Is liberal 3rd party group lying about its ads?

UPDATE, 4/22 5pm: The overall ad buy is around $90k so far nationwide, per the FEC’s reports. $5937.50 was spent on radio against Farenthold and $3800 against Canseco. So House Majority PAC did put some money behind their buy, but so far it looks like the media buy was to get media coverage for their press release.

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The Houston Chronicle reports that, “A new Democratic “Super PAC” began targeting [with attack ads] freshman Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi, on Thursday for supporting the House GOP budget. . .” The same group, House Majority PAC, is also “targeting” San Antonio Congressman Francisco Canseco.

Blake Farenthold pictured giving a speech.

Corpus Christi Congressman Blake Farenthold

But are they really? Or did the Chronicle get duped? It looks like they did, but we won’t know definitively for another day or two because of campaign finance law.

Just two days ago, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a very similar press release for a larger — but very similar — group of newly elected Republican members of Congress. It used the same false claims about Republicans and Medicare that Democrats trot out every election cycle to try to scare seniors. They even sent DCCC Chair Steve Israel to MSNBC to talk about their so-called “ad blitz.”

One little problem: it was a total sham — there was no ad blitz. In one Indiana district the entire ad buy against a particular congressman was…$40. Yes, $40. The DCCC’s entire nationwide “ad blitz” cost $6000. Considering that Barack Obama is expected to raise a billion dollars for his re-election campaign, the DCCC got caught just sending a press release with the hope that gullible journalists wouldn’t double-check.

It’s likely that the House Majority PAC is similarly trying to pull a fast one on Texas journalists. The targeted group is very similar and the message is just about the same. First, the House Majority PAC just filed its paperwork with the FEC and started less than two weeks ago. They haven’t had much time to fundraise and don’t even have a website yet. Second, a PAC of this kind is required to notify the FEC within 48 hours once it crosses $10,000 in spending (which it would immediately if this were real). So far, it has not. Third, the House Majority PAC’s Youtube page has just three ads (one of them has just 50 views), and neither are for Canseco or Farenthold. The most likely explanation for this is that they are actually airing those three ads with a very small amount of money, but not airing the others.

Finally, it would be fairly pointless to spend real money airing attack ads when we have no idea what Canseco or Farenthold’s districts will look like after redistricting. It wouldn’t be unheard of for politicos in Washington, DC, to make this mistake, but it’s not terribly likely.

Journalists beware. Anyone printing the House Majority PAC attacks should do some factchecking. I’ll be checking the independent expenditure filings to see if the House Majority PAC actually made a real buy, but I’d be quite surprised.

Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka thinks Perry is akin to Birthers?

Burka writes:

[Burka quotes TNR article about how Trump is making dumb comments about protectionism, xenophobia, jingoism and Birtherism]

As I see it, Trump is borrowing from Rick Perry’s Texas playbook. Perry was the first extremist to emerge in this political cycle, the first to understand how virulent the right’s anger had become

As a writer and editor, Burka should know better. He’s likening Governor Perry to Donald Trump, which is simply mindboggling. That’s really the way Burka sees Perry — as someone akin to xenophobes, jingoists and Birthers?

That’s incredible. Just incredible. I’m sure Burka would say that he doesn’t really think that Perry is the same as Trump, but the fact that he would even think to make the comparision is unbelievable.

Beyond that, Burka misinterprets the poll result. Donald Trump will sink like lead if he ever becomes a candidate, because then all his craziness and liberal positions (wealth tax, universal health care, etc.) will become known. He’s essentially just an easy way for poll respondents to choose “none of the above.” Yet one single misinterpreted poll result leads Burka to conclude that Trump is using “Reagan’s strategy” and “a real threat.”

Republicans are in big trouble this election cycle–not here, because we have precisely the Republican constituency that will consume all the radicalism that’s fit for consumption–but in the rest of America. Unless something changes in the Republican field for 2012, or in the country,

Is this any different than 2003/2004, when a huge portion of the Democratic base blamed Bush for anything and everything and frequently likened him to Hitler? As far as I can tell, the biggest difference is that the media briefly took Rathergate seriously (until it was so thoroughly debunked that no one could believe it), whereas the media doesn’t take Birtherism seriously.

Ricardo Sanchez for Senate?

