May 17, 2007

Canseco Hires Help and Hits Air Waves
with Debut Radio Spot in CD 23 Battle

With potential primary competitors still on the fence or on hold, San Antonio businessman Francisco "Quico" Canseco has shifted to a higher gear with a new campaign manager and his first radio spot in a bid as a Republican for the congressional seat that Democratic U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez won in a special election late last year.

Canseco, who plans to make a formal announcement on Monday, has hired Kyle Whatley to oversee the campaign's day-to-day business while veteran GOP consultant Todd Smith serves as an outside advisor. Whatley has been the executive director of the Home and Landowners Association of Texas.

Canseco, a former Laredo resident, is already on the air waves in South Texas with a 60-second radio commercial that's designed to introduce him to voters and to tout his conservative values while explaining why he's running for Congress. The radio ad was produced by the Strategy Group for Media.

Canseco said that GOP officials and members of the Texas delegation had stressed in meetings with him during a recent trip to Washington D.C. that the race for Congressional District 23 would be a top priority in 2008 for both Republicans and Democrats.

Bexar County Commissioner Lyle Larson has been weighing a bid for the Republican nomination in CD 23, which was represented by the GOP's Henry Bonilla of San Antonio before Rodriguez ousted him with substantial help from the national Democratic Party in December. Another potential Republican candidate, James McGrody of San Antonio, had planned to run for the seat as well before suspending his campaign indefinitely in deference to Larson.

The district, which stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, had been altered by a federal panel after the U.S. Supreme Court declared that Hispanic voting rights had been diluted by the way it had been redrawn by the Texas Legislature in 2003. But while Rodriguez beat Bonilla in a comeback bid two years after losing a seat that he held in another district, Republicans fared better at the top of the ticket in CD 23 than they had before it was realigned as a result of the high court's ruling in a lawsuit that Democrats had filed.

Canseco came up short in a Republican primary runoff in 2004 for the seat that Rodriguez used to represent before U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo knocked him off in the Democratic primary that same year. Canseo, who's also a lawyer, has vowed to spend a substantial amount of his own money on the bid for CD 23 in 2008.