Retired General and former presidential candidate Wes Clark made the rounds in Texas, endorsing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bob Gammage in Houston and then zipping down to Corpus Christi to endorse Juan Garcia III, a former naval aviator challenging Rep. Gene Seamon, R-Corpus Christi, in HD-32. Gammage was active in Clark's Texas campaign in 2004. Garcia served under Clark's NATO command. • House Democrats are going every which way in the governor's race. State Rep. Garnet Coleman endorsed Chris Bell, a fellow Houston Democrat, in the gubernatorial primary. Jim Dunnam, D-Waco, is flying the Gammage flag. Dunnam's the head of the House Democratic Caucus. Reps. Jose Menendez and Robert Puente of San Antonio are in the Bell camp, as is Jim Solis, D-Harlingen. • Former U.S. Rep. Dick Armey, who now lives in Bartonville, endorsed Tan Parker in the GOP primary race to succeed Rep. Mary Denny, R-Aubrey. Bartonville is in the district. • Supreme Court Justice Don Willett picked up endorsements from James Dobson of Focus on the Family and from the political action committees of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association and the Texas Civil Justice League, a tort reform group. • The Texas Parent PAC, which bills itself as a bipartisan group formed in frustration over the school finance impasse, endorsed two candidates, including a challenger to a House committee chairman. They'll support Anette Carlisle, an Amarillo Republican running against Rep. David Swinford, R-Dumas, the chairman of the House State Affairs Committee. And they'll back Rep. Delwin Jones, R-Lubbock, who is being challenged by a couple of his fellow Republicans. That group is backing both Democrats and Republicans, but is generally situated on the opposite side of House leadership on public education. • Marta Mattox, bride of former congressman and Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox, has gone into the water bidness. She's selling Longhorn Water -- having won permission to use the UT logo -- at a time when things featuring that orange bovine are kinda popular. They had a first edition bottle that's now selling on eBay. The brand is Texas Crystal and they're selling it in high-end grocery stores.

Hutchison v. Kirk? Really?Somebody over at Zogby International -- a polling company -- is playing the political equivalent of fantasy football: Their work for The Wall Street Journal includes a head-to-head race between U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who ran two years ago against John Cornyn but hasn't publicly expressed any interest in, well, a couple of years. They've got her winning that one 56.4 to 33.2 in a January 19 survey with a +/- 3 percentage point margin of error. That was well after candidate filing deadlines, and they tried Hutchison against the leading Democratic opponent, Houston lawyer Barbara Ann Radnofsky. Hutchison had a 56.9-31.8 advantage in that one. That race might actually be on the ballot in November. They included four candidates in their gubernatorial survey and came up with Rick Perry at 38.3 percent, Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Chris Bell tied at 17.9 percent, and Kinky Friedman at 14.4 percent. They didn't include Bob Gammage, who'll face Bell in the Democratic primary.

This is about the time in an election year when you'd see the Texas Poll hitting the field, but Scripps Howard -- the news company that owns the poll -- has closed its Austin news bureau and doesn't plan to do any polling right now. Officially, they're looking for alternatives for the poll, either trying to find a buyer or a partner or a business model that'll make it work.That bureau had two reporters when it closed at the end of December; Ty Meighan says he's still looking for work in a shrinking news business, and Tim Easton has been writing for the Texas Observer. That's the old Harte-Hanks bureau; Scripps bought that company's papers a few years ago and the Austin guys were writing for newspapers in Abilene, Corpus Christi, San Angelo, and Wichita Falls. Libby Averyt, editor of the Corpus Christ Caller-Times (and a former intern in the Austin bureau that just closed), says the company decided to concentrate on local news. Texas Tech Chancellor David Smith is leaving that post at the end of the month, and the board will start a search for a replacement. Smith headed the old Texas Department of Health before following John Montford to Lubbock; Montford, a state senator, went as chancellor, and Smith went to the medical school. Montford eventually went to SBC, and Smith moved into his spot. Among the names we've heard as possible replacements: state Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, former congressman and railroad commissioner Kent Hance, former House Speaker Pete Laney, former Texas Education Commissioner Mike Moses, who was superintendent of both the Lubbock and Dallas ISDs, and former regent Bryan Newby, who is now the general counsel to the governor. House Speaker Tom Craddick named Ike Sugg of San Angelo to the Sunset Advisory Commission, a panel that includes legislative and citizen members. Sugg's a rancher and the president of the Bar None Hunt Co. Gov. Rick Perry appointed Joe Bob Hinton of Crawford and Elaine Mendoza of San Antonio to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. He's the retired president of Mobil Oil Corp. Europe. And she is president and CEO of Conceptual Mindworks and former chair of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber. The Guv also named three people to the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which is supposed to help untangle the scandals that have plagued crime labs over the last several years. Austin criminal defense lawyer Sam Bassett, Debbie Lynn Benningfield of Hockley, deputy administrator in the latent lab section of the Houston Police Department, and Alan Levy of Fort Worth, chief of the criminal division for the Tarrant County District Attorney, all join that panel. Deaths: Garth Jones, a fixture in the Texas Capitol press corps for decades, retired from the Associated Press, after a bout with pneumonia. He was 88... John Michael "Mike" Quinn Jr., who left political (and other) reporting at The Dallas Morning News and other publications behind to teach journalism at the University of Texas. He was 76.