All along, for more than two years, former Texas solicitor general Ted Cruz has held two strategies as the keys to being elected as the Republican Senate nominee from Texas. The first strategy would see him spending week after week on the road all across the Lone Star State. A relative unknown who had only held an obscure appointed office, and with no elective office victories on his resume but a strong story to tell, Cruz would boost his name ID across the state by visiting every inch of it. So for about two years, Cruz and his campaign manager John Drogin reached out to every Republican club in just about every town in Texas. From the panhandle to the Rio Grande Valley, from El Paso to the piney woods out east, Cruz would drive from one end of the huge state to the other, speaking to every club of every size that would hear him. He explained his message of smaller government, fighting for Texas values against Washington encroachment, and he told his family’s tale of exile from tyranny in Castro’s Cuba. Cruz was already out there telling this story when I moved back to Texas in 2009. The former solicitor general’s name ID inched up week upon week.
But Cruz always knew he would trail in the money race and in the influence race, and would probably face the very wealthy and extremely powerful Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. So he had a second strategy: Make it past the primary to the runoff and win there. He and Drogin banked on the Texas Republican primary delivering a divided result, and as long as Cruz held second place he would get into a runoff that he could win, thanks to the first strategy of taking his record and ideas to Tea Party and Republican groups all over the state.
Tonight, both strategies have been vindicated.
Ted Cruz’s runoff win all but assures that will be Texas’ next Senator. The Democrats have not won a statewide seat in Texas since 1994, and never fielded a credible candidate for Senate this time.
The May 29th primary had been pushed back by court squabbles over the state’s new electoral map, which gave the Cruz campaign time to raise more money and to continue raising the candidate’s name ID around the state. The day of the primary vote, Dewhurst finished comfortably ahead but below the 50% threshold that would have prevented a runoff. Cruz and Drogin knew they were within striking distance. The post-primary endorsement of Dewhurst by former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert did nothing to dissuade them; the campaign had argued all along that Leppert’s appeal would never get past Dallas, and his third place showing on May 29 revealed that to be true.
Great news. I am so relieved.
Cruz was outspent by 12 millions $’s.
This is a warning to Rino’s across the country.
Get in line or get out. Quickly.
I don’t want RINOs to get in line. I want them to get out.
Not out of the party though. Just out of ofices where they do the country harm.
Thanks for the in depth analysis and HOORAY!! I’m also glad that Roger Williams won. Wasn’t he the one with the donkey ad?
That’s the guy. He’s a very sharp and conservative businessman. He’ll do well in the House.
Good for Ted Cruz. Even though I live in New Mexico we get the Amarillo, TX TV stations and I got to see the Dewhurst ads and they were as nasty as I have ever seen. I’m glad he lost.
I am an ex-pat Texan in Mexico and almost wanted to fly there to vote to support Cruz. Thank you Texans for making that expense unnecessary.
The news is just sinking in. Imagine. Replacing RINOish United States Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison with a true conservative to join up with the likes of DeMint, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, among others.
Barack Obama has brought about transformational change to America.
Great news from Texas!! I was just as excited as everyone else about MARCO RUBIO until last week when he ‘piled-on’ in joining Dottering John McCain and Old Yellowstain John Boehner in attacking Michelle Bachmann……VERY, very disappointed in Marco Rubio.
Hoorah for Texas!
Geeeeeee;
Not bad for a Has Been and a Dead and Burried movement.
Illegal Aliens Released by Obama Administration Commit 19 Murders, 142 Sex Crimes
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/townhall.comstaff/2012/07/31/illegal_aliens_released_by_obama_administration_commit_19_murders_142_sex_crimes
That was Random.
They .. didn’t do that
Someone else … did that
I disagree Totus, they did do that. But, obama is responsible by setting them free.
Last night on Greta they had story about the race with the caption “Tea Party Comeback?”. I guess Fox had bought into the idea that the Tea Party is dead. Never mind 2010, Wisconsin, Luger and Wisconsin.
of Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal now.
Dewhurst’s negative ads was a total negative for me, they made no sense. Cruz touted positive conservative values, and kept the pressure on reducing spending and repealing Obamacare.
Glad Cruz won the race.
BONUS: Cruz serves Chick-fil-A at victory party!
Sweet!
… but your link is a Rick Roll.
