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In a poll released Thursday by Public Policy Polling, former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz leads Lt. Governor David Dewhurst 49-44 in the Republican primary runoff for the U.S. Senate seat held by retiring Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Cruz leads 59-36 among voters "very excited" about voting in the election. Dewhurst leads 70-20 among moderate voters. The PPP report noted that runoff elections are notoriously difficult to poll, but that Cruz' chances look good based on his lead in the poll and his substantial lead with voters most likely to vote in the election, the "very excited voters."

PPP's first poll of the Texas Senate runoff finds Ted Cruz with a surprising 49-44 lead and a much more enthusiastic cadre of supporters than former front runner David Dewhurst. Cruz's lead expands to a whooping 59-36 margin over Dewhurst among voters who describe themselves as 'very excited' about voting in the election. The lower turnout is, the better Cruz's chances will be. Dewhurst leads 51-43 with 'somewhat excited' voters and 50-36 with those who say they are 'not that excited.' The big question is whether those less enthused folks will actually bother to turn out or not. This race...

What else is he hiding? Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst’s Senate campaign might have just crossed a line it should not have crossed. Who else would be behind the Lt. Governor’s taxpayer funded website for his Lieutenant Governor’s Office suddenly deleting the transcript of a speech proving David Dewhurst has been lying about his position on illegal aliens? The speech is . . . well . . . it is gone. Poof. Again, the website is taxpayer funded and the document suddenly no longer there directly contradicted Dewhurst’s present statements on immigration in the Senate campaign. Now, David Dewhurst adamantly...

Updated, 6:09 p.m. The Texas Republican establishment on Sunday came out hard against former state Solicitor General Ted Cruz (R) in his upstart Senate bid. Nearly every state Senator signed an open letter addressed to “Fellow Texans” that offered a defense of Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who is running against Cruz in a July 31 GOP primary runoff to replace retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R). The letter never once mentions Cruz by name. But it makes clear the state Senators’ displeasure with statements he has made on sanctuary cities, state spending, the state’s Transportation Security Administration “Anti-Groping” bill and...

. . . a recent internal poll conducted for the Cruz for Senate campaign shows Ted leading Dewhurst 49-40. Ted is leading Dewhurst among nearly every sub-group. Importantly, Ted is dominating self-identified “Tea Party” and “Very Conservative” voters. Among the 50% of likely runoff voters who are Tea Party aligned, Ted leads 72-22. Among the 60% who are very conservative, Ted leads 58-33.

One of the Tea Party's most critical battles is heating up in Texas, where two conservative Republicans will slug it out for their party's Senate nomination later this month. State and national Tea Party groups are backing former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, who they hope will join a small but growing group of U.S. senators aligned with the conservative movement and pushing an agenda of less government spending, lower taxes and fewer regulations. Cruz faces David Dewhurst, the state's lieutenant governor, in a July 31 runoff election after finishing at the top of the May 29 primary. Dewhurst beat...

Republican candidates in the highly-anticipated Texas U.S. Senate race will square off in The Texas Debates: Race for U.S. Senate on Friday, June 22, 2012, at 8:00 pm CDT. The live debate between Ted Cruz, former Texas Solicitor General, and Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst will be broadcast to millions on television, radio and the Internet. Live Streaming on:C-SPAN12newsnowand others at the link.Candidate Websites:Ted CruzDavid Dewhurst

The addition of former Perry presidential campaign spokesman Mark Miner to Senate hopeful David Dewhurst’s campaign means that the three most important positions in the Dewhurst bid to go to Washington are held by Perry people. Dewhurst, who’s in a battle with former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz for Texas’ open U.S. Senate seat, has former Perry strategist Dave Carney as his senior campaign adviser. A pro-Dewhurst super PAC, Texas Conservatives Fund, is run by Rob Johnson, who managed Perry’s 2010 re-election campaign and worked in his failed presidential effort in the 2012 cycle. Miner, another Perry presidential campaign worker...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry was booed at the state GOP convention Thursday when he mentioned his support for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s candidacy for Senate...Dewhurst is facing former state Solicitor General Ted Cruz in a run-off election for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Cruz has largely drawn support from more conservative elements of the party.

Upon Chief Justice Taney’s death, President Lincoln was tasked with replacing the Chief Justice of SCOTUS.  Monty Blair had served as a loyal friend throughout Lincoln’s first administration.  Likewise, Edward Bates had proven his loyalty to Lincoln over-and-over again.  Both were well qualified men.  Both greatly desired the position.  Yet, in the end, Lincoln knew that there was but one choice that would best serve the Union.  He knew that although Salmon Chase had essentially been dismissed from his Cabinet in disgrace and although Chase had been anything but loyal to Mr. Lincoln, Chase was an abolitionist and the one...

