Gov. Rick Perry warns agency heads and their governing boards that tough times might call for budget cuts, and sends them to look at their travel and other expenses. Here's his letter:

Dear State Agency Leader: Given the current financial turmoil facing our country, I want to take this opportunity to let you know that the Texas economy continues to be one of the strongest in our nation. It was no accident that got us where we are today: a multi-billion dollar budget surplus, an unemployment rate more than a full percentage point lower than the national average, and an environment in which we are still creating jobs. It took a lot of hard work by the Texas Legislature and your agencies to develop fiscally responsible policies that have limited spending and growth of state government. Without those difficult decisions, we could well be facing the same kinds of deficits that have other states on the brink of bankruptcy. The decisions we made starting back in 2003 were not easy, but now is not the time to rest on our laurels and grow lax in our spending policies. While we are in much better financial shape than other states, the economic turmoil that has gripped our nation will eventually have an effect on Texas. As stewards of public dollars, we must remain fiscally responsible and continue to put taxpayers first by finding ways to curtail state spending. That’s why today, I am directing all executive branch state agencies to take immediate steps to prepare for a slowing economy by curtailing taxpayer-funded travel and looking for other opportunities to rein in expenditures within your agencies. Just as families across America and throughout Texas are tightening their belts, we in state government must do the same. Within the next 10 days, please notify my office in writing of your plans to reduce travel in your agencies. Please send your letters to Mary Katherine Stout, director of Budget, Planning and Policy in my office. In the very near future, I also will be asking many of you to visit with me and my staff to discuss the specific steps you will take to curtail travel, re-examine spending and implement other cost-saving measures for the remainder of this fiscal year. Given the uncertainties of our nation’s financial difficulties, I also urge each of you to re-examine your Legislative Appropriations Requests for the 2010-11 biennium so that you are prepared to continue to put taxpayers first should economic circumstances worsen. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact my office and visit with the policy advisor assigned to your agency. Again, I thank you for all you have done, and I look forward to working with you as we continue to make Texas the most vibrant state in the nation. Sincerely, Rick Perry Governor RP:kwp

Ralph Sheffield, the Republican in the HD-55 race, went up with a spot that does a little biographical work and a little issue work.

Polls, straight-ticket voting, unemployment numbers

Democrat Rick Noriega's campaign is touting a poll done for the Daily Kos — a prominent Democratic website — that has Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn at 50 percent and Noriega at 44 percent. That's closer than any other poll we've seen; it tracks with a recent Rasmussen survey that had the two candidates seven percentage points apart, but it's out of line with another poll — done for the Cornyn campaign and leaked to the press — that had the difference well into double digits.

• Texas Democrats are worried about straight-ticket voters making a mistake and "de-selecting" their preference for presidential candidate Barack Obama or anyone else. If you vote a straight ticket, then vote for a particular candidate in that party, the second vote is recorded as an exception — that is, a vote for everyone on the ticket except for that one. State Democrats were alarmed by emails that circulated and instructed people to "be sure" of their vote by voting straight and then voting for Obama. That would, in fact, delete their vote.

They didn't say this, but we'll add it: If you want to vote a straight ticket for, say, the Democrats, but want to vote for one Republican on the ballot, you vote straight Democrat and then pull the lever (punch the chad, fill in the oval, click the switch) for the Republican you like.

• The unemployment rate in Texas last month rose to 5.1 percent, compared with 4.3 percent in the same month of 2007. The change from August to September was slight. And according to the Texas Workforce Commission, one major reason for the rise was Hurricane Ike, and that effect is expected to be even more pronounced in the October numbers.

Republican Lyle Larson, challenging U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, posted this ad on the Internet and says in an email to supporters that he's trying to raise the money to put it on broadcast TV before the election. He contends Rodriguez consistently supports higher taxes and that he's against tax hikes.

U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, is attacking his challenger, Republican Lyle Larson, contending Larson is supporting a flat-tax proposal that would raise overall taxes.

With three weeks left to go, a Democratic political action committee takes one of its top races off the trouble list.

To hear the 20/20 PAC tell it, Rep. Juan Garcia, D-Corpus Christi, has moved from the Endangered List to the list of Races You Needn't Worry Over.

