JCDPText Box: Campaign 2008 1825 Calder Beaumont, TX 77701 (409) 833-5129 Bookmark us and check back for updates!# Email Us Text Box: Many of you have expressed interest in becoming PALs (political action liaisons) to help us connect with community organizations that share our Democratic Values. This will help us create the communication we need to get record numbers to the polls and elect democrats on every level on the ballot in Nov.! Text Box: New poll shows Cornyn barely ahead of Noriega A new poll by Rasmussen Reports shows incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn leading Democratic nominee Rick Noriega by just four percentage points. The telephone poll had Cornyn leading 47 percent to 43 percent. The report said that puts Cornyn into the category of vulnerable U.S. Senators. Any incumbent who polls below 50% is considered potentially vulnerable. That is especially true when a little known challenger is so competitive in an early general election match-up. Rasmussen also had a survey on the presidential race in Texas that showed Republican John McCain with a less than commanding lead over Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In Texas, John McCain leads Hillary Clinton by six percentage points and Barack Obama by five. However, keep in mind that Hank Gilbert for agriculture commissioner and Dale Henry for railroad commissioner in 2006 each got about 42 percent of the vote without expensive media campaigns. The key in both the Senate race and the presidential election will be money. Cornyn currently has a huge funding lead over Noriega, but a survey like this will help Noriega make the case for national donors that they should give to him because he could win. In the presidential race, no candidate has put major funds into the state in a general election since Jimmy Carter carried the state in 1976. So the question remains as to whether Clinton or Obama will actually fund a statewide media campaign in Texas this fall.
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“... There is now renewed confidence in our country and our convictions. For this country is moving and it must not stop. It cannot stop. For this is a time for courage and a time for challenge. Neither conformity nor complacency will do. Neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. And our duty as a party is not to our party alone, but to the Nation, and, indeed., to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom.”
 - John F. Kennedy (from an advance copy of a speech to be delivered to the Texas State Democratic Executive Committee, 11-22-63)

 

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.
Jimmy Carter

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.
Lyndon B. Johnson

Texas Democratic Party Chairman urges Democrats to keep “Texas Two-Step”

AUSTIN — Texas Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie urged his party Monday to keep the so-called "Texas two-step" system of selecting presidential nominating delegates, but he suggested some changes to reduce the kind of chaos that hit the party this spring.

Richie said one reform may be to move the caucuses to a different night than the primary.

Richie said that would give party leaders time to organize for the caucuses. He said that would be expensive for the party because the Texas secretary of state pays for precinct space on Election Day but would not pay for the space if the caucuses were held on a different day.

A special committee Richie set up is taking testimony across Texas on whether to change the primary/caucus system of electing delegates. The committee will report to the state party convention in 2010.

The system faced confusion in March as a record 2.8 million people voted in the Democratic primary and a million turned out for party caucuses immediately after the polls closed. The previous record was 1.7 million votes cast in 1988, with 150,000 turning out for the caucuses.

Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters were particularly upset because she won the popular vote in the primary, but Barack Obama ended up with more Texas delegates because he won the caucus turnout. Some supporters of both candidates claim allowing a person to vote in the primary and again in the caucus violates the spirit of "one man, one vote."

No dates have been set for hearings to take public testimony from around the state.