Michael Hurta makes an observation.
The only Democratic legislator in Texas who is not up for reelection in 2014 yet also has seven figures in his campaign bank account is Rodney Ellis. Will we hear any Ellis for Governor rumors before session is done?
Sen. Rodney Ellis
You can see a copy of Sen. Ellis’ January report here. He has just over $2 million cash on hand, which isn’t exactly Greg Abbott territory but isn’t a bad place to start off, either. He has been in the Senate since winning a special election in 1990, but at least since I’ve been paying attention I can’t recall hearing any talk about him eyeing a run for something else. One opportunity he declined to take to move up was in 2004, when the DeLay re-redistricting effort transformed Chris Bell’s CD25 into the African-American majority CD09. Ellis was not up for election in 2004 but did not challenge the first-term Congressman Bell, who was ultimately defeated in the primary by now-Rep. Al Green, who had been a Justice of the Peace until then.
That may just mean he isn’t interested in a federal office. If so, 2014 is an opportunity for him since he would have had to give up his Senate seat to run in any of the three previous state election years. Personally, I have no idea if Sen. Ellis has even given this matter a moment’s thought, but hey, I can pass along out of the blue speculation as well as the next blogger, so there you go. As of now, Julian Castro has declared his non-candidacy for 2014, Sen. Wendy Davis is playing it coy, Henry Cisneros is almost certainly a figment of my imagination, and I have no idea if anyone has talked to Cecile Richards lately. May as well keep talking about possibilities till one of them becomes real. What do you think about this?
He’s as progressive as they come, that much is certain. He’s probably one of the few people that could get Obama to release all of that campaign technology/data, in order to help turn Texas purple.
And until our brown hermanos y hermanas start showing up in numbers comparable to other southwestern states…
… Democrats need mobilized 2012-style black turnout, which I have some concerns about in a post-Obama landscape.
Texas Democrats could certainly do a lot worse than Rodney Ellis.
I like the guy but really question whether he has the gravitas to be a truly election altering candidate.
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