Pretty good recap of the past couple of weeks for Rick Noriega and his fundraising efforts.
Noriega is traveling today to Las Vegas as a guest of the Democratic National Committee to meet national party donors who are attending the Nevada Democratic Party’s presidential debate, which begins at 7 p.m. Central Time.
“They’ve got a lot of national donors coming to this, and we wanted them to put a face with the name,” Noriega told the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday. “What’s going to happen is across the country folks are going to start realizing that Texas is in play.”
In the past several weeks, Noriega also has picked up endorsements from past Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and Wesley Clark.
“It’s a different race now, from a primary to a general election,” Noriega said Wednesday.
That weeklong netroots push for Noriega hauled in nearly $64K, which is not too shabby. But don’t feel bad if you missed out – it’s always a good time to make a donation to Team Noriega.
Another sign that Noriega is turning the national party to his favor occurred last week in Austin, where he was a guest at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
The senatorial committee will not decide which state races to finance until late next summer, but chairman Sen. Charles Schumer had in the past indicated a preference for Watts as the party nominee because Watts, a San Antonio trial lawyer, could largely finance his own campaign.
I think I’m more optimistic about the DSCC getting involved in this race than some. They’ll have plenty of money, and perhaps they’ll be spurred on by the DCCC’s aggressive fundraising goal and offense-minded approach. I admit I have no evidence for this optimism, and I know that in the end nothing will matter as much as Noriega’s own fundraising plus whatever poll they commission in August or so, but I’m feeling optimistic anyway. We’ll see how foolish I’m being for believing this soon enough.