Texas candidate filing closes soon

by: benawu

Tue Dec 29, 2009 at 02:03

How are the parties going vis a vis recruiting candidates to run in all 32 House Districts?

Below the fold for all the details and hey go check out the 2010 Race Tracker Wiki over at Open Congress for all your House, Senate and Gubernatorial needs.

(Cross posted at Daily Kos, MyDD and Swing State Project)

I think we can safely assume that both parties will file candidates (almost invariably the current incumbents) in the Districts that they currently hold.

So onto candidate filings.
First the bad news and there is no way to sugarcoat this - The GOP have a full slate, many with multiple candidates. Yep all 12 Dem held Districts have GOP candidates:

TX-09 (Green) - D+22,
TX-15 (Hinojosa) - D+3,
TX-16 (Reyes) - D+10,
TX-17 (Edwards) - R+20,
TX-18 (Jackson Lee) - D+24,
TX-20 (Gonzalez) - D+8,
TX-23 (Rodriguez) - R+4,
TX-25 (Doggett) - D+6,
TX-27 (Ortiz) - R+2,
TX-28 (Cuellar) - R+0,
TX-29 (Green) - D+8,
TX-30 (Johnson) - D+27,

And for us Democrats the news does not get any better.
We have confirmed candidates in only 8 of 20 GOP held Districts:
TX-05 (Hensarling) - R+17,
TX-06 (Barton) - R+15,
TX-11 (Conaway) - R+28,
TX-19 (Neugebaeur) - R+26,
TX-21 (Smith) - R+14,
TX-22 (Olsen) - R+13,
TX-26 (Burgess) - R+13,
TX-32 (Sessions) - R+8,

And in the other 12 GOP held districts there is not even a rumoured candidate:
TX-01 (Gohmert) - R+21,
TX-02 (Poe) - R+13,
TX-03 (Johnson) - R+14,
TX-04 (Hall) - R+21,
TX-07 (Culberson) - R+13,
TX-08 (Brady) - R+25,
TX-10 (McCaul) - R+10,
TX-12 (Granger) - R+16,
TX-13 (Thornberry) - R+29,
TX-14 (Paul) - R+18,
TX-24 (Marchant) - R+11,
TX-31 (Carter) - R+14,

This is a grim scenario to say the least. At this stage in 2007 we had confirmed and unconfirmed candidates in 12/19; this time 8/20.

I am not suggesting that we will not fill more of these districts but we are a long way behind. Remember that in 2008 we did not run candidates in 6 districts:
TX-01 (Gohmert) - R+21,
TX-02 (Poe) - R+13,
TX-05 (Hensarling) - R+17,
TX-11 (Conaway) - R+28,
TX-14 (Paul) - R+18,
TX-21 (Smith) - R+14,

So hop to it Texas Democrats we need more candidates filing NOW.

** Tips, rumours and what not in the comments please.***

****UPDATE****
We now have a candidate in the 14th!