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Texas Congressional Candidate Filing closes

by: benawu

Wed Jan 06, 2010 at 6:06 AM EST


Texas candidate filing has now closed.

How are the parties going vis-a-vis recruiting candidates to run in all 32 House Districts?

Below the fold for all the details and hey go check out the 2010 Race Tracker Wiki over at Open Congress for all your House, Senate and Gubernatorial needs.

(Cross posted at Swing State Project, MyDD and Open Left)

benawu :: Texas Congressional Candidate Filing closes
The Texas Congressional House delegation is currently split 20/12 in favor of the GOP.

All incumbents have refiled for all 32 Districts.

So onto challenger filings.
First the bad news and there is no way to sugarcoat this - The GOP have a full slate, many with multiple candidates. Yep all 12 Dem held Districts have GOP candidates:

TX-09 (Green) - D+22,
TX-15 (Hinojosa) - D+3,
TX-16 (Reyes) - D+10,
TX-17 (Edwards) - R+20,
TX-18 (Jackson Lee) - D+24,
TX-20 (Gonzalez) - D+8,
TX-23 (Rodriguez) - R+4,
TX-25 (Doggett) - D+6,
TX-27 (Ortiz) - R+2,
TX-28 (Cuellar) - R+0,
TX-29 (Green) - D+8,
TX-30 (Johnson) - D+27,

And for Democrats the news isn't great.
We have confirmed candidates in only 13 of 20 GOP held Districts:
TX-03 (Johnson) - R+14,
TX-04 (Hall) - R+21,
TX-05 (Hensarling) - R+17,
TX-06 (Barton) - R+15,
TX-10 (McCaul) - R+10,
TX-11 (Conaway) - R+28,
TX-12 (Granger) - R+16,
TX-14 (Paul) - R+18,
TX-19 (Neugebaeur) - R+26,
TX-21 (Smith) - R+14,
TX-22 (Olsen) - R+13,
TX-26 (Burgess) - R+13,
TX-32 (Sessions) - R+8,

And in the other 7 GOP held districts it seems that there is no candidate:
TX-01 (Gohmert) - R+21,
TX-02 (Poe) - R+13,
TX-07 (Culberson) - R+13,
TX-08 (Brady) - R+25,
TX-13 (Thornberry) - R+29,
TX-24 (Marchant) - R+11,
TX-31 (Carter) - R+14,

This is unfortunate to say the least.

Remember that in 2008 we did not run candidates in 6 districts:
TX-01 (Gohmert) - R+21,
TX-02 (Poe) - R+13,
TX-05 (Hensarling) - R+17,
TX-11 (Conaway) - R+28,
TX-14 (Paul) - R+18,
TX-21 (Smith) - R+14,

One potential snafu is that it seems that Grier Raggio is not listed as filed in TX-32. Given that there were media stories about him filing on December 30th I expect that he will bob up on the TX Dems list in the next day or two. There are also 2 Dem candidates listed without a race so we will see where they end up too.

A disappointing but not surprising effort from the Texas Democratic Party. Whilst write-in candidates are possible this is highly unlikely if past cycles are any judge.
How can we expect to win the Governors race when 1/3rd of Republican Texan Congresscritters will not have a Democrat running against them in November?

** Tips, rumours and what not in the comments please.***

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Raggio did file
Check your sources again - Raggio is filed on the 30th with over 30 supporters there to watch and he is listed on the Dallas Co Dem Party page - http://www.dallasdemocrats.org...

Strange rules in TX
if whatever you are running for is entirely contained within 1 county, then you may file with the county party instead of the state party. The filing papers will be updated once the County party gets around to turning them in, which is why the state list has no one listed running for any county offices in Denton as of now (Which is where I am registered to vote in as of yesterday, sorry TX-22, I gave up on you).

26, Male, Democrat, TX-26

[ Parent ]
Thanks
Two others are listed at the Harris County (Harris) site (hcdp.org I think):

Sheila Jackson Lee and Gene Green.

That completes the list and makes it far better than the 10 empties I had on my personal list.

From a distance, it appears that most of the focus of Texas democrats for the last few years has been on winning seats in the state legislature and very little on filing complete slates for the House.

Anybody know about Miguel Ortiz?  He's running against Ciro Rodriguez in TX-23 in the primary.  Is this a serious challenge?  Is Ortiz a closet Republican?  Will it create any problems for thew general election?  Clean primaries are not a problem but acrimonious ones are.


[ Parent ]
Legislature seats

Seems to me, the big thing for Texas Democrats in 2010 is to go all out for the Texas Lower House and leave the difficult Congressional districts, if necessary, to devote more resources to the state leg.

If we win a chamber of the leg and don't win any Congressional seats, then Democrats will have a hand in the redistricting and will prevent some of the horrible, horrible gerrymandering that makes the current map so hostile.

If we win some Congressional seats and don't win a chamber of the leg, then we will be shut out of redistricting, and the Republicans will be free to redraw districts so as to get rid of whatever new Democratic Congressional Representatives are elected.

Therefore, we should go for the leg.


[ Parent ]
yes but
Just think of all of the resources that 7 unopposed repub congresscritters can pour in into state leg races.

2010 Race Tracker Wiki

[ Parent ]
Well
Raggio did not appear on either the statewide list or the harris county list as of posting of this diary. Check 8 hours later and there he is. On the statewide list. Familiar with the one county filing rules but assumed that any single county filings that weren't listed on the statewide list would be linked by the TX Dem site (as harris was.)

Matters not he is there now.  

2010 Race Tracker Wiki


[ Parent ]
?
Isn't he Dallas county?

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/


[ Parent ]
Dallas County
You're correct, CD-32 is entirely in Dallas County

[ Parent ]
yep dallas
As it wasn't linked from the tx dems site I thought it would be included in the statewide list. It is now.

2010 Race Tracker Wiki

[ Parent ]

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