That's a funny way to ask people for money, but there's a pitch for help right after they declare the race against former Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, is all but over. The title of the email is "Much Ado About Nothing." Have a look:

Dear Friend,

The Austin echo chamber is a funny thing. Six months ago, to hear the Austin chattering classes tell it Juan Garcia was a dead man walking.

At that same time, Texas 20/20 even caught some flack for supporting a sophomore candidate that was then perceived to be a "financial burden" and a "losing cause" to our organization. Our standard response at that time was that we don't select our membership based on probabilities of electoral outcomes. Instead, we support leaders that have demonstrated a commitment to re-building a working process in the Texas Capitol and who put their district's interests ahead of partisan loyalties.

Juan Garcia matched both of those criteria, and for that reason, we were proud to add him as a member of our group.

And, as luck would have it, yesterday's conventional wisdom turned out to be blindingly wrong. Today, Juan Garcia is not just winning his race - he's running away with it.

Juan deserves most of the credit for this. He's been a disciplined candidate, a tireless fundraiser, and he has the kind of political profile that voters go ga ga over. And the mechanics of his campaign have been flawless. The Garcia field campaign started at the beginning of August. They've knocked on 68,973 doors since. If you drive through the district, you'll probably see one of the 3,563 signs that sit in front of Juan's supporters' homes and businesses. And in a race where money was supposed to be the biggest hurdle of all, Garcia has raised $827,474.42 to date.

For safe measure, the Garcia campaign's torrid fundraising is looking to hold its pace in the final month of the campaign. Next Wednesday night, Texas business and civic icons Charles Butt, Red McCombs, Bartell Zachry, Henry Cisneros, Frank Burney, and Roland Pablos are joining forces to host a fundraiser for the Garcia campaign in San Antonio. (If you'd like to attend that event, please e-mail me at jdow@2020pac.com for more information.)

And if numbers matter to you, Garcia has been at least ten points up in the two most recent polls of his district.

As much as I'd like to give all of the credit to Team Garcia for the "surprising" state of this race, we'd be remiss not to mention that his opponent has done more than his fair share to guarantee Juan's victory in 25 days. The list of gaffes, tactical blunders, and outright screw-ups is almost too long to wade into, but if you'd like to get a small sense, this is a good primer. If you're still in the mood for more, you can here or here or here or here or here.

The real bottom line, though, is that the conventional wisdom in Austin, not for the first time, has been 180-degrees opposite the facts on the ground in House District 32. Today, I'm happy to report that I can say with almost perfect confidence that Juan Garcia will win re-election this November 4th.

Texas 20/20 has been proud to help in Juan Garcia's re-election campaign. In January, we look forward to working with him to make positive change in the Texas House.

Sincerely,

Jim Dow

Executive Director

Texas 20/20 PAC

Campaign finance reports on state races dominate the conversation in the blogosphere this week. Bloggers are also talking about a Senate race in Houston that caught the eye of two important non-Texans, a debate that didn't happen and some that did. And at the end there are some amusing things to take your mind off the nation's — and your own — pecuniary tribulations.

* * * * *

Benjamins and Net Yahoos

Based on presidential campaign contributions, John McCain is hot stuff in Houston, San Antonio, and the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex; Barack Obama is the bee's knees in Austin and Corpus Christi; Hillary Clinton's still tops in Garland; and, El Paso hearts Bill Richardson, says the Houston Chronicle's Texas on the Potomac.

Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, tells Postcards from the Lege, the Austin American-Statesman's blog, that she's raised more than a quarter-million dollars in her bid for the U.S. Senate in 2010. Meanwhile, Capitol Annex passes on a Swing State Project item saying that the national GOP has cancelled a week's worth of scheduled ads in Congressional District 22, where Republican Pete Olson is facing Democratic incumbent Nick Lampson.

Tex Parte Blog frowns after reading a report by Texans for Public Justice on Texas Supreme Court fundraising: "Wouldn't it be nice if blind party affiliation and campaign donations had no impact whatsoever on who sits on the Texas Supreme Court?"

Texas Observer Blog writes about what they call "October Surprises," including: Diana Maldonado's financial trouncing of Bryan Daniels in House District 52; the flow of big PAC money to Democrat incumbent Juan Garcia rather than Republican lobbyist Todd Hunter in HD-32; Democrat incumbent Joe Heflin's tripling-up on Republican Isaac Castro in HD-85; and, Democrat Joel Redmond's cash advantage over Republican Ken Legler in HD-144.

