Start this look at Texas House races with the usual caveats: Partisans — the people who tell us about this stuff — are always wrong about some of the races on their "hot" lists. Some won't pan out. Some might pan out when nobody's looking. It's a head vs. heart thing.

The field of active races is relatively small, and you'll not find anyone sane or sober who predicts a shift of more than two or three seats from one party's column to the other.

Republicans seem more skittish at the moment, but that makes sense with the national mood and with the simple fact that defense is always more nerve-wracking than offense. The GOP holds more ground in Texas right now, and have more to lose.

A big unanswered question: Will a governor's race with two prominent independents jangle the numbers on straight-party voting? It's part of the challenger strategy in a handful of districts.

If you forced us to score the races on the list that follows (we included 18 that were mentioned one way or another by consultants, candidates, and others we've talked with), we'd put it like this. The Democrats seem most confident about their challenges to Reps. Martha Wong, Gene Seaman, Toby Goodman, and Tony Goolsby. The Republicans' favorite targets at the moment include Reps. Robby Cook, Jim McReynolds, Hubert Vo and the spot left open when former House Speaker Pete Laney decided not to run again. That's not a full list; the full list follows.

Some notes about that. We included the 2004 result from each district because we like to keep it handy and thought you might, too. The Bush/Cheney column shows the percentage of the vote the Republicans got in each House district listed. The GOP presidential ticket won in every won of these districts and generally outperformed other statewide Republicans. It tends to be a high water mark if you're wearing a red jersey and a low water mark if you're in blue. Not one winner on this list — if they were in a contested race — outdid the presidential ticket two years ago. Republicans say that's because Bush is so popular, and Democrats agree. The Democrats say marginal Republicans are in trouble without Bush on the ticket. That remains to be seen. Click here to get a printable version of the list.

Standard Equipment

The candidates for governor are filling in the blanks on their policy pages, an interesting phenomena that gives them something to talk about without interfering with the central bits in their campaigns — the stuff you've been seeing from the beginning.

It's not easy to come up with examples of politicians turning an election in the last five weeks by bringing up a new policy issue. It's possible, theoretically, but the new stuff that turns elections at the end is almost always negative.

But it can be a liability for a candidate to get caught without something to say about all the issues that come up. And they can always rely on a trusty line: "We put out the policy papers, but the press didn't cover them."

It has the advantage of being true. But reporters do file this stuff away for use later, like during a legislative session when these things come up.

We're in a parade of policy proposals from all fronts. Kinky Friedman, who's been taking out innocent bystanders with a string of politically incorrect lines lately, started his recent uninhibited quotation spree while on a tour to announce some policy ideas. Among other things, he wants to get a lid on state spending while also increasing pay for teachers and multiplying the number of National Guard troops on the Texas-Mexico border by a factor of more than six. He didn't say where he'd get the money to pay for those ideas.

Gov. Rick Perry, a former member of the House Appropriations Committee and a chief executive who once presented a budget with zeroes where the numbers usually go, proposed a list of finance reforms that includes a "real spending limit" in the budget, "transparency" that allows voters to see how his and other agencies are spending money, constitutional permission to return unspent money to taxpayers, a requirement that dedicated funds be used as intended, and he wants to crack open a budget trick that prevents governors from vetoing line items within agency budgets. Opponents swiped at that, saying he could do much of what he's proposed by just telling the agencies in his branch of government to get going. And they noted the calendar and the timing of the proposal five weeks before Election Day.

Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn wants to double the number of Texas Rangers and use them to beef up the state's border security. Perry's folks say most of her plan is already in place.

Former congressman Chris Bell wants the state to ensure the availability of contraceptives to victims of sexual assault. And he wants the state to add a vaccine against cervical cancer to the list of required vaccinations for pre-teenaged girls. He noted in the announcement that some people oppose the vaccine for fear it encourages girls to become sexually active. Perry, for instance, is for it, but only if parents can opt out. Bell's position prompted Cathie Adams, head of the Texas Eagle Forum, to fire off an email with the subject line "Chris Bell disqualifies himself for TX governor." Bell's campaign manager, Jason Stanford, shot back: "Cathie Adams wants women to die of cervical cancer so she can score political points. I'd tell her go to Hell, but she's apparently on her way there already."

Mining the Internet for Campaign Cash

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell's long pitch to finance and political people — his argument for why incumbent Gov. Rick Perry is beatable — is up on the Internet where anybody can see it.