I am told Dewhurst is pretty conservative himself, but anyone who would seek and then tout a Mike Huckabee endorsement is no fan of small government. A fan of himself in government, maybe, but not small government.
I see you bought the Cato Institute libertarian party line on Huckabee. They’ve never met a Christian they didn’t attack, and truth be damned.
Huckabee is a conservative. He’s not perfect, but he’s very good. His track record is actually better than Reagan’s was as governor. He seems to have worked out alright.
Oh, he raised taxes? Yeah, by court order. And they needed to be raised. Clinton had left that state a wreck. The roads were a disaster. There were a LOT of upgrades needed in a lot of areas.
Huckabee took one of the most corrupt and backward southern states, brought it into the 20th Century, and cleaned it up.
We could do a LOT worse.
In fact, we ARE doing a lot worse.
It seems a lot of Texans had tired of Republican “establishment entitlement.”
I wish Gov. Perry had seen fit to endorse him but, then, personal loyalty is another character trait that, perhaps, was strong in this case.
Nevertheless, the air has cleared nicely down here in the Lone Star after today’s vote.
I can hardly wait to read the media’s take on this, the DNC negativism, the bungling of the “chattering classes” informing each other in that national daisy chain of transparent shallowness.
gunnar, the other factor in that is that Dewhurst is Lt Gov, and Perry will have to deal with him on anything getting through the TX Legislature.
Confession:
I voted for Cruz.
I knew nothing about the issues, save the endorsement by Palin.
I had, however, sensed something extremely fetid about the Dewhurst campaign against Cruz.
After several decades of being confronted by politics, one can recognize when something has crawled up out of the depths of the swamp. Perhaps I am grossly wrong, but the Dewhurst campaign was that of a venal, bald-faced liar.
Perhaps it is not too late to save the republic. I’ve had my doubts but now and then there are glimmers of hope such as this. Godspeed Mr. Cruz.
It is never to late to save the Republic. If you believe, as I do, that people everywhere want to be free, then you know it is never too late.
The problem is that nearly 50% of our countrymen now define “free” as being shackled by the government. They want the government to do for them and take care of them. I hope it’s not too late but I do believe there is a point where it will be too late.
I am very glad that Ted Cruz won though and it does bid better for the future.
Well done Ted and TEXANS! We were there for you in spirit if not body. Who is next to feel the wrath? Go Tea Party! pops
The Republican establishment hasn’t learned in 5 years to listen to us. First they try to foist McCain on us, then Dewhurst. That’s OK, we’re slowly getting rid of them.
“He won all across the Lone Star State, in the large cities (except liberal Austin) ”
???
According to the Secretary of State, Cruz he won there by a 6% margin:
http://enr.sos.state.tx.us/enr/results/july31_162_county226.htm
There was an asterisk leading to an explanation at the bottom of the article that Cruz actually won. I’m sure the res
ults came in after the article was submitted.
This war is going to take time and I’ll accept on victory at a time. Hopefully it will ring some bells in the GOP elites that they have been put on notice and if they don’t wake up they’ll be left at the station.
Great win, maybe one day soon we will have the numbers to retire McConnell and Smoker Boehner who are very weak in their roles as supposed leaders.
Texas Tea. Heh.
Yeah! Yet again the media, including pjmedia, seem flabbergasted that the tea parties are alive, well and everywhere. How many attempts now to write them off? The press will never learn to deal with quicksilver bands of angry Americans: no leader, no headquarters, no central press office, no comfortably packaged press releases.
There is, btw, no such thing as a credible Tea Party, just uncountable tea parties, who cooperate when needed. It’s important not to allow the media define you, for obvious reasons.
This should put paid to the idea that the Tea Party is a one-off has been. I also believe that Glenn Beck’s performance with the help of FreedomWorks in Dallas put the spotlight on the race. I admire Rick Perry and to a degree Dewhurst, but their time has come to bow out. The world has changed since the last presidential election and the GOP needs to change with it. Get along, go along doesn’t work anymore. That kind of thinking has landed us where we are.
As a party we need to start looking at the NEXT round of senatorial elections in 2014 and start prepping for those. I do believe we’ll get our majority in the Senate this November but there are others out there that need to see which way the wind is blowing and retire, McCain being one of them and McConnell being another.