I had three main thoughts to the news that Gen. Ricardo Sanchez is the choice of Democrats in Washington, DC to run for Senate in Texas:

1. Gen. Sanchez is probably about as strong a potential pick as Texas Democrats can make
2. Texas Democrats continue to think candidate recruiting is about checking boxes.
3. Can he survive a primary?

Over the past decade, Texas Democrats have had a tendency to recruit candidates by checking off demographic boxes. That led to the 2002 “Dream Team” disaster. Frankly, until Sanchez, Texas Democrats really had no one who looked to be even near a strong enough nominee to beat any generic Republican even in a good Democratic year (which 2012 may or may not be). The alternative to Sanchez is probably John Sharp, who has lost a few races in a row now and thus whose current name ID is probably neither particularly high nor favorable.

In this case, Sanchez checks off the “military,” “stature,” and “Latino” boxes. Let’s not underplay those in a state which is increasingly Latino and more pro-military than average. Rising to be the commander in Iraq gives a certain stature as well that previous Democratic Senate candidate and military officer Rick Noriega didn’t have.

And yet one has to wonder whether Gen. Sanchez will be a strong candidate. He was commander in Iraq while the insurgency took root and military casualties began to spike upward, culminating in one of the 2 most deadly months of the war at the height of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Gen. Sanchez also got the surge completely wrong, saying about the surge in October 2007 that “the best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat.” Not exactly good judgment in what should have been his area of expertise.

But beyond that, let’s go to more technical issues. I’d guess that most high-ranking military officers are not the type of people willing to do the dialing for dollars necessary to be a successful Senate candidate. He also may not have firm stands on some domestic issues. And while he’s had some experience appearing on cable news shows, he’s perhaps not the most polished candidate.

Or watch here, where he implicitly accepts that he let torture happen on his watch:

Questioner: How did [torture] happen? How did it happen on your watch?
Sanchez: Well, I think it’s fairly simple. You had the torture memorandums as we now clearly understand them, how they came about, what they authorized and those were transmitted to the different entities that were operating in these wartime environments . . .

My point is not to impugn General Sanchez’s integrity, but to point out that being a candidate is much harder than it seems. He authorized things that he now calls torture — that’s something that will make people pause and go hrm?.

Many national Democrats — including those who recruited him — were quite vocal of Sanchez when he was the commander in Iraq. Almost all of them called for Secretary Rumsfeld’s dismissal — and yet they now want Rumsfeld’s commander in the field in the Senate? Perhaps not surprisingly, there are already liberal Texas blogs crying out against Sanchez.

Finally, Sanchez will have to explain his candidacy. Why now? What’s his motive for running? He can’t run against the Bush administration — which has been the point of most of his media appearances since retiring from office. He can’t run on the Iraq war. He will have to talk about the Obama administration’s wars — which will probably put him either at odds with the president or with the liberal base. What does he know about economics, solving America’s debt crisis or creating jobs?

For all those reasons, I remain somewhat skeptical that Sanchez will “do better than any other Democrat could,” as Paul Burka wrote yesterday. I think that he probably has the potential to do better than any other Democrat could, if he is decent at being a political candidate. But I’m not sanguine about that. Sanchez probably has just as equal potential to run behind Obama in Texas, even if he is able to survive what might be a probable primary.

So will Sanchez decide to run? He sounded a bit noncommital, and I think most retired generals would probably think it’s not worth it to invest a year and a half into a race that will very likely end in defeat. But only time will tell.

Hochberg to move — again?

Paul Burka writes about Houston Rep. Scott Hochberg who is in the same district as current HD149 Rep. Hubert Vo under the proposed Texas House redistricting map:

I haven’t discussed Hochberg’s plans with him, but I did hear from sources close to Sarah Davis that she expects Hochberg to move into her district and run against her.

Until the post-2000 redistricting, Hochberg represented most of Sarah Davis’s current HD134 district. When he was drawn together with Debra Danburg for the 2002 cycle, he moved across town to run in the vacant HD137 open seat that he has occupied for the last decade.

The above was my first thought when I saw that Hochberg and Vo had been drawn together, but I haven’t had the chance to sit down and figure out exactly how much of the district is the same. My intuition would be somewhere around 2/3, but I could be significantly off.