There's not anything secret about the pitch, but these productions generally get burned onto DVDs and sent to supporters and potential supporters. They're not usually available to the hoi polloi. It's essentially the same pitch the candidate himself would make if he could be in front of the money folks himself.

In Bell's version, the race depends on consolidating Democratic votes while Perry and Republican-turned-independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn split the Republican vote. That's been his line all along; here, it's coupled with appearances from other Democrats like Dallas' Ron Kirk, Austin's Kirk Watson, and East Texas' Max Sandlin. And it's a call for resources — money — right away. Through the mid-year reports, Bell's been well behind both Perry and Strayhorn in the fundraising department.

The video piece runs about 10 minutes, and it's available on YouTube. Bell argues that the Democratic base vote is in the 38 percent to 43 percent range and that he'll prevail in the five-way race if he gets that vote. A group of supporting characters — in addition to the three already mentioned — helps plug the campaign. That group includes Lyndon Olson Jr. of Waco, the former U.S. Ambassador to Sweden; U.S. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-San Antonio; and three lawyers: Fred Hagans and Tom Pirtle of Houston, and Mikal Watts of Corpus Christi.

Bell's close: "We've raised over $2 million, but we need $6 million more to ensure victory in November." The campaigns file their 30-day finance reports in a couple of weeks, and we'll be able to see what kind of response they get.

Considerably Cheaper than 2002

You've seen some of the gubernatorial finance stuff in other forms, but Texans for Public Justice put it all in a blender for a new report called "Keeping Texas Weird: The Bankrolling of the 2006 Gubernatorial Race." They rolled together all the campaign reports filed by the candidates since January 2003 (when Rick Perry's term began) through the mid-year reports filed this summer. The four candidates had raised $42.5 million altogether. Perry raised $24.3 million. Carole Keeton Strayhorn raised $12.7 million. Kinky Friedman raised $3.4 million. And Chris Bell raised $2.1 million. James Werner raised $1,400.

Some numbers really stick out. Friedman raised 21 percent of his money from people who gave less than $50. More than half came in amounts under $1,000. Nobody else was even close. Perry got 47 percent of his money in chunks of $25,000 or more. Strayhorn got 45 percent of her money that way. Out of state funding is light, especially after a run of national figures like George W. Bush and Ann Richards in state politics. Only $1.5 million of the total raised by the candidates came from the other side of the state's boundaries. Most — $1.2 million — went to Perry.

Endorsements from the Great Beyond

Ann Richards went to her grave without making a public endorsement in the Texas governor's race.

But that didn't stop her friend Liz Smith from saying the staunch Democrat would have backed Kinky Friedman.

And it didn't stop Friedman's campaign from leaping at the news and sending out a press release to make sure everyone knew about it.

That left Richards' family and former aides and supporters to walk the story back, which they did in about 12 hours time. They got Smith to say she'd only meant to compare Richards' and Friedman's common tendency to say odd and funny things to bring attention to ideas. She apologized for irritating the family. And any number of family and friends said Richards would have endorsed Democrat Chris Bell in the race because she always, always, always backed Democrats.

Smith, a close friend of the late governor, spoke at Richards' funeral. But in an interview with the San Antonio Express-News, she backed out of what she wrote about Richards' political preferences: "I was jumping to an assumption, because we had talked a lot about Kinky and weird candidacies and offbeat candidacies, and things are so pathetic in Texas, I jumped to a conclusion that I shouldn't have printed."

Political Hugs

From the No Hard Feelings Department: Republican Diane Patrick of Arlington, who knocked off House Public Education Committee Chairman Kent Grusendorf in the March primaries, held an Austin fundraiser. The draw? House Speaker Tom Craddick, who put Grusendorf in charge of that powerful committee.

• Add Republican Rep. Martha Wong of Houston to the list of candidates endorsed by Texans for Lawsuit Reform. They say they're backing the incumbent because her opponent, Democrat Ellen Cohen, is backed by lawyers on the other side of TLR's legislative agenda. Wong supported a state law limiting malpractice lawsuits against doctors; Cohen, the group says, was against that change in the law.

