Monday, February 6 is the first day of early voting in Austin for the HD48 runoff. On that same day, Tom DeLay will be in the capital for two fundraisers (as we've seen, he needs all the funds he can get). Anyone else think he's there in part to help whip turnout for poor, hapless Ben Bentzin? Given Bentzin's poor showing in January, it's hard to imagine him winning on issues or personality at this point. A little red meat surely couldn't hurt him. Just a thought.
By the way, DeLay will be at the Barton Creek County Club at 6 PM on Monday, in case anyone wants to give him a warm welcome.
UPDATE: Tangential, but Susan Combs is also trying to drag Bentzin across the finish line. "Mighty Texas Strike Force"? Someone read too many Action Comics as a kid.
Posted by Charles Kuffner on February 02, 2006 to Election 2006 | TrackBackFunniest aspect of the HD48 race is that Bentzin suggested to LP officials several weeks before the initial voting that they might want to persuade Libertarian candidate Ben Easton to drop out of the race. Of course, it turned out that if he had done so, Donna Howard would have won without a runoff.
Even funnier, Donna Howard also met with LP officials and Mr. Easton before the election and campaign manager Kelly Fero made it clear that they were very happy to have Mr. Easton in the race. They got it wrong too!
So both of the leading candidates bought into the conventional wisdom and thereby miscalculated. That just reinforces how unexpected the results were.
Harvey Kronberg of the Quorum Report suggested that many of the Republicans in the district lean libertarian and were unhappy with Baxter's performance in office and worried that Bentzin would be even more prone to falling in line with the House leadership and ignoring the interests of the voters in the district. Interesting...