Lt Governor's race not heating up

With four major declared candidates, you’d think that the race for Texas Lt Governor would be in high gear. Instead, it seems to be four guys talking to themselves and Republican primary voters (RPV’s) not caring much about what they say. Is this just the summer blues and voters will engage after Labor Day? Is it that the candidates are so similar that RPV’s can’t discern between them? Are RPV’s so focused on national issues that they are overlooking this race? I don’t have a clue but let’s take a look at the campaigns, in no particular order.

Dewsastrous phone call

As I noted earlier, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst had a great showing at the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club. And he’s been working hard all across Texas reaching out to Tea Party groups. His campaign focuses on getting former Ted Cruz supporters to help him. Seems like an odd strategy to me but its a strategy I guess, something that was lacking in his campaign against Cruz. Despite the strategy, he doesn’t seem to be making inroads among grassroots conservatives that are also RPV’s. There is no excitement, no buzz about his campaign when I attend meetings in Harris County.

And no amount of strategy can overcome the Dewsastrous phone call he made trying to throw his influence around and get a step-niece out of jail. if Dewhurst stays in the race, we are going to be bombarded with that recording between January and March 2014. The old saying that all publicity is good publicity doesn’t apply when you are supposed to be the frontrunner. Click here for a taste of the mockery that abounds about that phone call.

Patterson’s social media lead

I saw on Texas Insider that Jerry Patterson had a huge lead in social media. Well….not so fast.

[table id=19 /]

As you can see in that table, Patterson does lead on Facebook by about 25{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} over Dewhurst. And that is probably a good thing since RPV’s tend to be older and Facebook attracts older users. I’m not sure I’d call it huge though. And that table also shows the weakness all of the campaigns have with younger voters, who tend to use Twitter more frequently.

Patterson just released a video that is very good called Washington West. Very good on everything but image. Maybe it is just me but I don’t think that sitting position works.Reminds me of an old geezer sitting on the front porch whiling away the days.

Dannie’s Dewfeed and CScope

Sen. Dan Patrick is doing a good job of getting his name out there. First with his Dewfeed.com website mocking Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, then with his “debate” on CScope with SBOE member Thomas Ratliff. But for all the buzz on “dewfeed.com” in the Texas political media, it hasn’t reached outside of that. If you don’t believe me, just ask the people around you if they’ve heard of it.

The CScope debate helps him a lot with RPV’s, specifically the far, far right that will certainly vote. It will only be a problem for him if one of his opponents points out that what he is doing is removing local control and inserting centralized state government into schools. That will not play well with most Republicans. But thus far, no one has done that.

Staples MIA

The Todd Staples campaign has been a huge letdown thus far. I was hoping that he would bring a lot of energy and excitement into the race with his youth. It hasn’t happened at all – just look at that table above on social media.

Some of the “MIA” could be specific to me because he isn’t focusing on Harris County. But if you do like I do and set up Google Alerts on each of these guys, Staples is rarely in the news. There is just no buzz about him out there and that is the death of a candidate. Perhaps his team is conserving their resources and waiting until high primary season but they should still be trying to gain “free media” exposure.

Elbowing to the right

Where are the big ideas? Big ideas are not the same as big taxation. Where is the vision for the future? Each of the candidates seem to be trying to elbow their way to the right of the others. Well, except Staples – I’m not sure what he’s trying to do. But none of them are talking about big issues or future vision. None of them are trying to expand the party by attracting independents to vote in the primary. The “playing to the base” isn’t helping the party grow and isn’t helping Texas prepare for the future.

C’mon guys, give us a good race. Give us someone to vote for instead of settling for the mediocre.

If you are in Houston, you can see Sen. Patrick tomorrow at the weekly meeting of the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club. And ask him questions. Like, hey, Senator, you said you were going to run a positive campaign on the issues. What happened?