Disclosure: I'm probably going to end up helping this campaign with healthcare policy stuff, so I'm not entirely unbiased.

I just got an e-mail from the Barbara Ann Radnofsky campaign for US Senate. Ms. Radnofsky will be running against Senator Hutchison if no other Democrat steps up to the plate for the primary next spring:

Poll: Hutchison Slips

August 23, 2005

Impressive poll results showing a significant drop in support for our opponent punctuated our campaign trips to El Paso, Lubbock, and Austin last week. Survey USA approval ratings showed that Senator Hutchison's electoral façade has begun to crack. Across the board drops, in some cases as significant as 10 points, indicate that Texans have responded to our message: Senator Hutchison should be judged on her record. Follow this link to see the detailed poll results. http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollTrack.aspx?g=7e3d1b01-f9c8-4919-802d-9d899c4ad86c&x=625,3

Recent news reports showed that Senator Hutchison has abandoned the issues on which she based her announcement to seek re-election, choosing to focus on three issues our campaign identified: veterans’ affairs, education, and health care. She has crawfished on a variety of issues our campaign raised.

* She has flip-flopped on veterans affairs after a series of speeches and press releases from our campaign, and has finally called for a VA Hospital south of San Antonio, after months of my campaigning for such a facility.

* She has flip-flopped after her abandonment of her Constitutional obligation of Advise and Consent, and is now calling for Senate vetting of Supreme Court appointees, after her prompt rubberstamping of the President's nomination and her immediate call on her colleagues to ensure the nomination.

* She wrongly claims to be supportive of health care when in fact she voted against the bipartisan Bingaman-Smith amendment that restored Medicaid funding cut from Texas. After the last eleven years of rubberstamping and failed leadership, Texas now leads the nation in percentage of uninsured children and adults. She now parrots our campaigns call for insurance reform. We call on her to echo our call for prompt pay and preventive care.

* She wrongly claims to support education, while on her watch Texas has achieved the lowest high school graduation rate in the U.S. We call on her to echo our recommendations for mediation and full funding for grants for higher education.

* She has proudly touted her role in passage of the transportation bill. We call on her to concede that the transportation formulas in the bill that she rubberstamped have harmed Texans, sending our hard-earned Texas dollars out of state so that we can build needless construction projects in Alaska.

At our campaign stops across Texas, voters have already begun to call for public debates between Senator Hutchison and me. In less than two months, we've had an effect and changed public policy, and have focused attention on the needs of Texans.

Barbara Ann Radnofsky

Barbara Ann Radnofsky for US Senate Committee, Inc.
http://www.radnofsky.com/
P. O. Box 550377
Houston, TX
77055-0377

Contact:
Seth Davidson, 713-865-0416 or seth@radnofsky.com
Communications Director

Contributions or gifts to Barbara Ann Radnofsky for US Senate Committee, Inc are not tax deductible.

Given how little Ms. Hutchison helped out the state of Texas with that transportation bill, I'm not surprised to see poll numbers slipping. Plus, with the President's approval ratings slipping into humiliating levels on a daily basis, there has to be some fallout for those running campaigns in his party. Here's hoping that those numbers continue to decline for the Republicans.

I met a few people from Barbara Ann Radnofsky's campaign a few weeks ago, and I've met her twice at various functions over the last year. Once at an event for the Houston Democratic forum in April and Women Against Bush event at some point last fall. She's a relentless campaigner, and I think that she could be a very good Senator.

You can donate to her campaign here

Tags: politics: election 2006