It hasn't been a "red state" for that long. We had a Democratic governor, Ann Richards, in the early '90s and when I moved here in the mid-'70s it was a Democratic state. We had a Democratic Senator Lloyd Bentsen, and the state has had in the past some legendary Democratic Senators and Congressmen, people like Ralph Yarborough, Lyndon Johnson, Barbara Jordan..
Polls show it safely red in the Presidential election, but I took a look at the statistics in Five Thirty Eight and other sites and noticed some things that give me some encouragement. Like almost half of the population is African-American (20%) and Hispanic (25%). Turnout is huge in early voting--more than a million more than voted in 2004.
I've written before about some of these races, including TX-07 and the U.S. Senate race, also about the failures in 2002, when we thought we had a chance with a charismatic African-American candidate in Ron Kirk, a Hispanic candidate for Governor in Tony Sanchez, and a popular moderate in John Sharp for Lt. Gov. But that was a bad year for Democrats.
Not too long ago, we had a diary here about TX-07, the Michael Skelly vs. John Culberson race, a district that has been Republican forever, and that George H.W. Bush once represented. Skelly has run some great ads and today the Houston Chronicle endorsed him:
http://www.chron.com/...
I know it seems unthinkable, but this race may be in play. I am not seeing many Culberson ads, and I am seeing lots of Skelly ads. And they are good. I really like the ones with his family. Here is a link to that diary from a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
What I am seeing are nasty direct mail negative ads against Skelly. And just in the past few days, some pretty lame stuff from Culberson. What I'd like to see is Skelly fighting back with the truth about Culberson--that he is a lawyer who represented insurance companies against Texas families, injured consumers, etc. I had a case with him once, the typical case we see in Texas, where minority claims are furiously resisted by insurance companies.
This is the same kind of thing that I did not see in the hapless Kirk campaign of 2002, where he was running against Cornyn, the incumbent now.
Cornyn was the author of a judicial activist decision that changed the law in Texas to the detriment of consumers and injured people, while he was on the Texas Supreme Court, a Texas Supreme Court that has been described as being in the pocket of insurance companies for almost the last twenty years. That decision, known as Moriel, basically destroyed the ability of Texas citizens to sue their insurance companies for denying claims and enacted a new system of requirements for allowing punitive damages. Without the threat of punitive damages, insurance companies can deny claims and the worst that can happen is that a jury will require the company to pay the claim, after lengthy and costly litigation. I believe it was now-U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett, then on the Texas Supreme Court, who remarked that the Court never met an insurance company it did not like. The Texas Supreme Court remains an activist court on the side of big corporations and insurance companies.
Another thing Cornyn is vulnerable on, besides his backing Bush on everything, is his association with Pastor Hagee. I know that some independent voters may not like criticisms of candidates for their religious associations, but I am looking for Palin and McCain to start talking about Jeremiah Wright any day now, and I bet there are e-mails and flyers about Wright going around underground in states like Florida and Ohio now and this coming week. That's what Republicans do.
Cornyn appeared with McCain and Pastor Hagee, a nutty San Antonio preacher who rages against the Catholic Church. It's on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/...
McCain may have denounced Hagee but if Cornyn has, I missed it.
Back to the stats on Texas. I don't recall the exact numbers, but the combined African-American and Hispanic population here is close to 50%. The "evangelical" Christians here probably outnumber the conventional Christian Protestant sects (you know, churches that have organs and traditional church music as compared to the "Jesus is my boyfriend" stuff). But Hispanics are largely Catholic; my handyman and his family spend three or four nights a week at church. Hagee is as anti-Catholic as they get.
So if the combined Hispanic and African-American voting age population is close to 50% in TX--and I don't have the comparable state stats at hand for other states--why isn't Texas in play for Obama? Or maybe it is?
I would be surprised if many of the other "red states" that ARE in play offer comparable demographics.
In 2002, Ron Kirk, as a bland candidate for U.S. Senator got into the mid-40s in a bad year for Democrats after running a poor campaign that did nothing to trash Cornyn--in a state where nasty U.S. Senate races were once a proud tradition. Kirk basically ran as "Bush Lite".
In 2006, incumbent GOP governor Rick Perry probably would have lost to Democrat Chris Bell if only Kinky Friedman had dropped out of his narcissistic and quixotic effort.
So I think the Democrats have a chance here even if, as Chris Matthews reported yesterday, almost one in four Texans thinks Obama is a Muslim.
Early voting is really heavy here in Houston and other cities in Texas. I am reliably told that Harris County (Houston) incumbent judges, all of
them Republicans, are in a panic about hanging on to their jobs.
That happened in Dallas two years ago.
I voted at a site in southwest Houston that people had told me was a three-minute wait. It turned out to be about twenty minutes, but I would estimate the crowd to be about 90% African-American and very enthusiastic.
I am urging my Republican friends to vote Libertarian, as I usually do when there's no hope for the Democrat. Bob Barr is on the ballot here. This year, I am voting for Obama and just wondering if it's possible to see a real upset in the Lone Star State. And even though I like some of the incumbent Republican judges from experience in their courts, I voted straight Democratic.
Obama has not been here since the primaries, but he drew huge crowds in Austin and Houston. Bill Clinton has been here, and Bill Richardson too.
Cornyn is now running ads, mostly positive. Skelly's ads are really good. Everyone has been telling me that Noriega's problem is lack of money, but I'd sure like to see some talk about Cornyn and Culberson as stooges of the insurance industry--nobody likes insurance companies! And right now many Texans are just getting letters notifying them that they are not covered for damages caused by Hurricane Ike last month. A group of lawyers I know just got one of those yesterday.