The bottom line on House contests from BurkaBlog: "In twelve of the fifteen most competitive races, Democrats hold the lead in fundraising." We did a chart for pundits playing at home.

Burnt Orange Report relays allegations by Texas Values in Action Coalition, a north Dallas Democratic group, that Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, is getting fiduciary help from House Speaker Tom Craddick and trying to cover it up. Though a pauper compared to Craddick, Democratic challenger Bill Dingus is no fundraising slouch, bringing in enough scratch to buy local TV time, according to Greg's Opinion.

Craddick's money has trickled down to HD-78's Dee Margo and HD-17's Tim Kleinschmidt, via the Stars Over Texas PAC, reports Vaqueros & Wonkeros, the El Paso Times's blog. Being even-handed, she also writes that HD-78 Democrat Joe Moody has gotten a nice chunk of change from Texas Blue PAC, funded by Democratic legislators and lawyers, including former U.S. Senate candidate Mikal Watts' firm.

Democrat Diana Maldonado has a huge cash-on-hand advantage over Republican Bryan Daniel in HD-52, reports Eye on Williamson. ($278,368.50 to $19,142.36, to be precise.) Here's a follow up by the same blogger.

Postcards analyzes reports from HD-48, where Democratic incumbent Donna Howard leads Republican challenger Pam Waggoner in the money contest. Meanwhile, Burnt Orange looks at HD-97 financial reports, spinning Democrat Dan Barrett has establishing himself "as a hard-working, independent minded leader with people's interests at heart," and that Republican Mark Shelton is a pawn of the various Republican entities that Democrats accuse GOP candidates of being pawns of. Over in Waxahachie, Republican incumbent Rep. Jim Pitts, who is facing only a Libertarian in November, is utilizing the offseason to build up his war chest, says Ellis County Observer.

* * * * *

Isn't That Special?

The race to replace Republican Kyle Janek has grabbed the attention of former White House occupants George H.W. Bush, who's endorsing Republican Austen Furse, and Bill Clinton, who's backing Democrat Chris Bell, says KVUE's Political Junkie. And former Rep. Ron Wilson is supporting last-minute Democratic filer Stephanie Simmons, who some accuse of running only to siphon votes away from Bell, according to Texas Politics, the Houston Chronicle's blog.

Greg posts Bell's latest campaign commercial, and Texas Politics has an ad attacking Bell as a "crybaby." (That's not a novel assault of Dems by Reps.)

In related news, the Bell campaign raised allegations of "push polling" to Texas Politics. And ABC13's Political Blog talked to a majority of the six candidates -- four Republicans and two Democrats.

* * * * *

Face Offs

Potomac readers chatted and voted about the presidential town hall debate between McCain and Obama. Read what they think here. And if you're interested in what the polls say the rest of America thinks, click here for an analysis by Potomac. (Hint: Obama won.)

Here's a live blog of the U.S. Senate debate by Texas Kaos. Pondering Penguin says Cornyn won and that Noriega and other top Democrats are "not ready for prime time." But the Dallas Morning News's Trail Blazers says Libertarian Yvonne Schick stole the show, while Cornyn supporter UrbanGrounds says, " I would not be upset to have any one of these three as our state's junior Senator."

Erstwhile, Postcards says that "fireworks" erupted in the HD-47 debate between incumbent Democrat Valinda Bolton and Republican challenger Donna Keel after Bolton attempted to link Keel to House Speaker Craddick.

* * * * *

Imperfect Attendance

In Senate District 11, Democrat Joe Jaworski blasted Republican incumbent Mike Jackson for not showing up (via Burnt Orange) to a debate and skipping a town hall meeting (via Burka) about the future of UTMB.

Jackson issued a response in a press release, but Burka remains unconvinced. And click here for an interview with Jaworski by Off the Kuff.

* * * * *

Happy Thoughts

An amendment by Kevin Tracy of his 50 state prediction of presidential results. Puppies, by Plowing, Sowing, and an Occasional Harvest. And Austin Restaurant Week, via Austinist.

Hot political rankings, from Annex. A photo of GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin (and Gov. Rick Perry), from Texans for Rick Perry. How to expunge your criminal record, from Defense Perspective.