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has strong support from repeated Republican primary voters as well as senior citizens, two groups that are more likely to turn out for a July runoff for U.S. Senate, according to a Dewhurst campaign memo written by pollster Mike Baselice. Supporters of former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, a tea party favorite who placed second in Tuesday’s vote, have argued that Cruz would be favored in a runoff because his supporters are more enthusiastic and likely to show up for an unusual, mid-summer vote. So the Baselice memo was clearly intended to rebut that argument. Recent...

The battle to be the Texas GOP Senate nominee is this year’s most important Senate election. Tea Party backed Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz overcame long odds on Tuesday, and forced establishment favorite Lt. Governor David Dewhurst into a runoff in the race for the open Texas U.S. Senate seat. "Dewhurst failed to get a majority because he failed to fight for conservative principles. His false attacks backfired," Senator Jim DeMint, a Cruz supporter, tweeted Tuesday night. According to The Dallas Morning News, Dewhurst, who spent more than $20 million of personal funds to get elected lieutenant governor in 2002,...

The Texas Republican Senate primary is headed for a runoff, after Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst fell just shy of 50 percent of the vote Tuesday. Dewhurst will face former state solicitor general Ted Cruz, a favorite of the tea party, in the July 31 runoff. The winner of that runoff will be a heavy favorite to succeed retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), after Democrats failed to land a top-tier recruit. With 43 percent of precincts reporting, Dewhurst led Cruz 46 percent to 32 percent. Seven other candidates split the vote enough, though, to push the two into a runoff.

With the Texas state primary just days away, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst is in the lead to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison in the U.S. Senate, and according to some observers, one of the factors he has working in his favor is fear. In Texas, the lieutenant governorship is a hugely powerful position. Its occupant is the leader of the state senate, meaning he appoints committee chairmen and members, determines the order in which bills are taken up, and decides which committees get to handle specific pieces of legislation. At the very least, everyone has to be aware of the sway...

A new poll of the Texas Republican Senate primary race shows conservative candidate Ted Cruz surging to nearly within the margin of error against moderate establishment front-runner David Dewhurst.  The University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll shows Dewhurst at 40 percent and Cruz at 31 percent. Cruz had been trailing the self-financed Dewhurst by over 20 percent, so this poll shows him closing strong.  Early voting started last week in Texas, and the primary is on Tuesday, May 29. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote on Tuesday, the top-two vote getters will be in a run-off...

Ted Cruz won’t go to the U.S. Senate to get along in the U.S. Senate, the candidate told Gregg County Republicans on Wednesday in Longview. “We need to draw a line in the sand,” the Republican told some 40 party members, after recalling a Dallas Morning News editorial panel asking about the need for compromise in Washington, D.C. “At this point, I literally laughed out loud,” Cruz said. “If you’re looking for an established moderate who will go to Washington and work across the aisle and compromise, and continue this spending and building the debt deeper ... I’m not the...

In the Republican primary, the competition for the U.S. Senate nomination is a race to the right and a crowded one at that. Though there are nine candidates in the race, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is the best known and certainly the best financed. Dewhurst acts like the chosen one, but GOP voters looking for a no pretense, no apologies conservative found one in challenger Ted Cruz. [Snip] Cruz has a big intellect and doesn't mind taking it for a spin around the room. He's smart; he knows it and you know it within minutes of talking to him. Yet,...

A super PAC supporting Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst's Senate campaign has released an internal poll showing him at 57 percent in the GOP race with less than three weeks left until the primary. The poll shows Dewhurst at 57 percent, followed by Ted Cruz at 16 percent, Tom Leppert at 12 percent, and Craig James at 4 percent. Eleven percent were undecided. If Dewhurst finishes with over 50 percent of the vote on May 29, he wins the nomination outright. If not, the top two finishers will advance to a July 31 runoff. The Perception Insight poll of 800...

Texas’s Ted Cruz has come a long way in his quest to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison in the United States Senate. He has spent the better part of the last year slowly closing the polling gap with his principal rival, the better-known lieutenant governor David Dewhurst, to the point that a runoff between the two now seems the likeliest of outcomes in the May 29 primary. But finishing a strong second isn’t an outcome worthy of an articulate, principled conservative such as Cruz. He can and should win a runoff with Dewhurst, become the Republican nominee, and be elected the...

Gov. Rick Perry left no doubt this time. In Plano on Wednesday, Perry told KTVT-TV (Channel 11) reporter Jack Fink that he's backing Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for Texas' open seat in the U.S. Senate. "The fact is I'm a loyal individual, if I'm nothing else, and David's been a loyal supporter of mine," Perry said. "And I in turn am a loyal supporter of him and his task to become the next U.S. senator from Texas." On Jan. 2, while campaigning in Iowa on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, then-presidential candidate Perry gave Dewhurst, who was standing behind...