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Houston Mayor
Bill White (D) will run for the Texas Senate seat that will be vacated by Kay
Bailey Hutchison (R), according to a source with knowledge of White’s plans and
local media reports. The three-term
mayor, who won reelection in 2007 with 86 percent of the vote, gives Democrats
a top recruit in the Lone Star State, something the party lacked this year when
Sen. John Cornyn (R) won reelection by a wide margin.
A spokesman for
White’s mayoral office on Friday would not confirm that White will run, but
said an announcement is expected before the end of the year. The Houston Chronicle and a local political
newsletter reported that White will make his intentions known early next week.
White’s entry
into the race comes after a prolonged courting period by both national and
state Democrats, who had hoped to coax the mayor to run for either Hutchison’s
seat or for governor. White’s Senate bid gives the Democratic Senatorial
Campaign Committee its first major recruit of the 2010 cycle.
Hutchison, who
announced her own gubernatorial exploratory committee last week, has said she
will step down from the Senate in late 2009. Governor Rick Perry (R) will be
able to appoint an interim senator, but that temporary placeholder would have
to run in a special election.
White joins one
other Democrat, former state Comptroller John Sharp, in the race. Former GOP Secretary
of State Roger Williams and Republican state Sen. Florence Shapiro of Dallas
have also said they will run. Texas Republicans expect a number of the state’s
20 GOP members of Congress to take hard looks at the race.
Though White
would begin as an underdog in a state that remains solidly Republican, the open
seat and the prospect of a bloody GOP primary give Democrats hope they may be
able to snag a Senate seat in advance of the 2010 elections.
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