October 02, 2006
ParentPAC endorses Sherrie Matula

It's buried at the bottom of Clay Robison's column, but Sherrie Matula is the latest candidate to get the Texas Parent PAC endorsement. I don't have a press release on this yet - the official announcement is slated for Thursday, so I'll let John Coby say a few words about Sherrie.


Great weekend for Sherrie. She had 18 teachers and students block walking for Sherrie then phone banking, then putting out signs in the district. Over 1200 signs have been distributed with 50 locations with large Matula/Lampson signs. House parties are also continuing.

Color me stupid, but I don't see any activity from the other camp. Very few yard signs. No campaign Headquarters. No campaign phone number. No campaign staff. An ethics charge for hiding $100,000+ in expenditures. Is he that safe?


Objectively speaking, he's pretty darned safe. The best performance by any Dem in HD129 in 2004 was by Kathy Stone, with 35.1%. That's a very tall hill to climb. Not impossible - as the Lone Star Project notes, several Democratic state reps won in 2004 in redder districts. But tough - all of those guys were incumbents, generally long-term incumbents, and all of them had more money than Matula will have. You can only take a comparison to them so far.

That's what makes this endorsement all the more enticing. Every other race in which the Parent PAC has recommended a candidate so far has been in a swing district. Either the Parent PAC thinks this is a winnable race and is willing to put its money where its mouth is, or they just like Sherrie so much they're willing to overlook electability considerations. However you look at it, that says a lot about the kind of candidate Sherrie Matula is.

Congratulations to Sherrie Matula, who joins Juan Garcia, Joe Farias, Valinda Bolton, Allen Vaught, Kristi Thibaut, Ellen Cohen, and Joe Heflin on the Parent PAC endorsee list.

UPDATE: Muse has more, including a reminder about my own interview with Sherrie, and Vince's email interview with her.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on October 02, 2006 to Election 2006 | TrackBack
Comments

Please answer my question. I was excited to see their endorsements and applaud them for the way they wrote the endorsements but if they are endorsing ZERO Republicans don't their endorsements become increasingly less news worthy?

If everyone of their endorsements is the "D" then there is no suspense and may even be less inherent value to it, perhaps. Thanks!

Posted by: Burt Levine on October 2, 2006 1:57 PM

Burt - As you know, they endorsed a bunch of Republicans in the primaries. I presume those endorsements have carried over. I don't know if they've been endorsing any other Republicans in the general - they don't have a master list of their endorsements. I will see if I can get an answer from Carolyn Boyle on this. Thanks!

Posted by: Charles Kuffner on October 2, 2006 2:21 PM

Parent PAC has endorsed Republicans in the past. They are truly non partisan.

We have had many Republican voting people in Sherries campaign office and block walking with her.

I think they tend to endorse more Democrats than Republicans only because there are more Democrats who support public education.

Hey. We like the endorsement!

Also,it is true, they don't like losing battles. So maybe they are saying something we dont know.

Here are some observations:
Those that tend to vote republican do not have a star performer. No Tom DeLay. Perry is a disaster. Silly Sekula is a write in loser. So John Davis has nothing to hang on to.

John Davis has 0 name recognition.

Davis has an ethics charge about $100,000 in undisclosed funds.

Davis is a do nothing. He is a nice guy, but has done very little except spend his campaign donations on himself.

He isnt very bright, spending $4800 for a fundraiser that got $5400.

He doesn't have a ton of money. According to his last report it was in the low teens.

So. whatever.

Posted by: john cobarruvias on October 2, 2006 3:30 PM