No surprise, since she has been talking about running for Attorney General for awhile, but Barbara Radnofsky sent out a press release yesterday confirming that she’s in the race for keeps. From the release:
Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston attorney and the Democratic United States Senate nominee in 2006 is running for Texas Attorney General in 2010. Radnofsky says she will hold a formal announcement later in the year or early next year, but she’s in the race to stay because of what’s at stake for Texas.
“Our statewide leaders aren’t fighting for us; they’re fighting for themselves and their own personal agendas. We’ve seen how the Attorney General can harm our everyday lives: our electric bills, the insurance and taxes we pay, the safety of our children. We need an Attorney General who will use her skills to make sure all Texans get the protection they deserve,” Radnofsky said.
Barbara Ann Radnofsky, known as BAR to many of her friends and supporters, has emerged as the first Democratic candidate who says she’s definitely a candidate for Attorney General. Radnofsky says she intends to build upon her base of 1.55 million votes from 2006 with the help of a top notch team of political professionals with a track record of winning in Texas and across the country. She currently has hired fundraising, polling, media, direct mail, and opposition research firms to work on her 2010 campaign.
[…]
Since running in 2006, Barbara Ann has maintained her statewide organization and has engaged her organization to help elect more Texas Democrats in 2008. Recent polling shows Texas is ready to vote Democratic. In a recent poll conducted by a Republican polling firm in Texas, only 32% of voters in Texas said that Republican elected officials performed their job well enough to deserve reelection for their offices. In contrast, more than half (54%) responded that, “it’s time to give Democrats the chance to do better.”
“I’m in this race to stay and I’m in it to win,” said Radnofsky.
“I have a statewide organization, thousands of donors, and an experienced team of campaign professionals working with me. Texans are fed up with their interests taking a back seat to partisanship and next year it’ll show at the polls,” she concluded.
For what it’s worth, that Texas Lyceum poll shows an erosion in Republican party identification as well:
More respondents (46%) identified themselves as Independents than as Republicans (25%) or Democrats (28%). More of those who don’t identify with a party said they lean Republican (29%) than lean Democrat (22%). Asked about their political outlook, more consider themselves Conservative (46%) than as Moderate (35%) or Liberal (19%).
About the same number of those polled said they are “certain” or “likely” to vote in each party’s primary (Republicans, 31%; Democrats, 30%), and another 17 percent said they intend to vote in a primary but haven’t yet decided which one.
We’ll have a better idea of where we stand when they release their election polling today. I’ll say again, the biggest factor in turning these numbers from potential gains into actual ones is going to be fundraising. Dems have done very well at that in House races, and it’s resulted in near-parity in the House after starting with an 88-62 deficit. Greg thinks we’re basically a 55-45 state right now. Sufficient resources plus good candidates and a favorable environment can overcome that. That’s still asking for a lot, but it’s doable.
Back to BAR, this is reminiscent of the 2006 Senate campaign in that she jumped in early while many other potential contenders held back in the hope of KBH stepping down. As it was then, there are a lot of other possible candidates out there, and a lot of speculation that the incumbent, Greg Abbott, has his eyes on something else, in this case either KBH’s Senate seat or the Lite Gov’s office. We’ll see how it plays out this time, and if being first in line helps her in the event it’s an open seat and a contested primary.
I suspect that Greg Abbott will certainly entertain the idea of pursuing KBH’s Senate seat if the field of Republicans does not get too crowded. If you recall he initially was running for Lt Gov back in 2002 before John Cornyn decided to run for Phill Gramm’s seat. Abbott dropped out of the Lt. Gov. primary and switched to the AG’s race. He’s a wait his turn kind of guy who will do what he can to “keep his powder dry” in the primary.