Liz Austin Peterson
Associated Press Writer
Houston Chronicle

HOUSTON -- Democrat Rick Noriega, a five-term state lawmaker and National Guard officer who served more than a year in Afghanistan, formally kicked off his campaign to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn on Monday.

Noriega met with dozens of supporters at a breakfast in Houston, then filed his candidacy papers at the Texas Democratic Party's headquarters in Austin on the first day candidates could begin entering the March party primaries.

Congressional and judicial candidates filed candidate paperwork early in the day at the Republican Party state office. Cornyn planned to file his another day during the monthlong filing period, his campaign said.

Ray McMurrey, a Corpus Christi teacher, announced last month that he plans to challenge Noriega for the Democratic nomination.

Noriega is a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army National Guard who spent 14 months in Afghanistan. He supports ending the war in Iraq and setting firm timetables for withdrawing troops.

He also said he wants to provide veterans and their families with better medical care and make health insurance and higher education more affordable.

In Austin, Noriega said the "mismanaged" war in Iraq will be a leading campaign issue.

"America wins wars. We are in an occupation of a country currently," Noriega said.

As he mingled among supporters munching on Mexican pastries and scrambled eggs, Noriega acknowledged it won't be easy to defeat the state's junior senator. As of last month, Noriega had just $510,000 in the bank, while Cornyn has about $6.6 million.

But Noriega said regular Texans are more concerned about their own bank accounts.

"We no longer need someone who represents the interests of Washington but represents the interests of 23 million Texans," Noriega said, speaking at a banquet hall in the working-class neighborhood where he grew up.

Democratic precinct chairman David Robinson said he came to Monday's breakfast because he admires Noriega's military service and the years he has spent in the Texas Legislature.

The retired political science professor said he thinks Noriega could win because Cornyn has aligned himself so closely with the Bush administration, whose popularity has waned in Texas and across the country.

"It's going to take a lot of work, but I think he has a chance to pull it off in November," said Robinson, who used to teach at the University of Houston-Downtown.

Noriega was joined at the breakfast by his elderly parents, his third-grade teacher, his 9-year-old son and his wife, Melissa, a Houston city councilwoman. Several Democratic state lawmakers also came to show their support.

Cornyn, the former attorney general of Texas, was elected to the Senate in 2002. Republicans have held that seat since 1961, when Lyndon B. Johnson resigned to become vice president.

Associated Press political writer Kelley Shannon contributed to this report from Austin.

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Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN -- With millionaire Mikal Watts out of the U.S. Senate race, the national Democratic Party is now treating Houston state Rep. Rick Noriega as the apparent party challenger to Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.

Noriega is traveling today to Las Vegas as a guest of the Democratic National Committee to meet national party donors who are attending the Nevada Democratic Party's presidential debate, which begins at 7 p.m. Central Time.

"They've got a lot of national donors coming to this, and we wanted them to put a face with the name," Noriega told the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday. "What's going to happen is across the country folks are going to start realizing that Texas is in play."

In the past several weeks, Noriega also has picked up endorsements from past Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and Wesley Clark.

"It's a different race now, from a primary to a general election," Noriega said Wednesday.

Another sign that Noriega is turning the national party to his favor occurred last week in Austin, where he was a guest at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

The senatorial committee will not decide which state races to finance until late next summer, but chairman Sen. Charles Schumer had in the past indicated a preference for Watts as the party nominee because Watts, a San Antonio trial lawyer, could largely finance his own campaign.

Because of campaign finance limits, it will be difficult for Noriega to finance his general election against Cornyn with just the money donated by Texans. Noriega ended September with $510,000 in the bank to Cornyn's $6.6 million.

The task is not insurmountable, though. Democrat Ron Kirk in the 2002 Senate race raised $912,000 in the year before the election. By the end of the campaign, Kirk had raised $9.6 million. Cornyn won the race, raising $9.3 million, but both candidates received several million dollars more in independent expenditures by national party committees.

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By R.G. Ratcliffe

I received a call from Mikal Watts this morning informing me that he has decided to withdraw from the Democratic Primary race for the United States Senate.