Dewhurst, as Lt. Gov., presides over the state Senate and sets the calendar of bills and hearings brought before the houses for consideration. He also makes committee appointments. While Democrats hold a minority in both houses, key committee chairmanships went to several powerful or influential Democrats as a ‘show of bipartisanism’ from Dewhurst. This ensured certain bills would never be brought before the committees and the chambers; bills which Dewhurst did not want brought forward for any action. He’s not a true conservative, he’s a politician from the back room days. We picked a good man in Ted Cruz, and I think he’ll be a fine senator. His Democrat opponent is a ‘country lawyer’ from Henderson, TX, Paul Sadler, who is an attorney who served in the Texas House from 1991 to 2003. From Wiki:
He returned to practicing law in 2003, specializing in asbestos litigation. He has litigation for a multi-billion dollar company in all 50 states.
In 2008, he became the executive director for the Wind Coalition, a regional trade group of wind power producers that advocates for more wind resources in Texas.[9]
He has also been on the board of the Governors Advisory Energy Panel for Oklahoma.[10]
He’s a plaintiff’s attorney and a greenie. Nobody much liked him when he was in practice in Henderson.
The Tea Party has just proved that while it is only a plurality in a normal Republican primary, they are the absolute majority in any Texas Republican run-off election.
Not only did Lt Gov Dewhurst lose to Cruz in the US Senate primary, but many legislative allies of the current Texas House Speaker Straus went down as well.
Texas House Speaker Straus has made it a practice of ticking off grass root conservatives in the last two legislative sessions via tactical alliances with Big Government Republicans & Democrats on fighting limits to local property tax rate hikes.
Cruz is the classic “Young Bull” state politician.
Lt. Gov. Dewhurst is a political “old bull” who has been in the most powerful elected political position in Texas.
Texas State History/Civics lesson — Lt. Governor is the most powerful elected office in Texas. More powerful than the Governor, because the Governor had to swear an oath to the Federal Gov’t during post-Civil War reconstruction. So the Texas Legislature made the office of Lt. Governor more powerful as a institutional check to keep the Northern carpetbaggers & local collaborators from lording it over the local politicos.
This meant that no one in Texas politics in Austin would tell Lt. Gov. Dewhurst his “#2″ stinks for fear of reprisal. (See otherwise solid Texas conservative State Senator Dan Patrick’s endorsement of Dewhurst.)
Dewhurst got surrounded by the intimidated, the yes men, and the Political campaign consultant strap hangers such that he became isolated from the Texas public and especially the activist base of his own party.
Cruz is the classic “Young Bull” state politician who went to the Texas Republican Party voting base with the message that the Republican Lt. Governor (Emperor of the Texas Legislature) had no cloths.
That is why Cruz won today. We have a classic Young Bull populist taking out an Old Bull establishment politician.
The Tea Party is background color & noise (really loud, admittedly) to that classic political story.
Cruz recognized early exactly who the Tea Party was in terms of the Republican Party electoral base and his “lst & 2nd strategies” were classic Young Bull Populist on the make.
Most main stream media outlets and a lot of the Right of center “Alternate Media” are going to Scream “Tea Party” and miss the ‘Young Bull populist on the make angle’ because screaming “Tea Party” will sell more soap, gold certificates and Depends Adult diapers.
“The Tea Party is background color & noise (really loud, admittedly) to that classic political story.”
The Tea Party is not background–it is foundational to it–if Cruz votes in a manner representative of Tea Party values.
The GOP must and I believe will change. It must adopt the goal of moving the goalposts back where they where before the they compromised with the Dem about where the Dem would move them to–since FDR at least 80 years of own goals, timidity, and failure to strive. Where the goalposts weren’t here they should be, take them from where the Dems moved them and find a good place for them.
Take the donkey and what it stands for and put it in the ground, it’s been dead and rotting for centuries, and stinking up the place.
“weren’t here” != “weren’t where”
Bingo!
This victory just goes to show us and everyone concerned that we can make a change. Even with the heavy handed RINO’s, we the people can pray to God and recieve a victory. The dems have something to fear here and that is God fearing citizens taking back their country. Success breeds success. Keep it going Ya’ll.
I was in Texas last weekend (my wife works there), and the Dewhurst ads were reprehensible – one basically accusing Cruz of negligent accessory to murder.
