The ultra top-secret TSTA staff blog, Gravity and Waggery, has been revealed to me, and I must say I have to agree with the latest post on Speaker of the House Craddick.
As Richard writes in his post the subject of Junior Tuesday:
TSTA endorsed candidates who support Tom Craddick and candidates who don't because our endorsements were based on the candidates' votes on education issues. I wrote this in response to the question I seemed to be getting most often from just about everyone who is answering the political pundits' favorite question about Texas House races: Was Tom Craddick the reason candidates won or lost on election night?
I see something different - something probably far too simple for the political pundits and professional class of political operatives - that Tom Craddick was essentially irrelevant on election night.
I had the same thoughts. Are we crazy? naive? As far as I could tell, long-time incumbents had the advantage last Tuesday, and as Richard explains, those who didn't usually had a problem: Haggerty faced a lack of Democratic crossover. Macias lost by about the same edge he won last time. Latham's seat flipped again against a popular mayor.
And, of course, Van Arsdale lives in Sen. Dan Patrick's district, and woe be to anyone who crosses a Senator who is a conservative talk show host who owns his own radio station. That's a bloc vote out there.
As for me, I remember the video street survey that the Star-Telegram did, passing around pictures of David Dewhurst, Rick Perry and Tom Craddick. Did anyone on the street know them? Nope. They might know their money, of course, but most did not know them.
And Pat Hardy? Dodged a bullet, I think. I don't know that Pat would say that. I guess I would quote my own story, but you have to pay to read me. Here is the Star-Telegram's story. Almost 100,000 votes in that race. In the Republican primary. Those numbers are comparable to the 2000 Republican primary, which was GWB's first run at president.
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