Can A Democrat Win In Southwest Fort Worth?
November 29th, 2007 at 7:55 am
Democrat Dan Barrett says he feels confident he will win the December 18 runoff for Texas House District 97.
“I’m pretty sure I’m going to win it,” Barrett told me. He argues that much of the combined GOP vote was generated by groups dedicated to individual candidates — votes less likely to show up in the runoff. “A lot of that vote was a personal vote. I don’t think that’s going to be repeated.”
Here are the final vote totals from the special election according to the Texas secretary of state:
(D) Dan Barrett 5,575
(R) Mark M. Shelton 4,049
(R) Bob Leonard 3,294
(R) Craig Goldman 2,947
(R) Jeff Humber 925
(R) Chris Hatch 515
(R) James Dean Schull 375
Total Votes: 17,680
Barrett came in on top of a whole passel of Republicans in the Nov. 6 special election called for Anna Mowery’s old district — which is carved out of southwestern Tarrant County and southwest-central Fort Worth. HD 97 was considered a safe Republican seat.
The conventional wisdom says whatever Republican lands in second place is going to pick up the votes from all those other GOP candidates — and then he/she/it will handily beat Barrett in the general election.
But, Barrett warned, now that Democrats think they can win, they will turn out — offsetting the GOP advantage in numbers. Barrett has picked up the endorsement of the Texas Parent PAC and he is getting a lot of attention especially from Texas blogs.
The lucky Republican in the runoff is Dr. Mark Shelton. His victory over the other GOP contenders has been tainted somewhat by accusations about a late-in-the-game robo-call message — as well as the fact that his campaign hired Jason Johnson, an associate of Dr. James Leininger.
As I’m sure you know, Leininger is Texas’ one-man brass band trumpeting the golden oldies of school voucherism, eliminating a woman’s right to choose, and tort reform.
According to Harvey Kronberg’s Quorum Report, Shelton has voiced support for Craddick and at one point supported vouchers that would help Texas students attend private schools — on the public dime. Kronberg also “connects the dots” and suggests the robo-calls in question were made on behalf of Shelton’s campaign.
QR: As the dust settles, here is how the HD97 special election looks. The semi-official Craddick candidate was Craig Goldman. When it became evident that he would not make it to the runoff, chess pieces were moved and Shelton became the anointed candidate. Shelton’s campaign consultant shows no consulting fees on either of the two campaign finance reports but his largest lobby client is a PAC funded exclusively by James Leininger. Shelton’s support of both Craddick and vouchers apparently firmed up by the early October candidate forum. Potentially illegal phone calls were made on behalf of candidate-Shelton on election day.
–It must be noted, however, that QR has subsequently posted a denial from Leininger that he was involved in any way:
QR: (Leininger spokesman Ken) Hoagland also said that Dr. Leininger knew nothing about the controversial robo-calls attacking Bob Leonard and Craig Goldman until the issue was brought to his attention.
Dan Barrett says something similar about the robo-calls.
“That robo-call — I didn’t learn about that until a couple of days after the election,” Barrett said. “I don’t have a clue who did it.”
I asked Barrett point-blank if he had engineered the dastardly campaign trick to throw his six Republican opponents into disarray. He stuck to his story and said no.
I do think the ugliness wrought by the affair will change what Barrett calls “the dynamics in the district” — and I think Dan Barrett has a good shot to beat Dr. Mark Shelton, especially if Democrats and independents in the district, fed up with business-as-usual in Austin, take a break from their Christmas shopping to go and vote on Dec. 18.
December 27th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
[…] to run — and why he is announcing in December 2007 — Haggerty pointed to Democrat Dan Barrett’s victory in runoff in an erstwhile-solid-GOP district in southwest Fort Worth on Dec. 18. The Republicans in […]