|
One more time: Moody-Margo rematch
March 08, 2010 |
Back |
One more time: Moody-Margo rematch
By Sito Negron
The second round between Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody and Republican businessman Dee Margo started late last Tuesday night. OK, maybe Wednesday morning.
While the public might not see much official campaign activity until late summer or early fall, both sides have been sizing each other up for months.
That’s not a knock on Jay Kleberg, a political newcomer who came close to knocking off Margo in Tuesday’s Republican primary, but a studied look at the numbers.
Margo, 58, built up name recognition during two previous unsuccessful runs, one against state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh in 2006 and the one against Moody in 2008.
That name recognition did not come cheap, with Margo spending hundreds of thousands of dollars combined in those races.
Expect more of the same, said Richard Pineda, who teaches political communication at the University of Texas at El Paso.
“It has the potential to be incredibly negative,” he said. “There will be a larger amount of attention statewide focused on that race, and the Democratic and Republican parties will invest heavily. I’d be willing to predict it will be an escalation people haven’t seen locally for a while, in terms of the money that comes in.”
As of now, at least, both candidates say they will stick to the issues. In the previous election, Margo’s campaign team attacked Moody as too young and immature to effectively represent El Paso.
But Moody, 29, now has a successful session under his belt, and was named Freshman Legislator of the Year by the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.
“We’re going to focus on the legislative record we built on the 81st Session,” Moody said. He mentioned some priorities for the next session: funding for Texas Tech’s health sciences school, UTEP’s push for tier-one status, funding for jobs programs, and advancing the process of getting extra funding for the Franklin Mountain State Park.
“For the first time ever, we got the budget writers in the state to put a new focus on our Franklin Mountain State Park and put a plan in place to get a true visitors center,” Moody said. “We’ve talked about eco-tourism. If you want to start to grow that, Franklin Mountain State Park is the largest urban park in the nation.”
The Texas Tech and UTEP priorities have been cemented as El Paso issues, and Margo mentioned those at the top of his list, as well.
He critiqued the delegation in general for failing to advance any bills for funding a third building at the Texas Tech health complex.
“The comment by legislators was there were no tuition revenue bonds, but my thought is that it’s one thing to try and fail, and another to not even try,” Margo said.
He said infrastructure – whether for students, as in schools, or drivers, as in roads – is at the top of the list, and that as the state heads into a session with a projected deficit in the billions, “They’re going to make cuts and if I’m elected I want to make sure El Paso doesn’t get the short end of the stick.”
Endorsing Republicans
Margo’s key campaign argument is much the same as it was in his previous runs, as it was for the two candidates he defeated in this primary, and as it is for El Paso’s big-money political players, who have spent years supporting the state’s Republican leadership:
It’s a Republican state, and for El Paso to truly have a seat at the budget table, it needs to participate with the currency of politics – voters and dollars.
In an endorsement of that idea, if not an outright show of support for Margo, Kleberg wrote in an open letter that it was important for El Paso to have “effective Republican leadership in a majority-Republican House of Representatives.”
In an interview with El Paso Inc., he said much the same thing: “I stand by that and wish Dee the best.”
Kleberg, 32, who took 44 percent of the vote, said he couldn’t predict what those who voted for him would do.
“I truly believe it does not matter what I do or what I say that is going to energize those voters,” he said. “It is going to take the candidate to energize those voters and it’s going to take him reaching out to them.”
Candidate coattails
Since his defeat to Moody in 2008, Margo has argued that Texas House District 78, which includes parts of the West Side and Upper Valley as well as Northeast El Paso, is a naturally Republican-leaning district.
He attributed the 2008 election results to the desire for change and the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama.
When asked whether there might be a similar effect in his favor, given the campaign of Gov. Rick Perry against the Democratic challenger Bill White, Margo said, “Anything is possible.”
“I think there is more of a national anti-incumbency mindset now than anything else and it think that will play well,” he said.
Moody said he didn’t think the state races would have much effect in El Paso. And, he said, it’s not even a given the Republicans will maintain control of the Texas House, where they have a 77-73 advantage, although it was 76-74 before one Democrat switched party affiliation at the end of the last session.
In Houston, where White was re-elected as mayor with close to 80 percent of the vote, his presence on the ticket might help some candidates, Moody said.
“Here in El Paso, all politics are going to be local and there’s not going to be much of an affect from the top,” he said.
|
| |
|
|