• Add Democrat Juan Garcia, D-Corpus Christi, to the list of candidates with an endorsement from the Texas Parent PAC, an Austin group that jumped into the endorsement business before this year's primaries. He's running against Rep. Gene Seaman, R-Corpus Christi.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Cindy Werner, the Republican running against Rep. Yvonne Davis, D-DeSoto, says Davis doesn't live in the legislative district and ought to be tossed from office. Davis fired back with both barrels, saying she does too live in the district, and towel-snapping her opponent for a record that, according to Davis, includes runs for office every two years since 1996. She says Werner, who now lives in Duncanville, has run as a Democrat, an independent, and a Republican, and from addresses in Houston, Arlington, Dallas, Carrollton, and now Duncanville. Werner says she's asked Dallas County's district attorney and the county elections department to look into her allegations about Davis. She says the incumbent lives in DeSoto, but at an address outside the district.

• The state's Office of Rural Community Affairs, created less than ten years ago, should be folded into the Texas Department of Agriculture, according to the staff of the state's Sunset Commission. They recommend abolishing that agency and letting the Ag department run its block grant and other programs.

• Follow-up: The Texas Ethics Commission punted, delaying until December a decision on whether the law requires officeholders who receive checks as gifts to report the amounts in addition to the fact that they got checks. Their draft opinion says the law doesn't require the amount to be disclosed.

• From the headlines to you: Congressional candidate Lukin Gilliland called on the federal government to reimburse Texas spinach growers for the money lost because of a short spinach ban that followed an e. coli outbreak from California spinach. And Texas House candidate Larry Durrett chased a Freeport headline about the Mexican pledge of allegiance being recited on 16 September by grade-schoolers learning about that Mexican national holiday. He wants to prohibit public school officials from "promoting or requiring" the recital of any pledge of allegiance other than the one to the U.S. flag.

Political People and Their Moves

Patti McCandless joins Terral Smith & Associates as a lobbyist after 10 years at Wellpoint, a managed care company, where she was legal counsel and headed governmental affairs. She did time at the Texas Department of Insurance before going to Wellpoint.

Lisa Barsumian is the new head of government affairs for the Texas Dental Association. She's been at Strategic Partnerships since returning to Texas from New Mexico earlier this year.

Time Warner Cable named Ron McMillan the new regional veep for government affairs. He's been at their Houston division for 15 years, though he's been involved with their political action committee and with their trade group, the Texas Cable & Telecommunications Association.

Lynton Allred is leaving the Texas Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association at the end of the year, after ten years at the helm. Chris Newton, TPCA's general counsel, will take the top job. They're juggling duties in their lobby shop, too, but Doug DuBois Jr. and Scott Fisher are still in there.

Lesley Ramsey leaves the Texas Fair Trade Coalition to become outreach director for the Center for Public Policy Priorities.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst hired a couple of broadcasters to handle his press and public communications. Rich Parsons left Austin's KXAN-TV and the Capitol press corps to be the Lite Guv's new press secretary. And Mike Wintermute, a former radio reporter who works in California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration and who worked for that state's Republican Party before that, will be communications director.

Appointments: Gov. Rick Perry appointed Major General Charles Gary Rodriguez to Lieutenant General in the Texas Army National Guard. Rodriguez is the state's adjutant general.

Dan Mike Bird of Quanah, a retired district attorney and the former Hardeman County judge, is the new judge of the 46th Judicial District Court. He'll serve until the general election.

Barry Bryan of Lufkin is Perry's pick for the 217th Judicial District Court in Angelina County. He's a county court at law judge.

Judge Dean Rucker of Midland is the new presiding judge of the 7th Administrative Judicial Region, which covers 40 counties.

The Guv appointed Gloria Ray of San Antonio to the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. She's retired from Kelly Air Force Base.

And Frank Denton of Conroe won Perry's nod for a spot on the Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation. He was a candidate for Senate earlier this year but lost in a four-person GOP primary.

Quotes of the Week

Randy Pullen, a Republican national committeeman from Arizona, in The New York Times, on complaints that voter laws discriminate in favor of his party: "Democrats believe they represent stupid people who are not smart enough to vote. I do not."

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, in the Waxahachie Daily Light, after Rick Perry's campaign pulled a Ventura quote critical of religion from a 1999 Playboy magazine article: "I didn't realize Gov. Perry held on to eight years' worth of Playboy. Was he reading for the articles or looking at the pictures?"

Democrat Chris Bell, in a taping for the public television series Texas Monthly Talks: "It's one thing to talk about a big tent. It's another thing to live in one."

Gossip columnist Liz Smith, quoted in the Houston Chronicle after implying the late Gov. Ann Richards, a Democrat, was for Kinky Friedman in the Texas governor's race: "Let's just say I was mistaken."

