Concerned Citizens

Houston Mayor Bill White did yesterday what everyone expected and announced his candidacy for the Texas governor’s race. Speculation for this has been quietly on everyone’s mind for several months with a few publicly stating. But it took a few events to occur to galvanize the move – Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s resignation delay until after the March primaries and Tom Schieffer’s exit of the race and endorsement of White as a candidate. Yesterday before an enthusiastic crowd in Houston Mayor White made it official. You can watch the announcement video here courtesy of the Burnt Orange Report. So what does this really mean to Texas Democrats and does White stand a chance of beating Gov. Rick Perry? Read more…

Last week the race for governor of Texas took an interesting turn when Tom Schieffer pulled out of the Democratic primary race and publicly endorsed Mayor Bill White of Houston. The problem is that White is running for the U.S. Senate seat expected to be vacated by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas).  Once Schieffer pulled out the list of Democrats publicly urging and endorsing a presumed White gubernatorial candidacy started growing almost by the hour. White, trying to calm the rising tide right before the Thanksgiving holiday said he would make a decision by Friday of this week on what he would do. Well, we’re less than five days away and Democrats seem to be really hoping for a big Christmas gift this year – a Bill White candidacy for governor. Read more…

This afternoon the Texas political blogosphere has heated up quite a bit with Tom Schieffer’s exit announcement from the Texas governor’s race and the potential of Houston Mayor Bill White entering the race. It looks like we’ll have to wait until next week for an announcement from White whether he will enter the Democratic primary in a race for the nomination. White has been running a strong campaign against former Texas Comptroller John Sharp for the Democratic nomination for US Senate. That was in anticipation of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison resigning the seat in her bid to run against Gov. Rick Perry for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Hutchison has since said she will not resign the seat until after the March primary. Okay, are you confused now? Let’s try to sort this out. Read more…

Today was another great day with all the progressive political bloggers from around the nation. Starting with Howard Dean in a panel discussion on health care reform the bloggers got their morning fill of political fodder. In anticipation of “teabaggers” showing up in the crowd signs were passed around that said “Health Care Referm – We want Discussion not Disruption” which made sense. Tweeting that phrase up got a lot of good responses. Later I had lunch with Mayor Bill White, Houston, who is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. More on that later. The lunch was good but during an afternoon session on energy I got what I consider the big quote of the day for San Antonio. When asked about San Antonio’s issue regarding CPS investment in STNP Mayor White said “I would hate to see a city finance one of the first nuclear projects in the nation.” Hmmm. Read more…