(Don’t) Run Everywhere, Dallas-style

Remember when Dallas was a stronghold for the state GOP? Those days are long gone.

After two straight losing cycles that forced them out of power, Dallas County Republicans will feature a scaled-down ticket for the 2010 elections.

Party Chairman Jonathan Neerman says it doesn’t make sense to recruit candidates for well over 50 countywide races.

Instead, the party is focusing on a handful of judicial races and the contest for county judge.

And unless Ronald Reagan rises from the grave, Republicans won’t recruit a candidate to run against District Attorney Craig Watkins .

“We’re going to target selectively,” Neerman said. “We want to be thoughtful in our approach so we can be consistent with our philosophy that we’re looking for quality judges at the courthouse.”

Neerman, who says he will personally handle the recruitment of judicial candidates, is hosting a candidate slating meeting Thursday.

He says Republicans have no more than 20 candidates ready to run for various judicial posts in 2010. That’s less than half of the countywide ballot.

Boy, how the mighty have fallen. As you know, the Harris County Democratic Party was very recently been on that side of the fence, so I know where Neerman is coming from. I don’t think that strategy works, but I know it’s really hard to get good candidates to run when they have little prospect of getting adequately funded and little chance of winning. Even after the two consecutive drubbings the Dallas County GOP has received, you’d think that in a state where various Republican candidates are touting multi-million dollar fundraising hauls there’d be a few bucks to spare to keep the second-largest county in the state from becoming completely unreachable, but I guess not. Gonna be hard to hold onto some of those State Rep seats, even if they get a friendly map in 2011, that’s all I can say. Anyone think this might be a preview of things to come for their colleagues here in Harris County?

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