Friedman, quoted in the Houston Chronicle on the slew of quotes that has recently kept him in the papers: "The unforeseen event is it is shoring up the support of every redneck in Texas. That's a lot of votes."

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Texas Weekly: Volume 23, Issue 15, 2 October 2006. Ross Ramsey, Editor. Copyright 2006 by Printing Production Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher is prohibited. One-year online subscription: $250. For information about your subscription, call (512) 302-5703 or email biz@texasweekly.com. For news, email ramsey@texasweekly.com, or call (512) 288-6598.

Carole Keeton Strayhorn's newest TV ad suggests Gov. Rick Perry was stretching the truth when he said average Texans would get $2,000 property tax cuts because of the new business tax.Strayhorn's ad starts with a shot of a TV set playing an ad run by Perry earlier this year. When she starts talking, the camera moves to Strayhorn, wearing a business suit in front of a white background. Perry: "We kept our promises to you. The average homeowner will receive a $2,000 tax cut." Strayhorn: "Have you gotten your $2,000 property tax cut yet? Don't go running to your mail box. Turns out most seniors get nothing. And the rest of us? Just about $52 — about enough each week to buy a can of soda. We need a government that talks straight with Texans, and gives us real property tax relief. And real honesty. This grandma wants to shake Austin up." Perry's campaign was apparently waiting for this one — our inbox had eight press releases from the incumbent's campaign within three hours of the ad's release to the media. They forwarded supportive words from several groups that endorsed the tax swap last spring: the Texas Association of Business, the Texas Association of Realtors, the Texas Association of Manufacturers, the Texas Restaurant Association, the Texas Apartment Association, the Texas Oil & Gas Association, the Texas Motor Transport Association, Texans for Taxpayer Relief, and the Texas Association of Builders. Each group praised the tax bill in some form or another, but not one of them defended or even mentioned the $2,000 figure Strayhorn is attacking. The numbers in the ad come from Perry's estimate of what you'd save over three years if you bought a house at current average sales prices, a number his gang got from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. The argument is over the starting point; the average home sold last year is worth more than the average home owned last year; not everybody bought at the top of the market. Perry's ad originally ran in late May and early June. We reverse-engineered the facts in Torturing the Numbers. And his ad is available in our Files section.

Hutchison and Perry still lead, but Undecided is worth watching, according to a new Wall Street Journal/Zogby poll.

The Wall Street Journal/Zogby Battleground Poll has U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison leading Democratic challenger Barbara Ann Radnofsky 53.5 percent to 30 percent. That survey's early mid-September numbers had the race narrowing, but this time, Hutchison rose while Radnofsky fell. That leaves almost one voter in six unaccounted for; 16.5 percent are in the undecided/no answer column.

The same Battleground Poll has Rick Perry leading the five-way governor's race, with 33 percent of the vote. Democrat Chris Bell got 22.3 percent. Kinky Friedman was third, with 18.9 percent. Carole Keeton Strayhorn had 15.5 percent. Libertarian James Werner had 1.5 percent. That leaves a big bunch of votes unaccounted for; at 25.8 percent, that bunch would come in second in this field.

The polling was done September 19-25. The margin of error is +/- 2.6 percentage points. Zogby's methodology has come under some attack; you can read their explanation (and defense) and decide for yourself.

The body politic isn't as big as you think.

This is the sort of thing that, if you aren't cynical, might help you understand your cynical friends better.

If you'd rather look at this as a business analysis, you'll have to conclude that the industry producing these numbers is a niche business — a relatively big one, but a niche business. 

About 78 percent of all voting age Texans are registered to vote. Voter turnout, as a percentage of the voting age population of the state, has averaged less than 30 percent (in gubernatorial election years) from 1982 to now. In 2002, 29.3 percent of the voting age population showed up to choose Rick Perry over Tony Sanchez Jr. Four years before that, 26.5 percent of the state's adults turned out to pick George W. Bush over Garry Mauro in the top state race on the ballot. (The 1998 race was a low point; the 2002 race was in line with turnout in 1982 and 1986. The high was in 1994 — 33.6 percent of the state's adults voted. And presidential election turnouts over the last 20 years have ranged from 41 percent of all adults, in 1996, to 47.6 percent, in 1984 and 1992.)

If you were to make a wild guess about turnout next month, something in the 30 percent ballpark would make sense, based on the results from the last quarter-century.

