Richard Raymond Is Overrated
To all you Texas bloggers out there, I blame you. Between you and the San Antonio papers, you had me convinced that Richard Raymond was for real. If not exactly the second coming, at least the second coming of Cuellar. So, sitting in my remote Pasadena (Calif.) perch, you convinced me that if I did a poll of the 28th congressional district in Texas, Raymond would pull so much support from his fellow Laredan, Henry Cuellar, that Ciro Rodriguez would be at least close to the lead.
Boy, did I ever get that wrong. Raymond is barely a blip on the polling screen right now. In my poll, he barely breaks double digits (11 percent). But don’t just take my word for it. Ask my friend, Jef Pollock, the pollster for Henry Cuellar. Jef has Raymond at a measly 9 percent. With all the fawning coverage, I was thinking he’d be at least at 20 percent district-wide. Instead, he’s only at 25 percent in his own corner of the district, Webb County. Problem is, Cuellar is running 39 points ahead of him in the county they both call home.
So to the ABCers (Anybody But Cuellar) of the district, those bloggers (like The Red State and Dos Centavos) and voters looking for a true Democrat to replace the current pretender, I have a message for you: Ciro is your man. Raymond doesn’t have a chance. You know as well as anybody that Bexar County voters are loyal to a fault. Ciro got 80 percent there in 2004 and he’ll get that much and more once the voters are educated about Cuellar’s pro-Bush votes in DC. Even Cuellar learned that San Antonio is no place for a Laredo politician. So Raymond is going to have to slug it out with Cuellar down south. I wish him well – every reminder of Cuellar’s vote to keep Katrina clean-up workers from being paid the prevailing wage, to use just one example, is most welcome – but Raymond has a long way to go. Twenty points as it turns out. But it’s not like Raymond can assume that every voter he knocks away from Cuellar will fall his way.
I think the voters of South Texas are in for a serious case of buyer’s remorse. Cuellar looks strong right now (Pollock has him even higher than I do, at 54 percent), but that’s because the district is not yet aware of all the ways Cuellar has supported the legislative agenda of George W. Bush and Tom DeLay. Overwhelming majorities of the district feel like the federal government is falling short on key issues, like the cost of prescription drugs (80 percent), protecting Social Security (75 percent) and fighting the war in Iraq (70 percent). And Bush is not popular here (33 percent positive – 51 percent negative). Yet Henry Cuellar has supported Bush and the Republicans more than any other Texas Democrat. Meanwhile, Ciro Rodriguez fought for the district against Bush on each of those issues. All I did in the poll was read some positives about Ciro and, as the above graph shows, Ciro jumped 20 points while Cuellar dropped 16. (Cuellar drops even more when voters hear about his votes). Cuellar’s support is very, very soft.
Cuellar’s excuse for his votes will be that he’s being bipartisan. Well, these are Democratic primary voters in a safe Democratic district. They don’t care about bipartisan. When voters are asked whether they agree more with the statement “We need a Congressman who will go to Washington and fight for the working men and women of South Texas even if it means losing lots of votes on legislation” or the statement “We need a Congressman who can work with the Bush Administration to get legislation passed that will benefit South Texas,” a majority (52 percent) choose the former. Only 43 percent agree that getting legislation passed is an excuse to vote with Bush. Ciro is the only candidate in the race who has a record of going to Washington and fighting for the working men and women of South Texas.
I wasn’t around for the 2004 debacle, but it’s obvious that the 2006 primary will be a completely different kind of election. Cuellar doesn’t have Laredo all to himself and he has a lot of explaining to do regarding his pro-Bush votes. Rodriguez and Raymond both will be encouraging voters to see the error of their vote in 2004. But while Raymond needs both to tear down the incumbent and introduce himself as a viable alternative, Rodriguez has only to remind voters of his accomplishments relative to Cuellar on the issues of concern to South Texas.
The Red State wrote of a grad school professor who was quoted in the Express-News :
“If I were a betting man, I’d say it’s going to be a runoff between Raymond and Cuellar,” said Larry Hufford, a political scientist at St. Mary’s University.
Given that Raymond is at 11 points in the polls, I’ll take that bet.
