Spong's Memo to Rick

» TXMo: You're Rick Noriega. Do You Approve This Message? (John Spong)

In a nutshell ...

Alas, what was whispered in those phone calls was a different c word: "chaos." You had already been through three campaign managers and two chief fund-raisers. You were spending money hand over fist, but your fund-raising efforts had gone belly-up. Then I spent primary day with you, traveling to various Houston polling places, and saw a campaign stalled at the fork between viability and Radnofsky Land.

Starting off with the obvious and redundant, but I like Rick and I'll be voting for him in October (if you think I'm braving the lines of E-day voting, you're off your rocker). But the concern with his candidacy from day one was that he'd end up looking precisely like Radnofsky did by the time she aired her sock puppet ads. That's not a good thing. And he's still not out of the woods by most accounts I've gotten (which I'll state are usually thirdhand at best). So Spong's more critical notes are generally harder to dismiss out of hand.

There is still time and room for improvement. The success of the primary two-step is covered by Spong as well and it's a critical component. Much of what a campaign would do (or would dream about doing if it had the money) to ID voters has now already been done by that process. That lowers the pricetag of a successful campaign, but that lowered price is still not anywhere near the ballpark that Rick seems likely to raise on his own. Among the more illuminating points that Spong makes - and one I'd forgotten over the years - is that Ron Kirk apparently didn't even get $5M on his own. That the man was even on TV seems like a major miracle in that context. And, unfortunately, it still looks like a mountain to climb for Rick to get to $5M on his own.

Welcome to the difference between soft-money state races and hard-money federal races.

Beyond Spong's rationale for DSCC involvement (they're already lending name help from the looks of my email inbox), this is where the Obama camp can also have the most impact. While it is still beyond the scope of logic for me to see an Obama plurality in Texas, it's not out of the realm of possibility that a heightened Obama campaign in Texas that falls short by, say ... 55-45ish range ... might not be enough coattails for Noriega to add some Hispanic, McCain-Noriega voters to the mix as well as some of the more traditional rural Dems who might not want to cross over for his race. Suddenly, the prospect of a Senator Noriega would be more plausible.

Two other factos to add here. One is the obvious - that Corn Dog's money is going to land somewhere sometime and there's got to be reason to think his product will be at least slightly better than the "Big Joke" ad that obviously gave the Texas GOP some comic relief. Cornyn won't have much of a problem hitting the $20M mark this cycle. That's a lot of TV. Unlike Spong, I'm not as convinced that Cornyn has to go negative. Reason being that it's not entirely clear that voters outside of Noriega's State Rep district are going to be aware of who the Senate nominee is.

The second factor is that for any and all aid that Obama and/or the DSCC bring, they do absolutely nothing to fix the internal issues of the Noriega campaign. Campaignland is a tough place to get good advice. If you're the candidate - and an elected official at that, chances are you're getting a lot of the staid, stale conventional wisdom that a lot of other elected have lived and died by. And far fewer of them are as good as they think. I can count on one hand the number of elected officials with quality advice that they're willing to freely share (the two traits unfortunately do not always travel in pairs). The wealthy donors aren't any different. And the consultants (of which, I share the professional calling) are a mixed bag. Nobody said it'd be easy.

Spong seems to leave off the tale around the time of the primary, however. That's about 3 months ago. Hopefully, there's been some notable improvement since then. Maybe next time, he'll have something a bit more up-to-date. With a little luck, hopefully it comes around Election Night.

ADD-ON: Cory notes his view from the right ...

... I don't believe for a minute that Noriega is as bad a candidate as Radnofsky. He's certainly not perfect, and I have severe issues-based disagreements with he (and his supporters) but, as a candidate, he should be stronger than his is turning out to be.

I dunno. Some of us saw the challenge rather starkly for a State Rep without a strong fundraising base to enter a hard money race. That part has nothing to do with the type of candidate one is, but it has a lot to do with the perception of what type of candidate it is. A windfall of $15M would certainly fix a lot of those perceived problems just as certainly as they would leave some of the more institutional roadblocks unaddressed.

But I think the absolute bottom floor for Rick is 40% and might very well be 45%. Victor Morales won 44% with a lot less against a relatively popular and hard-working incumbent, Phil Gramm. A closer reading of my own take might shed some light that I think Noriega can do roughly 5-points better than Obama. The secret of success for Hispanic candidates in Texas, thus far, hasn't been that they drive up turnout any ... it's that Hispanic Republicans come home for them. That's been noted in some of the polling out there on the race so far and it's been borne out in previous outcomes (just check how many counties JR Molina is the leading percentage winner in).

Thus, if Obama pours on the advert dollars in Texas and does enough to push the race up five or six points over the 2004 outcome, Obama's at 45%. Add five points to that and ... well, you've got a Democratic Senator.

The caveats are certainly there for the scenario ... the most glaring being that it's not a given that there's five more swing points out there if Obama's cranked up the vote to hit 45%. Again, the 1996 example is illuminating ... Bill Clinton essentially earned the same percentage as Morales among Dems and actually won more votes.

Then again, Corn Dog's no Phil Gramm, is he? So place yer bets accordingly.