Democratic challenger down 10-to-1 in dollars

By W. Gardner Selby

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas is still ahead of Democratic challenger Rick Noriega in campaign cash on hand, though Noriega narrowed the gap in the past four months.

At a federal deadline today, Cornyn, a Republican, plans to report that he ended June with more than $9 million on hand, his campaign said. Noriega, a state representative from Houston, ended the quarter with $915,506, his campaign said.

Cornyn’s 10-to-1 edge on Noriega was down from a ratio of 26-to-1 at the end of March.

Noriega has stockpiled more money than the Democratic challenger to U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas had by the same time in 2006, the state’s most recent U.S. Senate race. Houston lawyer Barbara Ann Radnofsky had about $350,000 on hand at the time, compared with Hutchison’s $9 million-plus.

Neither Cornyn nor Noriega was available for an interview Monday, leaving aides and onlookers to interpret the funding gap.

Cornyn could “ignore Noriega and drive his own message and not worry about the other side” until the November election, said Republican consultant Bryan Eppstein, a Hutchison adviser. Eppstein, of Fort Worth, likened Noriega to a baseball team trailing by 20 runs.

“He’s going into the bottom of the ninth with a large lead to overcome,” Eppstein said.

Dane Strother, a Washington-based Democratic consultant, said that Noriega is still poised to surprise Cornyn, who has not proved as popular in polls as Hutchison, the state’s senior senator.

“Cornyn is a very ill-defined incumbent,” Strother said. “You have a political year without a Bush on the ticket, finally, which helps Democrats (in Texas). People are absolutely desperate for change.”

Noriega, a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army National Guard who served in Afghanistan, “has a brilliant profile.”

“Can Cornyn buy this thing? I don’t know,” Strother said.

Mark Bell, Noriega’s campaign manager, said this spring that his candidate would be well on his way to raising $10 million by June’s end.

Bell said Monday that the monetary goal remains but that the campaign is also considering ways to target resources.

“We’re going to be strategic,” Bell said. “We have to be.”

“We never expected to have the same amount of money as the John Cornyn campaign,” he said. “We expect to have what we need to run our campaign and deliver our messages.”

Still in play, Noriega’s campaign said, is the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which took a visit from Noriega last week and could, if he shows momentum, make a high-dollar contribution. And in a state where it costs $1 million to $1.4 million per week to advertise in all television markets, Noriega might focus on certain regions.

Celinda Lake, Noriega’s pollster, said, for example, that Noriega has a base of support in Latino-rich South Texas. “He probably doesn’t have to buy as much time there,” Lake said.

Through news releases, the candidates have hammered each other for weeks.

Noriega depicts Cornyn as out of touch for initially opposing Democratic versions of measures to expand benefits for service veterans and protect fees paid to doctors under Medicare.

Cornyn casts Noriega as an unprepared aspirant who incorrectly suggested that phone conversations that he had with his wife while he was stationed abroad could have been monitored by U.S. agents under a federal anti-terrorist law.

Cornyn’s camp also raised eyebrows at Noriega’s statement that one response to gas price increases would be to drill for oil in war-riven Iraq instead of drilling off U.S. coasts. Noriega’s camp has said that Noriega was kidding.