Free Dr Pepper, via PoliTex, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's blog. And a new blog focused on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, via Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center.

---

This edition of Out There was compiled and written by Patrick Brendel, who hails from Victoria but is semi-settled in Austin. We cherry-pick the state's political blogs each week, looking for news, info, gossip, and new jokes. The opinions here belong (mostly) to the bloggers, and we're including their links so you can hunt them down if you wish. Our blogroll — the list of Texas blogs we watch — is on our links page, and if you know of a Texas political blog that ought to be on it, just shoot us a note. Please send comments, suggestions, gripes or retorts to Texas Weekly editor Ross Ramsey.

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, a Republican seeking a term of his own (he was appointed when Robert Eckels resigned), goes up with two commercials touting his efforts after Hurricane Ike and kind words from folks like Democratic Mayor Bill White.

A state appeals court judge is asking the Texas Supreme Court to order her own court to allow her to file a dissent in a politically charged case that began three election cycles ago.

Jan Patterson, a judge in the state's 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin, says in her suit that she didn't agree with a recent decision on Judge Alan Waldrop's decision not to recuse himself from a case.

Waldrop wrote the court's decision on the latest issue in a lawsuit involving two aides to former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a decision that hinged, in part, on a distinction between checks and cash in the state's money-laundering statutes. Lawyers for John Colyandro and James Ellis say the law didn't apply to checks at the time. Waldrop agreed. Patterson disagreed.

Travis County prosecutors went back to the court, saying Waldrop should have recused himself since he was involved with the parties in the case as a lawyer before he was elected to the court. The 3rd Court, sitting en banc, denied that motion for recusal in a letter not revealing how the four Republicans and the two Democrats on the court voted.

Patterson's suit says Chief Justice Ken Law ordered the court clerk not to include her dissent in the public case files. She asks the Supreme Court to direct Law to instruct the court clerk to file the dissent so we can all see it.

Addendum #1: Texans for Public Justice filed a complaint with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, contending Waldrop's recusal refusal violated the code judges are supposed to follow. You can see a copy of that online.

Addendum #2: Judge Ken Law, the chief justice of the court and the guy Patterson accused of suppressing her dissent, says her dissent is "circulating" in the court and can't be filed with the clerk until that process is complete. He says in answering briefs that he's not blocking it.

Endorsements, contributions, and political scuffles

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples is hitting the stump for statehouse candidates, doing a fundraiser in Fort Bend County for SD-17 hopeful Joan Huffman and another for former Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi. Staples shares a political consultant, Jason Johnson, with Huffman. And he and Hunter served in the Texas House at the same time.

Chris Bell, one of two Democrats in that Senate contest, is getting a fundraising visit from former President Bill Clinton this week. There are four other candidates in that special election contest, and since it's a special election and not a general election, it'll go to a runoff if nobody can gather more than 50 percent of the votes.

One other bit from that race: The Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC gave $2,500 to Stephanie Simmons, the other Democrat in that six-person race. The rationale? The Republicans in the race are all with TLR on tort reform issues, as is Simmons. Bell isn't, and help for Simmons is more harmful to him than to the Republicans. Bell, who "enjoys a name ID advantage bought for him by trial lawyer John O'Quinn" is the frontrunner in both Democratic-run and Republican-run polls. They're trying to keep him under 50 in the first round, on the hope that what has been a Republican Senate district until now will go for a Republican if one of them can get into a runoff with Bell. Money for Simmons could bleed Democratic support from Bell in Round One, forcing a runoff. The above line about O'Quinn belongs to TLR spokeswoman Sherry Sylvester, who's referring to O'Quinn's huge contributions to Bell's gubernatorial race in 2006.

Meanwhile, Republican Austen Furse picked up endorsements from Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt and from Grover Norquist, who heads the Washington, D.C.-based Americans for Tax Reform.

The Republican candidate for Travis County tax collector-assessor — a contest we generally don't cover — goes for the gut in a new TV spot.

That's not the only Zimmerman ad with body parts for sale, either:

Republican Sen. Kim Brimer's TV ad features Democrat Mike Moncrief, a former legislative colleague of the incumbent and now the mayor of Fort Worth.

The Democratic state Senate candidate (in a special election in SD-17) now has ads running district-wide, according to his campaign. The latest one talks about his wife's bout with cancer and about access to health care.

