Courage in CD21?

Matt reports a rumor from the 21nd Congressional District.

The buzz is that John Courage may challenge Lamar Smith again. Courage is a San Antonio teacher and former challenger to Smith in 2002. In 2002 Smith received 73% of the vote and raised over $700,000 compared to Courage's 25% and a little over $150,000. Some view this as a long shot seat, and I couldn't disagree more.

Last year Rhett Smith garnered 35% of the vote and was only 6,000 votes away from winning Austin. This is a candidate that was originally running for President and after his loss decided to run for the Mayor of San Antonio.

I agree with Matt's assessment of CD21. I think it's within reach, and I know there's talk about making it a target next year. Rhett Smith is a perennial office-seeker, and served as little more than a placeholder on the 2004 ballot. Lamar Smith essentially ran unopposed, and he got a relatively paltry 61.5% of the vote while nearly losing the Travis County portion of his district. A real candidate, with a reason to vote for him or her plus a decent bankroll, can make a race of this.

Is John Courage that candidate? He's affiliated with a good-government group called Citizens for Ethical Government - San Antonio, which should fit nicely into any campaign narrative he'd be likely to take against DeLay lapdog Smith. A little Googling around suggests to me that he ran a fairly decent campaign in mostly hostile territory against an incumbent who had no shame about exploiting 9/11 for his own crass purposes. The Secretary of State district report on CD21 in 2002 had the statewide split at 29.2D/70.8R, implying Courage underperformed slightly in 2002 (the 2004 split was 36.2/63.8, meaning Smith underperformed last year). So in short, I don't know for certain. But what I've read about him so far I've liked, so if John Courage goes for a rematch in 2006, I'll be happy to support him. We'll see what happens.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on June 02, 2005 to Election 2006 | TrackBack