Strategies in the Texas Senate Race
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This is not necessarily the U-S Senate race Texas voters were expecting. GOP Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst had been a considered a favorite to win his party’s nomination to succeed retiring Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. But enter former Solicitor General of Texas Ted Cruz, who beat Dewhurst in the runoff for the GOP nomination. Cruz is now squaring off against Democratic former State Representative Paul Sadler.
Given the demographics of the state of Texas, a Cruz victory in the race seems pretty certain. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing to follow in this race. KUT’s Jennifer Stayton talked recently with Texas Tribune Editor-in-Chief Evan Smith who says Sadler and Cruz have both settled into their campaign themes:
Paul Sadler has chosen to run as an unabashed Democrat, which you know, in a number of the past elections the Democrats have realized they had a problem. The fact that no Democrat’s been elected statewide for so long, they’ve thought they had to be more like Republicans to run and win and that was the route to success. They found that wasn’t the route to success either. Sadler decided basically to double down on being a Democrat….
Cruz ran quite far to the right of everybody else in that Republican primary field including Lt. Gov. Dewhurst and railed at Dewhurst during the primary for being too moderate or not being sufficiently conservative. But since he has won the nomination he has started to move back to the center, which is what you do.
Smith says both parties are also already looking ahead to 2014, when Texas GOP Senator John Cornyn is up for re-election. Click on the player on this page to hear more from Evan Smith about the 2012 and 2014 U-S Senate races in Texas.
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