I had the chance to meet Eric Roberson, who is running for CD32 up in Dallas, while I was in Austin for the Democratic convention, but due to my short stay our schedules didn't allow for an interview. Fortunately, he was going to be coming to Houston shortly afterwards, and I took advantage of that to rectify the omission. Roberson is an attorney and Navy flight officer, and a veteran of Operation Desert Shield. A recent poll in the district, using the actual turnout data from 2006 as its model, showed him trailing incumbent Rep. Pete Sessions by only nine points; basically, this district is less Republican than it used to be, and could be within reach given the nature of this year's election. My conversation with Eric Roberson is here, as always in MP3 format. I'm working on gettting a few more interviews with candidates from other parts of the state, and will begin doing Harris County hopefuls shortly.
PREVIOUSLY:
State Rep. Dan Barrett, HD97.
Wendy Davis, SD10.
Robert Miklos, HD101.
Chris Turner, HD96.
Joe Moody, HD78.
Ernie Casbeer, HD59.
State Rep. Juan Garcia, HD32.
The big goal should be to get 1 or 2 (yes 2 is a possibility) new Democratic CDs in DFW in redistricting. There are two basic strategies to do this.
Strategy 1: Try to take over the map making process. This is pretty obvious and is why Democrats and now even Obama are going after the State House.
Strategy 2: Put the fear of God in Republican incumbents, so maybe their map makers will create another packed Democratic district and make their districts safer.
DFW is a perfect situation to apply Stategy 2. Minorities are already extremely diluted here, so it would be easy to create another packed Democratic district. If Roberson were to get a healthy 47%, then we might see the other shoe dropping.