Most of the smart people who run campaigns or watch this stuff have been saying for months that a gubernatorial candidate with 40 percent of the vote in November will be the next governor.

So, and this is where we get to the fodder for cynics, it's entirely possible the next governor of Texas will be chosen by 40 percent of the 30 percent of eligible adults in the state — elected, if you multiply that out, by 12 percent of the state's voting age adults.

That's just under one in eight adults.

Think about that when you're analyzing advertising, or the interest of regular people, or looking at the issues the candidates choose to talk about. A candidate can win an election by turning the head of just one in eight voters.

On the other hand, 18 percent of the adults in the state will be voting for one of the losers. Add them to the 70 percent who don't vote, and seven of every eight people candidates see on the streets won't be deciding who's in charge next year.

In these final weeks before the election, most blogs are "all politics all the time," which can be enlightening (if you're into that kind of thing). One thing is becoming clear: Candidates should assume that every conversation, no matter how trivial, will become fodder for a blogger who needs something to write about.

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Orange-Tinted Crystal Ball

Burnt Orange Report, which leans left, looked at the 207 races in Texas and came up with a list of predictions. Their bottom line: "Overall, we believe that Texas Democrats will have the strongest showing in Texas House races. We expect a four-to-six net pick-up this election cycle, and though it would be a surprise, we wouldn't be shocked to see more."

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Meet the Candidates

With so many candidates on the stump, it natural that bloggers would report on (or reflect on) meeting certain ones.

Joshua Huck of Austinist was enthusiastic after a speech in Austin by the national Democratic Party leader Howard Dean, but he was most impressed by another Democrat — the candidate for Agriculture Commissioner, Hank Gilbert. "Frank, funny, and passionate, he laid out his platform with wit and force, informing us that he 'didn't give a damn about politics.' We've never been so excited to vote for an Ag Commish," he said.

Eileen Smith, the "Pink Lady" of In the Pink Texas, also attended the event at Scholz's Beer Garden, and had an interesting conversation with Gilbert.

Sal Costello at The Muckracker, who supports independent candidate for governor Carole Keeton Strayhorn, recounted his first meeting with Democratic candidate Chris Bell and an aide. "I was not impressed with Bell, as he spent more time looking at his laptop screen than joining the conversation at our cafeteria capital small table. I remember how shocked I was when our meeting ended — that I'd wished Jason Stanford was the candidate. Chris Bell was aloof, arrogant and far from the friendly Stanford who simply asked questions and actually listened."

Annatopia, a big Bell supporter, describes an encounter with Richard "Kinky" Friedman.

And J.R. Labbe of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram couldn't believe it when Democratic Comptroller candidate Fred Head ignored warning signs and wore a concealed weapon to an editorial board meeting.

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Wall Building

Before taking a break, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to build a partial wall along the United States-Mexico border in order to decrease the flow of illegal immigrants.

Mick Stockinger at UNCoRRELATED called it "700 miles of CYA," saying, "While some will consider this 'a start', for most politicians its (sic) the end. They will be able to point to their vote to build the fence as an immunizing agent on the issue of immigration while avoiding any discussion of the far more controversial aspects."

The Right State was pleased. "Instead of digging in their heels and doing nothing, the Senators chose to focus on what the House of Representatives had passed which was a fence only measure. By passing this legislation, they correctly decided to protect America first, and then work on other things."

Vince Leibowitz at Capitol Annex opposes the wall and thinks an El Paso Times article about the possible negative environmental impact of a border wall gives other opponents hope that it'll be mired in legal tape for years to come. "Environmental issues have halted dozens of federal projects over the years: everything from endangered species to protected species to destroying habitats to screwing up the flow of water. All it would take to basically stop the fence from being built for a decade or more would be one federal lawsuit. "

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Four More Years?

Rumors that Gov. Rick Perry might seek another four-year term, if he wins this four-year term, struck Paul Burka at the BurkaBlog as inane. "This is silly," he said. "It's just a ploy, folks, to keep from being a lame duck. Let's see. He's been governor for six years, at least 60% of the people are against him, and the only reason he's going to win is that he has four opponents who are going to split the vote. After four more years, he's going to need six opponents for him to win. And one of them may be Anita Perry, who might like to live somewhere other than the Governor's Mansion."