As Teddy Roosevelt once said, the credit goes to the man in the arena. And Mikal Watts will always have my utmost respect for standing in the arena and highlighting how John Cornyn has let Texas down, placing political extremists and his financial contributors ahead of the people of Texas.

Of course, this is not the first time Mikal has been in the arena — he's been a true friend to Democrats in Texas and throughout the nation, and has always had the courage to stand up for his convictions.

Today, Mikal made a very difficult and personal decision to put his family first. That's a reflection of a strong character and a truly grounded leader.

Mikal and I made plans to sit down together in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I'll continue the campaign that we started together and fight for the vision for a better Texas that we continue to share.

EL PASO, September 29 - Potential candidate for U.S. Senate Rick Noriega picked up the endorsements of a number of El Paso elected officials at a campaign fundraiser over the weekend.

At an event at the El Paso Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Houston Democrat won the backing of state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, state Reps. Paul Moreno, Joe Pickett, and Inocente "Chente" Quintanilla, County Commissioners Veronica Escobar, County Attorney Jose Rodriguez, and City Commissioners Steve Ortega, Susie Byrd and Beto O'Rourke.

"I am humbled by the outpouring of support," Noriega said. "The people of El Paso are clearly ready to elect a U.S. senator who cares about having a VA hospital and a children's hospital built, who cares about stopping the border fence, and who cares about the plight of the Tigua Indians. They have not had that."

Noriega is a five-term member of the Texas House who has formed an exploratory committee to consider a U.S. Senate run. A lieutenant colonel in the National Guard, he served one year in combat in Afghanistan. His knowledge of border security issues was strengthened by serving for five months as a National Guard sector commander in Laredo during Operation Jump Start.

Shapleigh dubbed the event, "Noriega en El Chuco," or "Rock Solid with Rick." Shapleigh said the people of El Paso will warm to Noriega as they get to know him during the campaign because of his background and achievements.

He predicted Noriega would especially secure deep support among El Paso veterans, hotel workers, educators, and students.

"Rick has a great El Paso campaign theme. His own story is the story of so many from El Paso: brave, veteran, achieved the American dream through education, fought for his country in Afghanistan and his people in Austin," Shapleigh said.

Shapleigh said El Paso voters were ready for a change in the U.S. Senate because of Cornyn's record.

"As Texas Attorney General, Cornyn did more than anyone in state government to end Tigua gaming," Shapleigh said. "Then check his votes in the U.S. Senate on veterans' health, on SCHIP, and on the border wall, which he voted for twice."

Shapleigh predicted health care would be a key issue in the presidential campaign and that would help Noriega in El Paso in a general election match-up against Cornyn. "El Paso is ground zero for that debate," Shapleigh said, pointing out that El Paso and Texas are dead last in health care coverage.

Noriega agreed. He said Cornyn's vote against expanding the bipartisan SCHIP bill last week would have denied health insurance to more than 440,000 Texas children. He pointed to a Families USA analysis which showed that the CHIP bill will reduce the number of uninsured kids in Texas by nearly a third.

The bill was passed overwhelmingly in the Senate. President Bush has said he will veto the measure.

Explaining his vote against the SCHIP expansion, Cornyn said there was a lot of misinformation and "downright demagoguery" going on in the media and elsewhere. He said the bill would have allowed families earning $80,000 a year the chance to enroll their children in CHIP.

"Every member of the United States Congress, and certainly this senator supports a continuation and reauthorization of SCHIP. It is a canard to suggest that anyone is for denying access to health care to the children," Cornyn said.

"But it is simply a Trojan horse to suggest that we are merely reauthorizing this legislation, because what is happening is we are seeing a dramatic expansion of federal spending, losing sight of the targeted population, and taking another incremental step towards a disastrous Washington-run health care system."

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, one of the authors of the SCHIP bill, disputed the claim that parents earning $80,000 a year would get coverage.

"If this bill became law tomorrow, how many families earning $80,000 a year would be eligible for CHIP? The answer is none. As they say in baseball: You can look it up," Grassley said.

