December, 2003:

As of today, there are no Democratic candidates on the ballot for any statewide office in 2004. Well, there’s one, anyway.

AUSTIN — No Democratic candidate has yet filed to run for statewide office in Texas in 2004, but party officials say they expect a couple of hopefuls to emerge before Friday’s filing deadline.

San Antonio lawyer David Van Os said Tuesday he’ll be one of them, as a candidate for the Texas Supreme Court.

“I am going to file. That’s definite,” Van Os said.

The only statewide offices on the ballot in the 2004 presidential election year are a Railroad Commission seat and three seats apiece on the Texas Supreme Court and Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Like every other statewide office, each has a Republican incumbent, some of whom already have drawn Republican opponents.

Van Os plans to run for the seat held by Scott Brister, appointed by Gov. Rick Perry in November to replace Craig Enoch, who resigned.

That’s not stopping the state party from sounding optimistic.

State Democratic Chairman Charles Soechting said the party is concentrating its efforts on fielding candidates for the Texas House, saying voters are primed to punish Republican lawmakers for issues such as congressional redistricting and deep cuts in social service spending.

“The backlash has begun,” Soechting said in a news release. “A full year of the over-the-top Republican partisanship has sparked a movement to restore common sense and mainstream values to the Texas Legislature.”

Soechting did not give the names of the Democratic candidates he said would file in the House races or which Republicans would be targeted.

Ted Royer, a spokesman for the Texas Republican Party, which has not lost a statewide race since 1994, said he was unimpressed with Soechting’s plans or his analysis of the voters’ mood.

“I haven’t seen their news release,” Royer said. “We’re very confident heading into next year’s elections.”

Redistricting has certainly been a rallying point for Democrats here, and I certainly hope that will help to turn out the base in November, but let’s face it: Their base is bigger than ours right now. I’m not convinced that independents looked at the whole saga with anything more than a “pox on both their houses” mentality. I don’t see redistricting as the best way to bring more people into the Democratic fold.

Democratic Party spokesman Sean Michael Byrne and strategist Kelly Fero, who advises Soechting, said they are not aware of any candidates who planned to step forward in the statewide races.

For years, the party made a conscious effort to bypass statewide races, saying it was regrouping for a strong comeback in 2002. But that plan backfired when Republicans again swept all statewide offices while strengthening their majority in the state Senate and winning control of the Texas House for the first time since the Reconstruction.

Fero echoed Soechting’s prediction that a slate of formidable Democrats would emerge for the legislative races.

“You’ll have to wait until 5 o’clock Friday when filing ends, but I think you’ll see about two dozen strong candidates step up,” Fero said.

I hope you’re right, but I’ll be holding off on the champagne until then. Bill Howell fears a repeat of the disastrous strategy from 2000. I’m not as downbeat as he is, but I see where he’s coming from.

I’ll say this: It’d be nice if whoever the eventual Democratic Presidential nominee is spends a little time here campaigning. Not because he thinks Texas is winnable, but because it would help turnout for all of the downballot races. Al Gore got about as many votes in 2000 as Bill Clinton did in 1996, while George Bush got one million more than Bob Dole did. I don’t know about you, but I think that has an effect on other races. Anything to minimize that effect would be good.

Via Yellow Dog comes this analysis of the 2003 Houston Mayoral race. I kind of wish now that I’d looked for this earlier, because the cited paper by Richard Murray no longer appears to be posted at the stated URL. Regardless, the long passages quoted have some familiar stuff about the Sanchez and White campaigns, plus something that I hadn’t heard before:

Much of the support Orlando Sanchez received in 2001 election was an anti-Lee Brown vote. In a number of polls done in 2002 and 2003, only about 60% of the respondents who said they had voted for Sanchez in 2001 said they expected to vote for him in 2001.

I had long believed that Sanchez wouldn’t get the same level of Hispanic support that he did in 2001, but this is the first I’ve heard that his support across the board was so shallow. I’d love to know where these polls are that Dr. Murray is talking about. I for one wouldn’t have given in to the conventional-wisdom description of Sanchez as the frontrunner if I’d known this.