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Robyn Hadley cherry-picks the state's political blogs each week, looking for news, info, gossip, and new jokes. Robyn, a veteran of both journalism and the state Capitol, is the owner of Capitol Crowd, a networking site for people who work in and around state government. The opinions she quotes belong to the bloggers, and we're including their links so you can hunt them down if you wish. Please send comments, suggestions, gripes or retorts to Robyn at robyn@capitolcrowd.com, or to Texas Weekly editor Ross Ramsey, at ramsey@texasweekly.com.

Remember when Roland Hedley, the fictional TV reporter in Doonesbury, was sent on assignment with paper, pencil, camera, tape deck, and a radar dish on his head? We're not there... yet. But multimedia is seeping into newspaper newsrooms.

The Austin American-Statesman posted video debates — taped at the paper — in two House races.

Reporter Jason Embry sat town with Democrat Valinda Bolton, Libertarian Yvonne Schick, and Republican Bill Welch for a debate you can watch on the Statesman's website. And reporter Gardner Selby interviewed the candidates running in HD-50, where Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, is the incumbent. He's facing Republican Jeff Fleece in November (along with Libertarian Jerry Chandler, who didn't make it to the debate).

At the Houston Chronicle, Austin political reporter R.G. Ratcliffe has been lugging around a recorder, and you can hear podcast interviews with Republican Ed Gillespie, and with candidates like Democrat Chris Bell, Libertarian James Werner, and others on the Texas Politics blog on the paper's website.

Snapshots of the race for governor

Old School: Politicians complain about the "filter" of the news media, a gripe usually leveled when they had something good about themselves or nasty about the opposition that they couldn't convince anyone to run.

New School: Politicians complain about the "silly polls" and "petty little stuff" that gets on the Internet through blogs, the changing mainstream media, and other Internet sites. Now the complaint is that the media — that's the old guys and the new guys — aren't responsible and don't separate verifiable information from gossip from disinformation.

There's plenty to commend both arguments. For better and worse, though, this is the See For Yourself age of news and information and most of the polls are getting ink.

Actual mileage varies, but recent polls all illustrate the same story.

• Gov. Rick Perry is trying to see whether it's possible to win reelection with most of the voters against you.

• Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, who left the Democratic Party to become a Republican and the Republican Party to run as an independent, will see whether you can defy the base votes in both parties and win with a well-financed media campaign

• Libertarian James Werner will be the winner of the None of the Above vote, along with the small percentage that usually goes to candidates in his party.

• Democrat Chris Bell is running, so far, as a sort of anonymous Democrat: There's a base vote, but not much money to make his name and positions known to the electorate. Various pollsters have found that a third or more of voters have never heard of him.

• And there's Kinky Friedman. Remember the photos of Iraqi voters who dipped a finger in purple ink to show they'd voted? Friedman's trying to find out how many Texans will dip their middle fingers into the ink jar to send Austin a message.

It's a Texas Standoff. To this point, none of the three major challengers — Bell, Friedman, and Strayhorn — has broken out of the second-place race with enough velocity to overtake Perry. A suppressed Republican vote — if scandals and bad news has that effect here — would weigh against Perry. A big turnout of new voters might be good news for Friedman. Bell's hope is that Democrats vote, and come home to him. Strayhorn's is that a constant and heavy TV presence will make her the "top of mind" alternative to Perry come Election Day.

With about four weeks left (early voting starts on October 23), nobody's making fast moves to the front of the second place pack. That's good for the incumbent. We've mentioned this before, but it's a key number: To beat Perry, a contestant will have to smoke the other challengers, winning 70 percent of the anti-incumbent vote to push their overall numbers up to around 40 percent overall. Recent polls show nobody's more than halfway there.

• The latest of those polls was done by New York-based Blum & Weprin Associates for The Dallas Morning News. They've got Perry at 38 percent, Strayhorn at 18 percent, Bell at 15 percent, Friedman at 14 percent, and undecided at 14 percent. (They surveyed voters from September 26-October 3; the margin of error is +/- 3.5 percent.)

• Just before that one was published, an Opinion Analysts survey done for the Texans for Insurance Reform PAC had Perry at 33 percent, Strayhorn at 20 percent, Bell and Friedman at 14 percent each, and undecided at 19 percent. That PAC is affiliated with the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. Some of TTLA's members are backing Strayhorn, some are backing Bell, and a lot — including the trade group itself — are staying out.

