Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Democratic Primary Filing: Three Days In

After only three days, the Texas Democratic Party has three pages of filers for the March 2, 2010 Democratic Primary. Look in for yourself from time to time. There are now three links to get a PDF file, one for the list by filing date, one for a list by filer’s name, and one for a list by office the candidate is running to be nominated for.

I notice that for Governor, we now have three filers: Bill White, Bill Dear and Felix Alvarado. Farouk Shami the hair care billionaire has yet to file. Nor has Kinky Friedman but we are now reading today that Friedman, who got just 9% of the popular vote in the 4-way gubernatorial race in 2006 when he ran as an Independent, is changing his mind again and might just drop out. In fact, a news conference was scheduled yesterday but the thing was cancelled, ostensibly while Kinky tries to figure out who he should support in the primary.

Felix Alvarado lists his profession as a teacher (a teacher without a phone number). He has a website and all the proper social networking in place. Bill Dear is a Private Eye, was the first to file on day one, and has no campaign website. I suspect that Dear would have a lot to say about the case against, and the execution of Todd Willingham.

I expect Shami to continue his campaigning and will eventually file as it is reported that he has opened a campaign office today in San Antonio.

So this should be fun.

A term-limited mayor of the 4th largest city in the United States, a tec, a teacher, and a self-funding businessman with a bottomless pit have filed so far (or will file in the near future).

I hope that’s not all, but that appears right now to be the case. Primaries on the ballot with a high stakes office like governor up for grabs, and no incumbencies to worry about, draw more people to the polls as it creates a little more excitement. Not as much as the record level primary attendance that we had last March when the Democratic nomination for the presidency was still up in the air, not by a long shot. But excitement is what we are going to need to carry us through to victory in November.

So anything to keep that excitement up (with the exception of Kinky Friedman who darn near single-handedly gave us 4 more years of Rick Perry) is welcome.

The more the merrier.

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