One other item for your consideration, for which I’ll try to clean up the formatting:

Estimated Vote Share in Different Voter
Precinct Groupings in 2003

General Election          Runoff

White% Sanchez% Turner%   White% Sanchez%
Racial/Ethnic Anglos     46%      48%      6%      48%      52%
Blacks                   18%       1%     81%      96%       4%
Hispanics                46%      47%      7%      56%      44%
Asians                   70%      25%      5%      72%      28%

No matter how you slice it, that’s what I call broad-based support for Bill White.

UPDATE: Greg found Richard Murray’s full report (PDF). I did come across this link yesterday, but it came up blank on my screen. Oh, well.

As expected, the GOP will be putting up some challengers to Democrats who participated in the legislative boycotts during the last session. Here’s the scoop from San Antonio.

A group of GOP newcomers has targeted incumbent Democratic state legislators, thinking they can hang the albatross of breaking Texas Senate and House quorums around the Democrats’ necks.

Depending on what happens in March, some potential November races include Jim Valdez against District 26 state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, Steve Salyer vs. District 118 state Rep. Carlos Uresti, Chris Shindler against District 116 state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, and Sandra Ojeda Medina vs. District 123 state Rep. Mike Villarreal.

The thinking of these Republicans is that voters will not look kindly on the Democrats who fled across state lines in a failed attempt to derail congressional redistricting.

Similarly, much could be made of Van de Putte’s unproven allegation that a Republican colleague slurred Mexicans during the divisive debate.

But despite those perceived advantages, some longtime local Republicans don’t see the merit in such a strategy. All of the districts lean Democratic, and none of the GOP hopefuls have proved they can raise the funds necessary to beat an incumbent.

At the same time, the Democratic incumbents now will run full-scale campaigns that could help raise overall Democratic turnout, making life more difficult for Republican judges on the countywide ballot.

All of these incumbents except for Mike Villareal (who won 63%-35% over a different Republican challenger) ran unopposed in 2002. The state House boundaries were redrawn in 2001 to create more favorable districts for GOP candidates, so many existing Democratic districts were packed. As such, I’m not particularly worried about these races.

If anyone should be vulnerable, it’s Sen. Van de Putte, who did not distinguish herself with that claim about a racial slur allegedly made by a Republican colleague. Her Senate seat would also be a bigger prize, especially if the Democrats snatch back SD 1 on January 20. Again, I’ll be surprised if she’s seriously challenged.

As for other locations, I know that someplace I’ve seen a link to a listing of candidates who have already filed for the March 9 primary, but I’ll be damned if I can find it now. Any help for my failing memory would be appreciated.

The ever-so-shrill, I-liked-him-so-much-better-when-he-stuck-with-economics Paul Krugman has a few suggestions for the press on how to cover the 2004 elections.

• Don’t talk about clothes.

• Actually look at the candidates’ policy proposals.

• Beware of personal anecdotes.

• Look at the candidates’ records.

• Don’t fall for political histrionics.

• It’s not about you.

How totally naive. You won’t get any ratings with that. Where’s the horse race, the inside baseball, the validation of one’s personal worldview? No wonder the guy toils in such obscurity.

Unfortunately, via Atrios, it looks like there ain’t much hope for what Krugman hopes. Oh, well. Maybe in 2008.

Byron is helping to lead the charge to give support to State Rep. Paul Sadler, who is running in a special election on January 20 to replace the retiring Bill Ratliff. Sadler is the only Democrat on the ballot, and if he wins it’s a pickup for the Dems, making the Senate balance 18-13. He’s a strong candidate with a good legislative record, so I’m happy to give him what little support I can.

You can make a donation to his campaign if you’d like to help. I’m going to add that link to my sidebar along with ones for Richard Morrison and Stephanie Herseth, which I’d unaccountably forgotten to do before now.

I keep promising to do that blog post on what Official Political Party blogs like the Yellow Dog Blog ought to do in order to get a return on their investments, but until I get around to it, something they ought to do is help promote candidacies like Sadler’s and Morrison’s. If there’s one lesson we’ve learned from the 78th Lege, it’s that politicians who aren’t on your own ballot can have a pretty big effect on your life, including who your representatives are. It matters to all of us how many Democrats there are in Austin and in DC, and that’s a message that should be broadcast on every channel.