Republicans in statehouse races we're watching have, in aggregate, raised less money, spent less money, and borrowed more money than their Democratic opponents, according to candidates' latest reports with the Texas Ethics Commission.

We didn't total this last week because a couple of reports were missing, and congressional numbers still aren't posted at the Federal Election Commission's website.

But state candidate reports are all in. The latest report in the three heated Senate races show Republican fundraising totaled $668,039, while Democrats were raising $1.1 million. Spending was higher on the Democratic side, too, with candidates dropping $913,983 to Republicans' $799,987. With two incumbent senators on their side of the ledger, Republicans had a decided advantage in cash on hand: $3.9 million to $1.0 million for the Democrats. (Sens. Kim Brimer, R-Fort Worth, and Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, had $1.4 million and $1.2 million, respectively.) And GOP candidates had $950,000 in debt to the Democrats' $82,377. That Republican loan total came from two candidates in the SD-17 special election: Austen Furse and Joan Huffman.

We're tracking 21 Texas House races, and the Democratic money advantage is notable there, too. For the period ending September 25, the Democrats on our list raised $2.9 million while their Republican counterparts raised $1.8 million. Spending on the Democratic side was $2.1 million, as against $1.6 million for the Republicans. Unlike the Senate, the Democrats in the House had more money in their sacks than the Republicans at the end of the reporting period: $2.8 million to $1.7 million. And the Republicans ended with slightly more debt: $306,415 to the Democrats' $233,209.

Eight of those 42 candidates raised more than $150,000 between July 1 and September 25: Chuck Hopson of Jacksonville, Juan Garcia of Corpus Christi, Diana Maldonado of Round Rock, Dee Margo of El Paso, Chris Turner of Arlington, Dan Barrett of Fort Worth, and Carol Kent of Dallas. Only one of those — Margo — is a Republican, and only three — Hopson, Garcia, and Barrett — have the advantage of incumbency.

Four candidates got to the 30-day checkpoint with more than a quarter of a million bucks in the till: Mark Homer of Paris, Garcia, Maldonado, and Tony Goolsby of Dallas. Goolsby is the only Republican in that bunch, and he and Homer are incumbents. Seven more candidates finished the period with more than $150,000 but less than $250,000 on hand: Hopson, Todd Hunter of Corpus Christi, Margo, Turner, Kent, Kirk England of Grand Prairie, and Jim Murphy of Houston.

The biggest borrowers, each with $90,000 or more in loans outstanding at September 25: Homer, Hubert Vo of Houston, Ralph Sheffield of Temple, and Margo.

That Democratic advantage didn't reach the statewide court races. Republicans running for the state's two high courts hauled in $460,107 to the Democrats' $248,747. They spend about the same: $142,876 for the Republicans and $144,665 for the Democrats. Cash on hand? A Republican blowout. GOP candidates ended with $1.9 million in the bank. Democrats had $339,513.

Make it 13,410,330.

That's not official yet, but it's the current number of registered voters from the Texas Secretary of State.

That compares with 13.1 million voters registered for the elections in 2006 and 2004.

A relative few declined to provide their age, but the breakdown of the rest is in the chart.

Three-quarters of the vote is in 30 counties, a list that begins with Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar, Travis, Collin, El Paso, Denton, Hidalgo, and Fort Bend. More than half the state's registered voters are in those top ten counties, according to the early list.

Harris County paid visiting judges for long stretches to cover cases in then-Judge Joan Huffman's court, a statistic now being used to accuse her of taking long vacations while she was on the court.

But Huffman's campaign consultant says the opposition didn't do their homework and don't understand how the courts work.

Huffman is the leading Republican candidate (according to every poll we've seen) in the special election to replace Sen. Kyle Janek, R-Houston. The Best for Texas PAC — funded mainly with Janek's campaign money and working mainly on behalf of Republican Austen Furse — has a mailer out (see below) saying Huffman took an average of 78 days off every year she was the judge of the state's 183rd District Court. Allen Blakemore, the consultant who runs the PAC, says he's making the assumption that visiting judges were there because she wasn't there, and says he's not aware of any reason she might have gone missing for four months each year.

