Texas: Bill White

As the legislative session starts to wind down and eyes look towards 2010, the Texas Democratic Party lacks the serious, high-profile primary races needed to keep voters interested and motivated to vote for Democrats in Texas. We need to hold on to our gains from 2008, and get folks excited about a general election in which we can take back the Governor's mansion and the Texas House. It all starts with a vigorous Democratic primary.

In 2008, we saw unprecedented gains for Democrats here in Texas. Over 2.8 million Democrats voted in the primary, an over-threefold increase over the 830,000 cast in 2004 (granted, that primary was a done deal, but perhaps it further proves my point-no one turns out for an unexciting primary).

Houston Mayor Bill White joined other Texas mayors today at the House Urban Affairs Committee for a general discussion about their cities.

Speaking in the context of the federal government's decision to send stimulus funds to Texas, White said some of that money could be well spent on affordable housing and energy efficiency programs.

White especially touted the city's program of "weatherization" of homes with new insulation and compact fluorescent light bulbs in older neighborhoods, such as Pleasantville. He said such an idea should be brought to "scale" to benefit neighborhoods across the state and conserve energy.

He told committee members about the Houston Hope affordable housing program, too, and then briefly mentioned Hurricane Ike recovery, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and even red-light cameras.

Have a listen (including members' questions) or download it here:

Grand Saline blogger Vince Liebowitz had an interesting post this week entitled "Bad News Bill: Is Houston's Mayor Ready for Prime Time?"

The posting detailed many of the things that have gone wrong for Houston Mayor Bill White since he launched his campaign for U.S. Senate late last year.

The core analysis was not terribly different from a story produced by Houston Chronicle reporters Bradley Olson and Alan Bernstein back in January. It was just more up to date and opinionated.

The big difference is the question of whether the blog item represented really independent thought. You see, that's because Liebowitz was among a group of progressive bloggers who got bought a steak dinner by White's Democratic opponent John Sharp back in January.

A new survey on the U.S. Senate race shows, in general, that it's too early to pick favorites in the race to replace U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, though Republicans tend to have the advantage.

The most interesting thing in the Public Policy Polling survey is that 43 percent of those questioned did not know enough about Houston Mayor Bill White to have an opinion about him. That's not unusual for regional politicians looking at running for statewide office.

The same kind of numbers occur for state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, who is looking at running for the seat. She's unknown by 48 percent of those surveyed.