Their poll had some other interesting tidbits. More than a third — 36 percent — say they haven't heard of Bell. About the same number of people see Perry and Strayhorn favorably (or very favorably), but Perry has higher unfavorable ratings. Friedman was the only candidate in the bunch who was underwater in that section of the poll: He's viewed favorably by 24 percent of those polled, and unfavorably by 40 percent. (The poll was done between September 28 and October 2 and has a margin of error of +/- 4 percent. The results are available online, complete with questions, cross-tabs and previous poll results.)

Carole Keeton Strayhorn added a warm and fuzzy spot to her TV mix — a quick family album that barely mentions politics. Wanna speculate? It's the sort of spot designed to humanize a candidate and make an attacking political opponent look like a heel. Nobody's attacking and it might be that nobody does, but this lays the groundwork for a defense. And it softens Strayhorn, who's attacking Perry in the ad that started earlier in the week.

The new spot is voiced by Strayhorn joined toward the end by her husband, Ed Strayhorn. A spokesman for the campaign says her attack on Gov. Rick Perry's school tax cuts is still running and that the new spots are an addition to the mix rather than a substitution.

The script:

Strayhorn: "My greatest accomplishment: My four grown sons. My greatest joy: Six, smart, beautiful granddaughters. A few years ago, I was blessed to marry my high-school sweetheart. Eddie Joe Strayhorn first asked me to marry him when I was eighteen. My parents said we weren’t old enough. Well, now we are. Ed still had the ring. He saved it 45 years."

Words on the screen: "One Tough Grandma. One Happy Newlywed For Texas."

Ed Strayhorn: "Ah, she was worth the wait." (laughter from a group of people off camera.)

The one-hour gubernatorial debate scheduled for Friday night in Dallas (live in some markets; tape-delayed version on CSPAN) comes almost pre-buried.

It's on a Friday night in football season. It's in Dallas on the eve of the Texas-Oklahoma game. It's a one-company deal, with the Belo Corporation in charge of what has in the past been a cooperative effort between non-profit and for-profit media. It's only one-hour long, which means that, with four candidates, the contestants only have to have full control of themselves for 12 to 15 minutes each, while they're actually talking.

Still, it's got two potentially promising features. Three of the four candidates — Chris Bell, Kinky Friedman, and Carole Keeton Strayhorn — want to make news, and there's a section of this thing where the contestants are asking questions instead of relying on reporters to do it for them. Unless they found new wealth (campaign finance reports come out next week) Bell and Friedman don't have the money for big TV campaigns. Debate time, if they can leverage it into free media coverage, is valuable. Gov. Rick Perry, on the other hand, would like a fast hour with no runs, no hits, no errors and nobody left on base.

Debates don't move voters unless there's something in them that makes news and, in the repeating news cycles, embeds itself in the minds of voters. Think of past debates. Unless you were personally involved in some way, all you'll probably recall are the parts that made the highlight reel that played on the nightly news and/or made the front page. Blogs could amplify high and low points, but if this is a one-hour civics exercise, most voters will never know about it.

If you vote a straight ticket, and you're in one of the congressional districts that's having a special election, your straight-ticket vote won't count in the special election.

That could, theoretically, be a big deal.

Five congressional districts were redrawn because the U.S. Supreme Court found legal problems with the way the Legislature drew them. The tightest race in that bunch is probably for the spot held by U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-San Antonio. He's got a number of serious opponents, and a couple of hot races overlap that one. It's possible that someone would vote for a U.S. senator, a governor, some state lawmakers and judges, and miss the congressional race altogether. It's hard to say who'd benefit, but enough dropped votes could move a close contest from one column to the other. 

There's a special election going for the rest of state Rep. Vilma Luna'sterm (she retired to take a lobby job), another where state Sen. Frank Madla retired, and one more to fill final weeks of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's term. Those matter less, since they're only "stub terms," but it's something for fretful people to fret over.

• A related issue arises in races where there are write-in candidates and no candidates in the party favored by a straight-ticket voter. The big guacamole here is in CD-22, where a voter pulling the Republican lever won't be casting a vote in the congressional race. They'll push the Vote button on their electronic voting machines and it'll send them to a screen that notes, among other things, that they didn't have a candidate in the congressional contest. They'll then choose to go back and do a write-in or vote for another party's candidate, or they can just cast a ballot without that voting in that race.

Assistance and assistance withdrawn, endorsements and non-endorsements, appearances and non-appearances...