Huffman's consultant, Jason Johnson, says the visiting judges were there for 282 days during Huffman's term on the court, which ran from January 1999 to May 2005, when she resigned. He accounts for them this way, which he said is all documented at the courthouse: • 129 days when visiting judges took over the rest of her docket while she was presiding in capital murder cases; • 115 days of actual vacation (it comes out to about 18 days per year); • 20 days for illness; • 2 days for recusals; • 11 days for required judicial education; • 1 day for contempt hearings (when other judges have to step in for appeals of a judge's contempt ruling); • and 4 "administrative" days, which Huffman's side describes as required absences akin to judicial education days. "The only possible explanation [for the attack] is that Allen Blakemore is hitting the crack pipe," Johnson said. "It's just crazy."

The mailer also takes a swipe at Huffman for alleged ties to gambling and nightclub interests. Johnson said she's always been and remains opposed to any expansion of gambling in the state. Her husband, Ken Lawyer is in the nightlub business, and she's not opposed to that, he says" "I don't think Joan Huffman has anything against country western dancing."

 

Dallas attorney Fred Baron, founder of a law firm and the biggest funder of Democrats in Texas, has late-stage cancer (multiple myeloma) and his son is pleading for experimental drug treatment for it.

On his Dembot blog, Andrew Michael Baron, posted an open letter to the CEO of Biogen, asking him to reconsider a decision not to let the elder Baron be treated with a drug called Tysabri. That drug was designed for other uses, but according to doctors at the Mayo Clinic, might be effective against the cancer afflicting Baron.

The Barons have enlisted some big names on their behalf, as you can see on the letter's cc list: Lance Armstrong, President Bill Clinton, Senator John Kerry, Senator Tom Harkin, Senator Ted Kennedy, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach (Head of FDA).

The company and the FDA and the Mayo Clinic are reportedly working on the request. The younger Baron's letter said his father's prognosis is bad — that he could die in a matter of days.

Watch out for the cow.

Brian Newby is giving up his post as chief of staff to Gov. Rick Perry, after a little more than a year, to work on Hurricane Ike recovery with former Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, and won't be back.

Perry named former aide Jay Kimbrough to that post. Kimbrough has been general council and deputy chancellor at the Texas A&M University System (working for Chancellor Mike McKinney, another former chief of staff to the Guv). Previously, he was Perry's deputy chief of staff and a deputy to Attorney General Greg Abbott, and he was Perry's fireman, sent in when the Texas Youth Commission scandal broke a year-and-a-half ago. He'll start on Monday.

When it comes to campaign cash, the adage "better late than never" holds true. But the question remains: How much better?

If you ask veteran Democratic strategist Kelly Fero, the answer is, "a whole lot better." Especially if it's a whole lot of money coming in the final 30 days of a high-profile race where the outcome on Election Day could go either way.

"There's no question it made a difference 10 years ago this month when James Leininger dropped $1.1 million for Rick Perry against us," said Fero, recalling the 1998 race for lieutenant governor between Perry -- agriculture commissioner at the time -- and then-Comptroller John Sharp. "That gave him the financial wherewithal to just clobber us on statewide television."

In election years, the last 30 days of the campaign tend be to be the busiest for both the candidates and the check-writers. According to Texans for Public Justice, of the more than $157.5 million raised for statewide and state legislative races in the 2006 cycle, about $24 million was handed down in October, making it that year's most lucrative month by far.

In 1998, Perry-Sharp matchup played out in the shadow of George W. Bush's bid to win re-election as governor and to position himself for the 2000 presidential race. Bush was en route to a blowout win over Land Commissioner Garry Mauro and Sharp's best hope was to trim the popular Republican's coattails as short as possible.

Polling showed Sharp and Perry neck-and-neck. Campaign finance reports showed that the race for cash was equally close. The $1.1 million from Leininger, a San Antonio physician and then and now a generous GOP donor, arrived in the form of a loan on Oct. 25, which was just about two weeks before the election.

Eric Bearse, now a Republican consultant and then a press aide to Perry, said there's little doubt that the late money helped. But it's impossible to say for sure it made the difference in the Perry-Sharp race, or in the race for comptroller that year when Leininger dropped nearly $1 million in October on behalf of Carole Keeton Rylander (now Strayhorn) in her even closer race against Democrat Paul Hobby.

