Ted is clearly the better Conservative in the race. You go Ted, do us proud.
Former state solicitor general Ted Cruz appears favored to win the Republican Senate runoff in Texas on Tuesday, which would hand the tea party a significant underdog victory in a massive state.
Tea party support stretching from high-profile figures like Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and Jim DeMint down to grassroot volunteers helped catapult Cruz to the top slot in Tuesday’s primary race. And he held his lead, despite beginning the election with less name recognition and less money than his wealthy and well-connected opponent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.
Matt Mackowiak, a Republican consultant who divides his time between Washington, D.C. and Austin, T.X. is a Cruz supporter and gives “enormous” credit to the tea party for Cruz’s come-from-behind success.
“Look, this is a low turnout primary runoff late in the summer– it’s hot, we’ve never had a primary this late– it’s the most committed folks that are voting,” Mackowiak told Yahoo News, “and in many ways it’s the tea party activists who are not only voting but who are really acting as multipliers.”
Cruz, a Cuban-American lawyer, grabbed enough votes in the May 29 primary to keep Dewhurst below the majority required to win the party nomination outright. Dewhurst placed first with 44 percent of the vote, while Cruz came in second with 34 percent, and the two headed for a runoff.
Today’s the day, go vote.
The final statewide poll in the race, taken over the weekend by Public Policy Polling, showed Cruz with a solid 10-percentage-point edge (52 to 42 percent) and also ahead by 15 points among people who have voted early — suggesting Dewhurst needs a surge of voters to pay attention to his last-ditch phone bank appeals and TV ads and go to the polls tomorrow. (But the last spot airing statewide features an appeal from Gov. Rick Perry, and the poll found only 16 percent saying they were more likely to vote for the person endorsed by the former presidential candidate — while 31 percent said they were more likely to vote for someone endorsed by Sarah Palin, as Cruz has been.) Dewhurst’s campaign says its own polling shows the race as a statistical tie that can be turned in the former front-runner’s favor because of his funding and organizational advantages.
We should have results after the polls close.
