July 01, 2008
TexBlog PAC Endorses Sherrie Matula

Vince has the writeup on TexBlog PAC's endorsement of Sherrie Matula at last Thursday's fundraiser.


Matula's race represents one of those races that a lot of folks in the "bricks and mortar political establishment" may have underestimated in the early part of this year. However, this district is ripe for a flip. Matula laid the groundwork for this year's campaign with a respectable general election showing in 2006 and her "Apple Corps" team of volunteers and on-the-ground activists has worked very hard this year to register new voters, identify Democratic voters in the district, and conducting GOTV.

This race, however, is one where the Netroots have consistently seen the potential for defeating incumbent John Davis (a legislator who Texas Monthly appropriately deemed "furniture") and the value in Matula's traditional and online campaign operations.


Click over to read the rest. I've said before that Matula ran a great campaign in 2006 on a shoestring; this year, with much better funding, more experience, and a stronger Democratic trend overall, she is in a good position to win in a district that nobody would have pegged as competitive as recently as 2004, when Rep. Davis ran unopposed. You can help Sherrie and help us help her make that happen.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on July 01, 2008 to Election 2008
Comments

Out of curiosity: I've seen a LOT of chatter that Davis is in trouble. Is there any data to back that up or is this talk being fuled by speculation?

Maybe Matula's internal polling?

I ask out of curiosity, not out of snark.

Posted by: Cory on July 1, 2008 11:22 AM

Hi, Cory -
I'm Sherrie's campaign manager. Davis is in trouble for several reasons. The R's in 129 are not real happy with him. He had a Primary challenger (Jon Keeney) who got 1/3 of the vote. Many of Keeney's public supporters are precinct chairs in HD129. Keeney and his supporters are fed up with Davis' ethics problems. Three ethics complaints have been resolved against Davis, mostly regarding spending campaign cash for personal use (He had to return $13,000 to his campaign, for example.) Also, the numbers in HD129 are better for Dems than people realize. Sherrie got nearly 43% of the vote last time on a very short campaign, very little money and not a lot of field effort. Nick Lampson got 48% of the vote in our 38 precincts. We are running a much different kind of campaign this time, with more money raised and an aggressive field plan. In addition, we are entirely within Harris County, TX-22 and SD 11, so a lot is riding on how HD129 performs for a lot of races.
Hope this helps.

Posted by: Martha Griffin on July 2, 2008 10:32 AM
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