"For late money to work, the money you got earlier had to be spent wisely — whether it's for TV, direct mail, GOTV," Bearse said. "So if you do get let money, it reinforces what you were doing all along."

Sometimes, late money can be too late, he said. Case in point: Just after the only governor's race debate in 2006 (held in early October of Texas-OU weekend), deep-pockets trial lawyer John O'Quinn handed a check for $1 million to cash-starved Democrat Chris Bell. The plan was that O'Quinn's gesture was supposed to inspire other Democratic donors to jumpstart Bell's campaign so he could break free from the two better-known independent candidates — Strayhorn and entertainer Kinky Friedman — and make a serious bid to unseat Perry.

While Bell strategist Jason Stanford said O'Quinn's money helped get the Democrat on TV in the big markets, it failed to spur the wave of check writing among other potential donors that the candidate was counting on. Many of them had already signed on with Strayhorn before Bell was in the race and it appeared that no strong Democrat would challenge Perry.

Bearse said that even if the others did contribute, the shoestring Bell campaign had been unable to build the necessary infrastructure in the months leading up to the stretch drive to maximize the money.

"It takes time to get up on TV," he said. "You have to write the script, shoot it, edit it. So if you have to do all that at the last minute, late money is useless."

Perhaps not, countered Stanford, at least in the long run. Even though Bell came up short in 2006, his late surge was well received and helped put him in position this year to run a credible race for state Senate in a Republican-leaning Houston-area district.

In the special election for the seat vacated this year by Houston physician Kyle Janek, Bell's the best-known candidate in a crowded field — and raising money is considerably easier, Stanford said.

Fero said it's tough to gauge the impact of late money in state races this year because so much attention is being focused on the presidential race (and because the amount of late money won't be evident until campaign finance reports are filed just before the elections).

"Maybe in some of these marginal districts, money for some late TV ads could help keep some voters in the voting booth long enough to find that state rep candidate they've heard about," he said. "For Democrats, our biggest fear this year is that voters will go in, cast their vote for president, then leave."

— by John Moritz

The state's campaign finance cops will tell you that complaints against candidates rise in the early spring and the late fall — when primary and general elections are held.

The October flurries are underway. And we can say this, based on experience: You won't have a definitive answer (unless someone confesses) about any of these until well after the elections are over. They're not usually being filed to make the world a more ethical place — they're being filed to make political opponents less attractive to voters.

Still, some turn out to be substantive in addition to being politically effective. Time will tell.

The latest spate issued from the campaign of Sen. Kim Brimer, R-Fort Worth, and is directed at Democrat Wendy Davis and, in one case, at the people who are providing air cover for her campaign.

Davis held a press conference Friday afternoon in Fort Worth to knock down Brimer's complaints and to accuse him of filing them to generate news he can use to sustain his political attacks on her. "Kim Brimer has filed complaint after complaint after complaint, and he's not doing it with legitimate concerns," she said. "He is making a blatant attempt to use the media to advance falsehoods, and he is doing it to hide his own record."

Item: Brimer, referring to Davis' campaign finance reports, says she's getting an in-kind contribution of office space from Peter Lyden of Fort Worth, to the tune of $2,300 per month. But Brimer's researchers found that the building in question is owned by a Nevada corporation, Leo E. Wanta & Associates, Inc. And that, they say, makes the contribution of office space an illegal contribution from a corporation to a candidate for the Texas Legislature. He announced that by saying he'd filed a complaint on the issue with the Texas Ethics Commission. Davis says the contributions are legal, but her aides are still putting together their defense of that charge.

Item: Brimer says two Democratic political action committees are operating on Davis' behalf without properly disclosing their assistance to the state. They filed ethics complaints against the Lone Star Fund PAC and the Texas Values in Action PAC. And they filed a complaint against WFAA-TV in Dallas with the Federal Elections Commission over a news story that didn't disclose that someone working for the Texas Values in Action PAC is also employed as a campaign aide to Davis. Matt Angle, the Washington, D.C., consultant who runs the Lone Star Fund, says "all of the paperwork that's supposed to be filed has been filed, and lawyers have been over everything to make sure it's in order." Brimer's also accused those PACs of working in coordination with Davis. Eight minutes before her press conference began, the Lone Star Project — part of Angle's effort on behalf of Texas Democrats — sent reporters an email detailing "The Brimer Strategy" and making the same points Davis made minutes later.