Noriega said he looked forward to debating Cornyn on his votes on SCHIP, the border wall, and veterans' health care. He also said he would be returning to El Paso many times during the campaign. "Things are going really well here," Noriega said.

Meanwhile, Noriega's potential Democratic primary opponent, Mikal Watts, held a campaign fundraiser and pachanga Saturday at the home of Baldemar and Laura Gutierrez in Benavides.

Watts, a San Antonio-based attorney, said the event was part of his Listening Tour. He pointed out that Duval County has the highest turnout percentage (43.5 percent) in a Democratic primary of any county in Texas with over 9,000 registered voters.

Michele Angél
RioGrandeGuardian.com

By Richard Gonzales
Special to the Star-Telegram

In a church turned reception hall, state Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, told local Democrats last week that Fort Worth Rep. Lon Burnam is a prophet.

Burnam was the lone representative in 2005 to vote against electing Tom Craddick as speaker of the Texas House. In 2007, Burnam led another House dissent against Craddick, but this time he wasn't standing alone.

Perhaps Burnam is foretelling the future with his endorsement of Noriega to win the Democratic nomination for the 2008 U.S. Senate race. Noriega, citizen-solider, believes that Texans are as frustrated as other Americans with the Iraq war debacle and yearn for experienced leadership to end that conflict.

As battalion commander of an infantry unit in the Texas National Guard, he has led troops in Afghanistan and guarded the southern U.S. border.

Noriega said he's running partly because of his warrior ethos, which demands you leave no soldier behind.

"We have 160,000 brothers and sisters right now who I think are being misled by civilian leadership that has never walked the walk," he said.

Noriega claims that his experience at the front lines and the border gives him the expertise to formulate policy based on the realities of war and diplomacy. After five terms as state representative from District 145, he said he's ready to go to Washington to help fill the leadership void.

Science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein, in his book Starship Troopers, defined a citizen who served in the military as the only person qualified to assume political office. The willingness to risk and sacrifice your life for your country showed an extraordinary commitment to the nation's values.

On the other hand, as William Buckley once argued, Abraham Lincoln's lack of military experience (other than brief service in the Black Hawk War) didn't prevent him from acting as an able commander in chief of the Union forces during the Civil War.

Still, the citizen-soldier, like Noriega, has an unromantic, unsanitized understanding of war that tempers the zeal to shock and awe the enemy. As any grunt in Iraq will tell you, the mission is far from accomplished.

Turning his attention to immigration, Noriega claimed that Sen. John Cornyn was the administration's first lieutenant in supporting every policy introduced in the Senate except for comprehensive immigration reform. Instead, he said, Cornyn joined the ideological extreme and became an obstructionist.

Noriega said that obstructionists oppose reform because it offers them a punching-bag issue in the next election cycle. Doing nothing provides employers with an easily exploitable work force. The Noriega plan recognizes that this country will continue to need professional and manual immigrant labor as the baby boomers age. At the same time, he wishes to secure the borders with more law enforcement officers.

His five months serving along the U.S.-Mexico border taught him something valuable: "There are bad guys over there doing bad things," he said. Those "bad things" include human and drug trafficking.

Noriega recognizes that as long as the enormous economic difference exists between the United States and Mexico, the flow of undocumented immigrants will not end. He said that "people will continue to do risky things for $15 an hour."

He proposes foreign aid to Mexico that will help build its infrastructure. Mexicans building roads, schools hospitals and dams will give them the opportunity to work with dignity and will reduce the temptation to come to the United States.

"They may make $8 an hour, but they won't take the risk or leave their families to do something treacherous." he said. Noriega's comprehensive plan would address the supply-and-demand side of the immigration equation.

At the end of his remarks, he offered to take his Democratic audience on a run.

If Noriega wins the Democratic Senate nomination, the citizen-solider will certainly give the Republicans a run for their money.

But first we may need to consult with prophet Burnam to discern where Noriega will find the war chest required to run a statewide Senate race.

Richard J. Gonzales of Arlington is a freelance writer. Rgonz37034@aol.com

Source: Star-Telegram.com

Great story in the Fort Worth paper today about our campaign:  http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/224009.html