Announcement Delayed … Sort Of
July 12th, 2007 at 9:28 am
If you announce that you’re delaying the announcement of your exploratory committee, have you really delayed the announcement at all? Rick Noriega let the media know last night that he was postponing the announcement of his Senate exploratory committee, scheduled for this afternoon, out of respect for the passing of Lady Bird Johnson. Noriega’s statement does a good job of succinctly summing up the great woman:
She represented the best of Texas – larger-than-life, open-hearted, confident, idealistic. Millions of her fellow Americans were touched by her kindness and her warmth. In her calm, positive way, she worked to beautify America and to improve the lives of all its citizens, especially children. Her legacy will survive and enrich Texas and this nation through the ages.
We can’t add much else that won’t be more than properly covered by the major media outlets this weekend. The legions of reporters and a phalanx of PR people at a press briefing at the LBJ school testified to the attention she’ll receive, and rightly so. Lady Bird only shows up in the Observer online archives a few times, most significantly in a review by Char Miller of LBJ’s secret White House tapes, in which the first lady features prominently, acting “as a Greek chorus articulating the heightened interior drama.”
As for the race to be the Democrat in the campaign for Senate, Texas’s primary is getting some national attention, with a good-size profile in The Hill (via Burnt Orange Report). It’s easy to see the narrative of this race already shaping up: the formidable fundraising power of Mikal Watts vs. Noriega’s military and leadership experience in Afghanistan, on the border, and in helping Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Watts will be targeting Hispanics, Noriega’s presumed base, from the beginning: “a peripatetic Watts attended 39 events in the 30 days after he launched his exploratory campaign on June 1. He has also been working to woo Hispanics in South Texas, which observers see as an effort to take a bite out of Noriega’s base of support and avoid a primary,” The Hill reported.
Whether Watts can make that bite extend beyond a handful of Hispanic leaders to actual voters remains to be seen.
July 16th, 2007 at 11:26 am
[…] be two events dueling for press coverage Monday morning. Last week, Rick Noriega postponed the announcement of his Senate exploratory committee in deference to Lady Bird Johnson’s […]