A bit of “potential candidate” news is tucked into this story about the current state of the Democratic statewide slate.
Joy Diaz
If Democrats had a mantra, it would probably be something like “diversity and inclusion.”
So it’s kind of strange that since jockeying in Texas began for positions on the party’s 2022 statewide ballot, nearly all of the focus has been on white men. You might argue that there’s some diversity within that group: One of the white guys is in his late 40s, one is in his late 50s, and two recently crossed into their 60s.
For the record, we’re talking about Beto O’Rourke, who’s 49 and expected to someday officially announce he’s running for governor; 59-year-old Joe Jaworski, a former mayor of Galveston who’s running for attorney general; and the two 60-year-olds, Mike Collier, who wants a rematch with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Matthew Dowd, the Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Democrat who also wants to take on Patrick.
[…]
But a more diverse statewide field appears to be shaping up on the Democratic side. On Monday, Brownsville lawyer Rochelle Garza dropped plans to seek an open South Texas congressional seat that was redrawn to give Republicans an edge and announced she was joining the race for attorney general. Dallas civil rights lawyer Lee Merritt, who is Black, has been running a low-key race for AG since July. Merritt has not been chasing headlines, but he has assembled a somewhat impressive list of small donors to his campaign.
And on Wednesday, a newcomer teased out vague plans about entering the political arena. Broadcast journalist Joy Diaz, who since 2005 has covered politics and public policy for Austin’s public radio station, said she could no longer mask her biases while “covering the issues of race and inequality.”
In a story posted on her station’s website, Diaz said she plans to run for office. She didn’t say which office, but a handful of Democratic operatives said she’s been putting out feelers for a possible run for governor.
If that holds, it would pit her against O’Rourke — assuming he runs — and certainly test his strength both among Hispanic Democrats and across the party’s base. In the 2018 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, before he transformed into the money-raising machine he would become in the general election contest against Ted Cruz, O’Rourke vastly underperformed in several heavily Hispanic border counties against little-known opponent Sema Hernandez.
Statewide, O’Rourke’s margin of victory in the primary was a bit better than 60-40, which might be considered modest for someone who at the time was a three-term congressman running against a political novice.
Here’s the story. Hard to say much more until such time as she gets more specific, but if she does run for something then I welcome her presence. I will also welcome Beto’s presence when he finally makes it official.
I’d like to address the last two paragraphs as well, since Beto’s performance in the 2018 primary has been a regular talking point even though he did just fine in all those counties in the general election when it really counted. Did you know that in the 2018 Republican primary, George P. Bush and Sid Miller, both incumbents running for re-election, did worse than Beto in their own primaries? Miller got 55.65% against two no-name candidates (well, okay, one was Internet legend Jim Hogan, the 2014 Democratic nominee for Ag Commissioner), while Bush got 58.22% against three candidates, two no-names and former Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson. Beto got 61.81% in a three-way race that included Sema Hernandez. That was his first statewide run, while again those guys were incumbents. Somehow, that never gets mentioned, possibly because the “Anglo Dem underperformed against a no-name Hispanic in South Texas” angle is always sexy.
Also, since this story also mentions a couple of non-Anglo Republicans running for Attorney General (P Bush and Eva Guzman) and Ag Commissioner (James White), I’ll note that if you go farther down the Dem ticket there’s more diversity as well. Austin attorney and community organizer Jinny Suh announced her candidacy for Land Commissioner back in September. We’re still a few days out from the start of filing season, and I fully expect there will be plenty more candidates that we’re not currently talking about to make themselves known.
O’Rourke acting like a true Gen-xer, wait till the last minute.
3 days and counting……
Pingback: Beto makes it official – Off the Kuff