Candidate
for US Senate
Rick Noriega
Interview
Notes from Evan Smith
"It is, by all reliable measures, a Democratic year. Two terms under a Republican president whose disapproval ratings have sunk to historic lows, approaching 5000 lives lost in two uneding wars, and the worst economy since the Depression, to name just a few get-out-the-vote guarantees, have put the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy and Clinton within sight of recapturing the White House in a could-be landslide, and of building solid, shenanigan-proof majorities in the House and Senate. Only if you just paid attention to politics in Texas, you’d never know the left-of-center surge was working. Fourteen years after a self-assured wiseacre named George W. Bush sent not only Ann Richards but her party’s control of other statewide offices packing, the Republicans still run things around here, and woe to the Democrats who think their investment of time, money, and sweat will amount to anything. That’s the reality that Rick Noriega is confronting with just a few weeks to go in his race for the United States Senate. The Houston native, a five-term state representative whose legislative district extends across the eastern part of his hometown, was hoping to topple incumbent John Cornyn on the strength of his resume and with the assistance of demographic inevitability. A Lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army National Guard who served in Afghanistan, Houston mayor Bill White’s hand-picked choice to lead the city’s relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina, a onetime commander of the Border Patrol’s Laredo sector, 50-year-old Noriega reads on paper as a heroic, capable, can-do kind of nominee not cut from the Democratic party’s usual cloth. And his Latino heritage held promise at a time when the state’s population will soon be majority Hispanic. Yet while Democratic hopefuls in other red states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Alaska are home writing their victory speeches, Noriega has had a harder time gaining traction — Texas may simply be too red, at least for now, and Cornyn, as conservative and Bush-loyal as he is, may simply be too formidable. Polls show Noriega down anywhere from 7 to 12 points, and with Barack Obama writing off Texas and diverting resources to truer battlegrounds, the hill to be climbed between now and November 4 seems steep indeed. Still, is a Noriega upset possible? Of course. In an election year like this one, anything is." - Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 10.23.08