A musical endorsement of Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez by members of the Texas-based bands Asleep at the Wheel and Texas Tornadoes insists that The teachers and the farmers and the working folks agree / If you want someone in Austin who will stand for you and me / Tony is for Texas, you, and me. It’s a cute ditty, but it probably won’t help Sanchez against the Texas Republican juggernaut.
The GOP holds all 29 elected statewide offices in the Lone Star State–from both U.S. Senate seats to the governor to the agriculture commissioner. Although this year’s ticket doesn’t have George W. Bush at the top, the Texas GOP remains in good shape to repeat its sweep. Despite having spent $60 million of his own money, Tony Sanchez trails Bush successor Rick Perry by double digits in a current Dallas Morning News poll. Perry’s campaign has created doubts about Sanchez’s ethical standards: In one recent commercial, Perry’s campaign implies that drug money laundered through Sanchez’s failed savings and loan facilitated the death of a DEA agent. On a more fundamental level, Sanchez has suffered from assumptions his campaign made in its infancy, namely that a Hispanic Democrat would better represent Hispanics. On October 31, Rick Perry received endorsements from a group of Hispanic pastors, the Latino Coalition, and a Dallas-based Hispanic newspaper.