Rep. Chuck Hopson, D-Jacksonville, is getting help from colleagues in both parties in his reelect race against former Jacksonville Mayor Larry Durrett. Republicans Warren Chisum of Pampa, Charlie Geren of Fort Worth, and Bob Griggs of North Richland Hills all came to the district to knock on doors for Hopson. The incumbent is one of a handful of so-called WD-40s (White Democrats over 40 years of age) in East Texas. Geren, who survived a heavily financed attack in the GOP primary earlier this year, says he walked the district for Hopson two years ago, and says Hopson "walked for me in a sleet storm" before this year's primary. Chisum says Hopson called and asked for help and that's all there was to it: "Shoot me for having friends that are in the other party, I guess."

• Hold your surprise: AGFUND, the political arm of the Texas Farm Bureau, endorsed U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for reelection. That group has endorsed her every time she's run statewide, since her bid for state treasurer in 1990. She was introduced to the group by that year's GOP candidate for agriculture commissioner — a state legislator named Rick Perry. You can see all of the group's endorsements on their political action committee's website. It's at www.txfbagfund.org.

• The Rev. Jesse Jackson hit the trail on Democrat Chris Bell's behalf, taking the candidate and a gaggle of political reporters through a high school and a community center in Houston.

• Ignore that rumor that former Comptroller John Sharp, a Democrat, will be helping the Rick Perry team at the gubernatorial debates in Dallas. Sharp, who hasn't endorsed anyone in the five-way race, will be hunting.

• Harlan Crow of Dallas let Gov. Rick Perry's campaign issue a statement saying why he's supporting the incumbent over his former favorite, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn. He's given more than $60,000 to Strayhorn over the last year-and-a-half. But he sent her a letter early this year telling her he wouldn't support her as an independent, or against Perry. It wouldn't have been his first shot at Perry: Crow contributed to Tony Sanchez Jr. four years ago. But he's also a generous backer of Texans for Lawsuit Reform and the Republican Party of Texas, both of which are and have been solidly behind Perry.

• Another Dallas backer of Strayhorn's — County Commissioner John Wiley Price, a Democrat — told The Dallas Morning News he's considering a switch to Chris Bell, the Democrat in the race.

• Democrat Sherrie Matula, who's running against Rep. John Davis, R-Houston, was endorsed by the Texas Parent PAC. That group pointed to Davis' support of a voucher program for low-income and Spanish-speaking residents of Houston. Matula, a former teacher and school board member, is opposed to vouchers.

• The National Rifle Association has opposed U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards' opponents the last three times he's run. This time, the gun lobby is staying out, backing neither Edwards nor Iraq war veteran Van Taylor, the Republican who's challenging him.

• The Texas State Teachers Association's PAC endorsed Ellen Cohen, the Democrat challenging Rep. Martha Wong, R-Houston, in HD-134. 

John Stobo plans to quit his job at the top of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Stobo, who's been at the center of a controversial series of layoffs there, says he'll leave before the 2007 school year starts. He's been in that post for a little more than nine years. They'll replace him after a search by the regents.

Michael Donley is the new inspector general at the Texas Education Agency. They're assigning him to work on irregular scores on tests given public school students in Texas. TEA did a computer run on the scores at schools around the state and found 700 schools with "unusual data patterns" in the 2005 school year. Donley, a lawyer and former U.S. Air Force police officer, is supposed to find out if there's anything to that.

There's a new public affairs outfit in Austin. The principals in The Patriot Group include Denis Calabrese, Kevin Brannon, Ryan Gravatt, Anthony Holm, Jill Warren, and Matt Welch. Marc Levin signed on as general counsel, and Haley Cornyn — daughter of the U.S. senator — is the operations manager.

Keith Strama (brother of state Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin) is leaving McGinnis, Lochridge, and Kilgore, to start his own law firm with a couple of other lawyers. He's the lobbyist and administrative lawyer — Matt Beatty and Shannon Bangle are litigators. The new firm is called Beatty, Bangle, Strama.

State Rep. Carl Isett, R-Lubbock, is back in Texas after a tour of duty on the Kuwait/Iraq border. He's a commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve. His wife Cheri Isett took his place in the Legislature while he was gone, a period that included the special session on school and business taxes last spring.

Smiley Garcia, a lieutenant in the Texas Army National Guard, has been named the legislative liaison officer for the Texas Military Forces. He previously worked for Gov. Rick Perry and for House Speaker Tom Craddick.