TX SEN: Noriega Goes National

By Vince Leibowitz on Nov 16, 2007 in 2008 Texas Elections

Earlier this week, we missed several stories about State Rep. Rick Noriega (D-Houston), “going national,” following the departure of Mikal Watts from the race for the ‘08 Democratic Party Nomination for U.S. Senate:

“They’ve got a lot of national donors coming to this, and we wanted them to put a face with the name,” Noriega told the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday. “What’s going to happen is across the country folks are going to start realizing that Texas is in play.”

In the past several weeks, Noriega also has picked up endorsements from past Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and Wesley Clark.

“It’s a different race now, from a primary to a general election,” Noriega said Wednesday.

Another sign that Noriega is turning the national party to his favor occurred last week in Austin, where he was a guest at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

The senatorial committee will not decide which state races to finance until late next summer, but chairman Sen. Charles Schumer had in the past indicated a preference for Watts as the party nominee because Watts, a San Antonio trial lawyer, could largely finance his own campaign.

Because of campaign finance limits, it will be difficult for Noriega to finance his general election against Cornyn with just the money donated by Texans. Noriega ended September with $510,000 in the bank to Cornyn’s $6.6 million.

The task is not insurmountable, though. Democrat Ron Kirk in the 2002 Senate race raised $912,000 in the year before the election. By the end of the campaign, Kirk had raised $9.6 million. Cornyn won the race, raising $9.3 million, but both candidates received several million dollars more in independent expenditures by national party committees.

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