Bill White

http://www.mkyong.com/blog/digg-digg-wordpress-plugin

Author : Yong Mook Kim
Website : http://www.mkyong.com
-->

It’s Monday, and that means it is time for another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance’s Weekly Blog Round-Up. This week’s round up–the last weekly round-up of 2008–is compiled by Vince from Capitol Annex.

Next week, the Texas Progressive Alliance will bring you its Best of 2008–a compilation of the best posts from member blogs and bloggers from the historic year past.

Happy Holidays, and enjoy the last regular round-up of 2008.

At TruthHugger The crystal ball in BossKitty’s head has instructed me to share its opinion on how the final month of a pretentious Bush Administration contributes to the destruction of the America we knew.

Paul Burka:

White and Sharp may have miscalculated by jumping into a Senate race that may never come to pass.

Evan Smith:

The serious point here is one I and others have made before: You are not a real party,  you are not a competitive party, unless you field actual, plausible candidates for high office. And from this vantage point, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

Eileen Smith:

Since the fan-f—ing-tastic Blagojevich morning jog clip has been hastily removed from YouTube, I had little choice but to post this video of Evan and I talking about the Senate race, Bill White, John Sharp, and another crappy year for the D’s in 2010.

It's no secret at this point that U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is planning to challenge incumbent Gov. Rick Perry in the 2010 election.

What's in question is whether she will resign her Senate seat to run and what the timing would be. Hutchison is not required to resign to run.

So here are some of the scenarios of how this will play out over the next 18 months.

1. Perry is adamant that he will seek re-election. And he's acting like a politician ready to engage Hutchison in battle. But as the immediate past chairman and current finance chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Perry could finish the legislative session next year and declare rebuilding the national Republican Party with an emphasis on conservative values would be his best way to serve the people of Texas.

Houston Mayor Bill White will announce on Monday that he intends to run for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's (R-Dallas) anticipated vacant U.S. Senate seat, "reasonably reliable sources" told the Quorum Report late Thursday.

White, a favorite among Houston voters and likely the most high-profile Democratic candidate statewide, was debating between running for the U.S. Senate or for Texas governor. But he admitted that issues of "energy policy" were his passion, and Democratic consultants this week agreed that hint seemed to point toward the U.S. Senate.

The near consensus in the Texas political world is that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Dallas) will resign her U.S. Senate seat in 2009 and focus on a 2010 gubernatorial bid against Texas Gov. Rick Perry. But the more intriguing question may be if she officially resigns her seat by Sept. 28, 2009.

If or when Hutchison resigns, Perry would immediately appoint a successor. However, as PolitickerTX.com has previously reported, a special election would be held soon after in which a number of candidates from both parties would compete against each other. Just how soon is the key question, especially for Houston Mayor Bill White.

Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk said late Wednesday that he had met with President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, according to The Dallas Morning News.

"I'm happy where I am, but if the president needs me, it's something I have to seriously consider," Kirk told the newspaper.

Kirk, a Democrat, was in Washington from the weekend through Tuesday, but he didn't reveal details of the discussion with Obama's team. During the campaign, he was one of Obama's top allies in Texas, and he also completed surrogate work for the president-elect in several swing states, including North Carolina.

Houston Mayor Bill White said last weekend this would be the week he'd issue a statement on his future political plans, more specifically involving whether he'd run in 2010 for governor or for the anticipated vacant U.S. Senate seat of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Dallas).

However, when former Texas Comptroller John Sharp officially declared his U.S. Senate candidacy on Monday, that might have thrown a new wrinkle into the plan. White and Sharp are the two biggest-name Democrats for a potential statewide race, and some Texas Democrats likely wouldn't want them running for the same position and competing against each other, potentially leaving one race without a known candidate.

Houston Mayor Bill White hasn't always been one to hold to timetables, but his latest self-imposed deadline for a statement about his future is sometime this week, according to Houston's KPRC.

The question is whether that future is in a run for Texas governor in 2010, or a run for the U.S. Senate, assuming Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Dallas) vacates her seat to pursue a governor's run of her own, as expected. White remained coy with reporters over the weekend, but did offer one clue:

"Issues about energy policy are what I feel most passionately about," White said.

After speaking last week with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, former Texas Comptroller John Sharp made it official Monday: He's running as a Democrat for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's (R-Dallas) seat, whenever it first becomes available.

Sharp, 58, announced Monday that he is foregoing the step of an exploratory committee and will file paperwork allowing him to begin raising money and campaigning across the state on Jan. 1.

"I will be a candidate whether the election is in 2012 or anytime before then," Sharp said in a statement obtained by PolitickerTX.com. "Texans face tough challenges that call for innovative solutions, and that's what our campaign is all about."

Former Texas Comptroller John Sharp is already talking with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee about funding a 2009 special election campaign for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's (R-Dallas) likely vacated Senate seat, according to The Dallas Morning News.

The DSCC didn't contribute much to state Rep. Rick Noriega's (D-Houston) Senate bid this year, but several factors might change that in 2009. First, the special election would likely contain a host of candidates all running against each other, without a primary or the typical partisan back-and-forth. The voting electorate would be smaller, and in theory, easier to reach.

And, if Al Franken wins the Minnesota Senate recount, Hutchison's vacated seat would have the potential to give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority of 60.