The Express News does a nice profile of Democratic Lite Guv candidate Linda Chavez-Thompson. The most important bits are right here:
Party leaders gathered in Austin last month to brainstorm on promising candidates for the lieutenant governor’s race. They had initially approached state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, but she said she declined.
Someone suggested Chavez-Thompson, and before long, her friends and associates began a full-court press to persuade her.
Strategists dropped by her home and made their case. Pollsters broke down the numbers for her. Prominent politicians such as former state Comptroller John Sharp and state Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, urged her to run.
“There’d be one day when I thought it was doable,” Chavez-Thompson said. “And the next day I’d think, ‘Am I crazy or what?’”
[…]
Four years ago, Texas Democrats nominated Maria Luisa Alvarado, a little-known, underfunded San Antonian with no election experience, for lieutenant governor. She lost to Republican incumbent David Dewhurst by nearly a million votes.
Dewhurst has a personal fortune estimated to be close to $200 million, and Alvarado said she found it particularly hard to compete with “the millions of dollars Dewhurst had available.”
The main difference between Chavez-Thompson and Alvarado is that Chavez-Thompson starts out with a base and the promise of support from establishment Democrats. If she is the nominee, she won’t need to match Dewhurst dollar for dollar, but she will need enough money to get her name and basic message out. If these party leaders who urged her to run were sincere, then they will be there to help her raise some of that money. It will be hard to win, for all of the reasons we’re familiar with, but if Chavez-Thompson has the resources she can certainly be competitive. If that doesn’t happen, then her fate will be like Alvarado’s. She – indeed, all of the Lite Guv hopefuls – deserves better than that. I just hope whoever the nominee is, he or she gets it.