 Last night, after hanging with the Texas bloggers (good folks, those TX bloggers), I went to help make some signs for the Austin Progressive Coalition with KT and Glen Maxey. Back in my Austin days, Mr. Maxey was a state house member. In fact, he was the only openly gay Texas house member. He's now running for Travis County tax assessor-collector, which interestingly enough also controls the voter rolls. His opponent, also a Democrat, seems to be a fan of purging the voter rolls rather frequently and not really attending to the activities of her job. But, the more important part of this story for this blog is that he's been involved in Texas politics for decades, and knows a thing or two about how this stuff works in Austin.
Glen mentioned something interesting to me: he can never recall any television spots for the presidency being aired in Texas. And that's saying a lot for a guy who's been involved in Texas politics since the 70s. And now, as I said yesterday, they are everywhere. And, for my childhood state, it's clearly a good thing.
But the problem with all this excitement? Well, people are going to vote in the Democratic primary, and then voting for the rest of ballot based upon...ummm...cute names? Seriously, in the Senate primary you have Rick Noriega, a guy who thinks because he's named Gene Kelly, that he needs to run for every election ever in the state of Texas, a somewhat good-hearted teacher who doesn't really get the politics of it all, and some other random dude. Fine and all, but Noriega is a strong candidate who not only would make an excellent senator, but also has a pretty good shot of taking out one of the worst Bushanistas in the Senate. I mean, Cornyn really, really sucks. He has the lowest progressive score of any Senator, and Noriega would be a great replacement. Unfortunately, people like voting for the dancer guy. Ugh! Well, the Austin Progressive Coalition is trying to do something about that by sending out mailers targeting young voters and by having handy slate cards available 100 feet away from the polling place. They've selected some real Democrats running for office and are trying to get the large progressive community in Austin to make sure they vote for Real change, not just Republicans who have now decided to run in the Democratic primary.
But, I've also learned something from my blogger friends here in Texas. It's changing. The Democratic brand is strengthening just like everywhere else in the nation. Maybe don't expect a progressive sweep in 2008, but the state is very gradually changing to Purplish. |
