk about his feelings on the war when it began, and would not commit to a timetable, despite being asked twice by a moderator. He seemed more interested in talking about his military experience, frankly.
Noriega came out in favor of publicly funded elections, which was a surprise, having never heard him make a public statement in favor of clean elections. He listed off a bunch of campaign finance bills that he's supported without going into any details, but I wonder if any of those were related to public financing of campaigns, which is different from campaign finance writ large. Can anyone give me a bill number and session number on a bill in the Texas lege over the last few years that has called for public financing of elections? At any rate, money still runs politics in Texas, so if Noriega has acted on this issue, we don't have any results. I'm glad he's for it, though, and I hope he'll make it a major issue. Maybe McMurrey has pulled him to the left on this one, since this has always been one of Ray's top issues.
I liked that the mods worked the Hutto debacle into the question about immigration - that was a national shame, and a lot of people still don't know about it. If you're one of those, read here.
I do want to thank KAB and UDems for finding the room and the moderators, setting up all the sound stuff, and emceeing. This was a sizable undertaking, and I appreciate their efforts. One question I have for the hosts - why were the audience questions cut out at the end? They are an important part of any debate, and were promised in the debate format agreement, yet were dropped without explanation.
I watched the part of the debate that I could, and I'm sure others will differ in my opinion, but from what I saw, both Rick Noriega and Ray McMurrey did a very good job in the debate. Overall, I thought McMurrey's presentation was better, while Noriega's language was better (McMurrey comparing the health care industry to the slave lobby just made me scratch my head).
Noriega spent a good deal of time talking about his time in the Texas Legislature, some of the bills he worked on, and how his experience with the process makes him ready to serve in the U.S. Senate. McMurrey focused a lot of his attention on the "outside" candidate -- talking about clean elections and repeatedly referring to Noriega's work with Center Point energy.
The only part -- from my point (and this is my post) that really irked me about either candidate was when McMurrey attacked Noriega for his health position. Noriega stated he supports making health care accessible and affordable, to which McMurrey responded (via the Dallas Morning News):
"That's exactly what John Cornyn said" a few months ago, Mr. McMurrey replied, referring to the Republican incumbent. "Access to affordable health care is a Republican policy," he said.
Sorry, Ray -- and sorry to Will and Jeff -- but that line really, really upset me. Access to affordable health care is NOT a Republican policy -- its something Democrats have talked about for years. Republicans have co-opted our language because it was so effective; for Noriega to surrender what has proven to be an accurate distinction between what Democrats and Republicans actually intend to do about health care in this country is absurd. I understand that McMurrey needs to try and distinguish himself from Noriega on certain issues, but this was a cheap attack that I really didn't appreciate -- not as someone who supports anyone, but as someone who worked on health care policy for most of my time at the Capitol.
I'm sure many of you have different views on the debate. Feel free to share below. But please, keep it civil. Matt, KT and I are all running on about 4-5 hours of sleep (or less), so we're likely to have very little tolerance for any outright attacks on either candidate.
Both Democrats did well tonight -- let's be pleased about that.
Man. I just got back from the Noriega-McMurrey debate and it was brutal. For McMurrey. For a man who was quoting Barack Obama, he certainly could have picked up a few tips from the man he was trying to cast himself as.
Tonight at 8pm (CT), Rick Noriega will participate in a Democratic primary debate in Austin. We know that Texas is a big state, and we want everyone inside and outside of Austin to see what Rick has to say about the war in Iraq, the economy, and health care.
Because of that, we're going to be streaming the debate live tonight on Rick's website starting around 8:15 pm.
If you happen to be in Austin tonight, be sure to attend the event, invite some friends, and show your support for Rick. It will be in the Jester Auditorium Room (Room A-121A) at the University of Texas. I hope you'll come and support the next U.S. Senator from Texas!
Arrive early and don't depend on parking on campus. There is the Bob Bullock museum lot and other spaces south of campus in downtown where you might find parking.
**Update**
Apparently, all that extra tuition deregulation money that UT-Austin has been collecting has been going to bail out our UT football team instead of making sure we have a strong enough wireless signal in our classrooms. Thanks, Regents -- no, we can't use the internet in the class, but there's more seats at Royal-Memorial!
(cross posted to Texas Kaos)
Rick Noriega and Ray McMurrey are going to debate next Wednesday, Feb. 13 at UT - Austin according to the Postcards from the Lege blog.
You got to take a look at Muse with the comparison of Rick Noriega to Ray McMurrey. It is quite a huge difference. I mean HUGE.
Why Ray is getting any press is beyond me. Gene Kelly might have better credentials than Ray. With only $776 in the bank, Ray is working for change, change that he could use for gasoline to get himself back home.
God bless him for running, but geez, he should run for school board, not US Senate.