A Solomons-ic Choice

If you’re reading this, then chances are you’ve seen the proposed Texas House maps. You know that there are now supposedly 92 safe Republican seats instead of 82…which means that Republicans drew a map which won’t protect all 101 Republican incumbents.

You know that there are 7 districts that pair Republicans: Landtroop/Perry (West Texas), Burkett/Driver (Dallas), Hamilton/Ritter (Southeast Texas), Anderson/Harper-Brown (Dallas), Scott/Torres (Nueces), Chisum/Hardcastle (West Texas, though Chisum is planning on running for the Railroad Commission), and Cain/Flynn (Northeast Texas). While a few of these pairings seem to give an obvious advantage, others not so much. Who’s going to win them?

You also know that the map pairs Democrats Hubert Vo and Scott Hochberg in Harris County. Paul Burka writes about this:

One of the key decisions concerning this map was to reduce the number of seats in Harris County from 25 to 24. The math called for Harris to get 24.4 seats. Solomons stuck by the strict interpretation of that number, which resulted in the pairing of Hochberg and Vo, and the ultimate loss of a Democratic seat. I’m told that Republicans feared a court challenge if they gave Harris 25 seats, but I don’t buy it. The R’s were out to maximize seats and they had the wherewithal to do it.

Republicans currently have 101 seats and incumbency protection is always a huge part of redistricting. Very few people think that a map can be drawn that retains all of those 101 Republican seats given legal restrictions. The Voting Rights Act protects black and Hispanic reps. Vo and Hochberg aren’t, so they are one of the few vulnerable reps, and they are from the same part of town. And then Harris County came in under the 24.5 number necessary to give it 25 seats. So why would the redistricting commitee risk a lawsuit when it makes a ton of sense to draw two non-protected guys together when they live near each other? Hence the somewhat misused analogy in the title.

And of course, you know that saying that “Ritter/Hamilton” pairs Republicans is…only technically true. Alan Ritter switched parties after the election because he saw the writing on the wall with redistricting looming. When he switched, he certainly didn’t sound happy about it. More than a few people assumed he was hoping to get the best map he could by switching sides.

Finally, Burka’s two predictions:
1. “I’d wager right now that by the end of the cycle represented by this map, Republicans will be down to 85 seats due to continued white flight into the collar counties around the Metroplex, and into Fort Bend County and Northwest Harris County outside of Houston.”
2. “When the next House map is drawn, Republicans will be looking at Latino districts for pickups.”

His first prediction might be true. I haven’t had time to really get into the Harris County maps, but I assume that under this map for Democrats to get Republicans down to 85, they’d need to win some seats in Harris County. There are certainly some seats that could flip in the next decade. It depends a bit on demographics.

As for Burka’s second prediction, I hope he’s right. I think he probably is. But answering that question basically involves knowing whether Texas will still be a red state in 20 years.

Michael Williams raises under $500k…now what?

So far, we know the fundraising totals for 3 of the 5 Texas Republican Senate candidates.

Money Raised as of 3/31/2011 FEC deadline
Tom Leppert $1.1M (+1.6M loan from candidate)
Ted Cruz $1M (including $70,000 loan from candidate)
Michael Williams under $0.5M
Elizabeth Ames Jones (TBA)
Roger Williams (TBA)

This is a pretty weak showing from Michael Williams. [Disclosure: I support Ted Cruz though I’d be relatively happy with all the candidates as nominees]. The knock on the former Railroad Commissioner is that he couldn’t raise the money necessary to win a high profile office statewide. Raising under $500k will definitely not quell those fears. A couple different friends separately have made similar jokes to me: Give me a month, I think I could raise $500k. With the individual limit now at $2500, that’s only 200 rich people. After more than 10 years in statewide office serving as one of three energy regulators, you’d think that Williams would have had the opportunity to forge the relationships that convince those people to donate. But so far, it doesn’t look like it.

The Williams camp would certainly reply that Williams was focused on being Railroad Commissioner for all of Q1. And there’s probably some truth to that.

Yet for anyone wavering between Michael Williams and Ted Cruz — and my sense is that there are quite a few out there — it’s tough to feel good about M. Williams’ ability to win the primary. In particular, RedState said that it would wait and “see how much money they can raise” before deciding between Cruz and Williams. Jim DeMint might be thinking the same thing, and he was a pretty effective kingmaker in Republican primaries last cycle.