Good riddance to Dewhurst…
Bryan, does the turnout say anything? Did the counties that went heavily for Cruz turn out in greater numbers, or was the overall turnout significantly higher than comparable races from past years, etc.?
A quick look at the countries seems to indicate that turnout in the big cities was lower than the state as a whole (and particularly liberal Austin). Does that mean anything?
Be glad for that. A Cruz victory that was due in part to high urnout in the Cities would have meant that a hispanic crossover vote would have been making an electoral down payment on….
Before the vote I read two claims:
1: Cruz would be helped by lower turnout (because his support was mainly people who would vote no matter what).
2: The Dewhurst campaign claimed they’d “won” the early vote.
It turns out that both these claims were complete crap.
1: Republican primary results: Cruz: 480,558, Dewhurst: 627,731.
Republican primary runoff results: Cruz: 631,316, Dewhurst: 480,165. Yes, total turnout dropped between the two (no surprise). But Cruz still got more votes in the runoff than Dewhurst got in the primary, and 30% more than he (Cruz) had won in the primary.
I wonder how many people voted for Dewhurst the first time around, and Cruz the second time?
2: Early voting results: Cruz: 291,040, Dewhurst: 258,893
So Cruz won early voting by 6%, overall by 13.6%, and by 21% on election day.
49.48% of the total votes were cast before the actual election. (This really is insane and needs to stop. Unless you’re physically not capable of going to the voting booth on election day, you should only be able to vote on election day.)
I was actually not that invested in this race until the voter suppression efforts started. There is probably a 50-50 chance I would have voted at all (it’s very busy at work), then some idiot called me and “encouraged me” to “vote for Ted Cruz tomorrow”. Um…elections are always on Tuesday, and how desperate do you have to be to do voter suppression ON YOUR OWN PARTY! So I told everyone I knew, and sent a note here.
Now for a little “inside baseball”
Getting interviewed by PJ Media is actually a pretty neat process. I’ve been interviewed a couple of times (and went to University of Missouri-Columbia, so I got to know a lot of reporters). Bryan does a nice detailed interview. Very professional and very quick. He was clearly writing the story as we spoke. He reported everything exactly as I related it, and did not try to push or guide the narrative. He then checked to “make sure I was a real person” as he put it and let me know the story would be “out in about 10 minutes”. It took a little longer as (I perceive), he went to the Cruz campaign for comment (I had mentioned I had called them, so that could be fact checking). In all he did a very accurate story.
I used to follow PJ Media haphazardly, but with this experience I’m going to make it one of my primary sources.
I could see Victor Carillo’s point; we will also learn that Craig James was probably a deliberate “vote sink” for white voters who despite Cruz’ conservative bona fides, could not brng themselves to vote for Cruz. This strategy worked in that it robbed Dewhurst of a 5% he needed to avoid the runoff.
Also face the fact that Cruz is a Cuban as opposed to a Mexican or Tejano. I just hope Cruz doesnt start showing the more recent tendencies of Rubio. Surname and amnesty was probably the next arrow for the Dewhurst campaign.
The fact that Cranot James murdered five prostitutes while he was at SMU really did hurt Dewhurst when James endorsed him.
Us hard corpse conservative types in Texas are real proud of Ted and those that busted their humps for him.
Kay Bailey was a squish as is Perry and Dewhurst, they were all Democrats at one time and only came over to the GOP when they saw that it would be an advantage for them politically.
Good. Now lets primary Cornyn and get him out of there in 2014.
The Dewhurst campaign insulted the intelligence of the Texas voter. Really despicable. Dewhurst also did the bidding of local big business during the 2011 legislative session to the detriment of the country: namely blocking any step to address the illegal alien invasion. This is the most pressing issue today. Democrats have a surreptitious long term policy of remaking the ethnic make-up of the country with one more to their liking: peasants from south of the border. Big business mistakingly gets in bed with this treasonous policy since it benefits their bottom line but it hurts us all in the long run and will be the cause of the next civil war.
Hispanics must not allow to be tricked by false advertisements of Liberals. The Hispanic community immigrated here to realize American dream and not to live under conditions similar to Cuba. If they wanted to be controlled and live like the people in Cuba and Venezuela, they didn’t need to be separated from their families and their roots. They would be better off remaining in their own country. Republicans must hammer this message for Hispanic and make them aware that liberals only care about their votes and don’t want to allow them to enhance their life.