Item: Brimer filed a complaint with state insurance regulators accusing Republic Title of paying Davis "for steering title insurance business" to the company. The arrangement, according to the complaint, was part of a divorce settlement between Davis and her husband, who owned the company at the time. That complaint accuses her of "unauthorized practice of insurance." At her press conference, Davis said she's never accepted commissions or incentive payments from the firm, and produced a contract saying so, along with a letter from Fort Worth's city attorney, who blessed the contract when she joined the city council.

Brimer has been the loudest complainer this month, but he's not alone in Texas politics.

Item: Texans for Public Justice filed a complaint against 3rd Court of Appeals Judge Alan Waldrop with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct after he declined to recuse himself from a case involving a former client. He's not on the ballot this year, but the issue now involves that court's top judge, Ken Law, who is up for election next month.

Item: Sherrie Matula, the Democrat in the HD-129 race, filed a complaint against Rep. John Davis, R-Houston, for a mailer attributed to "Friends of John Davis," a PAC that doesn't exist. Davis' consultant said the mailer should've said "Texans for John Davis," which does exist.

Democratic statehouse candidates will have at least one significant source of late money this cycle, courtesy of trial lawyer and one-time U.S. Senate candidate Mikal Watts.

Reports on file with the Texas Ethics Commission show that Watts donated $400,000 to a moribund Democratic political action committee based in San Antonio called Vote Texas. The PAC's one-page Web site said it is pushing for ethics reform, accountability and "lean, efficient government."

The Ethics Commission report also showed that the PAC gave Democratic House candidates Diana Maldonado of Round Rock and Donnie Dippel of La Grange $25,000 and $30,000, respectively, and incumbent Rep. Juan Garcia of Corpus Christi $10,000.

Dippel and Maldonado are running for open seats and Garcia is seeking his second term against former Rep. Todd Hunter. All three races are considered razor close.

Vote Texas' consultant Jim Dow — who also heads the 20/20 PAC — declined to discuss how the $355,000 remaining in the PAC's account at the beginning of the month might be divvied up. Campaign representatives of the Republican candidates in the races targeted so far by Vote Texas did not return calls Friday.

Vote Texas has been a registered PAC since 1993, Ethics Commission records show, but has never had access to the amount of cash dropped last month by Watts.

— by John Moritz

The honchos at Texans for Lawsuit Reform met with Reps. Jim Keffer of Eastland and Byron Cook of Corsicana a few days ago, but say that meet-up was regular business and had nothing to do with the race for speaker of the Texas House.

Just dinner. No hanky panky.

"It would be a mistake to read anything into it about the Speakers' race," said Dick Trabulsi, through a spokeswoman. The meeting was attended by Trabulsi, Dick Weekley, Leo Linbeck, Hugh Rice Kelly, and Bob Perry.

Keffer and Cook are rivals of House Speaker Tom Craddick, part of a small group of House Republicans who, like the majority of House Democrats, want to elect a new speaker. That politicking has been going on at a relatively quiet level since the end of the last legislative session. That was the session that featured bookend challenges to Craddick: He won reelection after a dramatic opening fight at the beginning of the session, and staved off a challenge by refusing to officially recognize his opponents at the end.

TLR has friends on all sides and doesn't want to play, according to spokeswoman Sherry Sylvester. "We see the speaker's race as something the members decide — we always have.

"It's very unlikely that an opponent of lawsuit reform could be elected speaker," she added.

Keffer's name is among those most often mentioned as potential Republican challengers to Craddick, along with (recently) Reps. Edmund Kuempel of Seguin and Charlie Geren of Fort Worth. Should the election flip five or more seats to the Democrats, giving them a majority, the most-mentioned names right now are Reps. Allen Ritter of Nederland, Craig Eiland of Galveston, and Pete Gallego of Alpine.

Democrats' hope for a majority has dampened talk of a challenge to Craddick. With that possibility open, Democrats won't commit to a Republican challenger. And without a Democratic commitment, none of the challengers can put together a majority.

Wendy Davis, the Democratic challenger to Sen. Kim Brimer, R-Fort Worth, launched an air attack accusing Brimer of everything from defaulting on loans to trying to get taxpayers to cover some debts.