Meet your first official candidate for CD02.
Elisa Cardnell
A naval battle just might be on the horizon in one of Houston’s most competitive Congressional districts.
On Thursday Navy veteran and science teacher Elisa Cardnell, a Democrat, filed papers with the Federal Election Commission to challenge newly-elected U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Houston Republican who is a former Navy SEAL.
Cardnell said she has been considering running for Congress for more than a month. In January, she told her social media followers she was getting ready for the race.
“Before 2016, I tried to stay out of politics, especially since as a member of the military I viewed my role as necessarily nonpartisan — at least in public life,” Cardnell said. “But now I feel that I have to do something, and my entire career of serving my country and my community has led me to this point.”
The 32-year-old Cardnell, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Rice University, spent 5 years on active duty in the Navy and nearly 6 years in the Navy reserves. While on active duty, she rose to the rank of lieutenant, serving as an anti-submarine warfare officer and an officer in charge of port operations in Yorktown.
I’ve mentioned Elisa before, after she reached out to me to tell me of her interest in running. Among other things, filing this paperwork means she can now raise money, so we’ll have a very early indicator of enthusiasm in three months, when the Q1 finance reports get filed. Quite a few of the 2018 Congressional candidates are at least in the picture for 2020 – Mike Siegel (CD10), Sri Kulkarni (CD22), Gina Ortiz Jones (CD23), and MJ Hegar (CD31) are running, thinking about running, or being wooed to run again. I’ve not heard anything about Todd Litton yet, but he’ll be part of the conversation until he says otherwise. CD02 is not currently on the national target list, but I expect it will eventually get there, and as it is wholly within Harris County, it’s the biggest target available for local Dems. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on it. The Hill has more.
I believe Ms. Cardnell’s candidacy has the potential to make the race competitive. The next step is to see if she can raise money. Rep. Crenshaw has spent most of his short time in Congress being an ardent defender of the wall(and the president) and courting right wing press figures like Ben Shapiro. Ultimately I think that’s a mistake in a center trending district that almost went for Beto but its TBD whether the district moves far enough to the center next cycle to elect a dem congressmemeber. My analysis of the data and political instict tell me the district has the potential to be truely competitive but will be a big uphill battle.
Small point, Ben Shapiro has some overlap with the MAGA agenda, but we, Trump supporters, don’t claim him, even though sometimes he has good arguments we agree with. Ben’s on the periphery of never-Trumpism.