September 26, 2007

Challenger Enlists Help from Strategist
Who Helped Take GOP to Top in Texas

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

Norman Newton - one of the key architects of the Republican's rise to power in Texas - has been conspicuously missing from the Texas political landscape since giving up his job as a major GOP fundraiser two years ago. But the gravel-voiced consultant whose name became synonymous with the Associated Republicans of Texas is back in action on a mission aimed at taking back a congressional seat that the GOP lost in a special election late last year.

Newton has joined Quico Canseco's team in the bid by the San Antonio businessman and attorney for the Republican nomination in the race for the Congressional District 23 seat that stretches from San Antonio to El Paso. Democratic U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez won the post when he unseated Republican Henry Bonilla in a December special election that was needed to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court decision in a redistricting lawsuit. A panel of federal judges has shuffled the district's boundaries in the wake of the high court's ruling that Hispanic voting rights were being violated as a result of the way Republicans in Austin had drawn CD 23 to protect Bonilla.

Newton will be a member of Canseso's South Texas Leadership Committee in a role that will presumably involve raising funds and helping the campaign court Hispanic voters in a district where Republicans saw their percentage of the vote shrink from 62 percent in 2004 to 53 percent last year after the court-ordered changes were made. Newton has long been an advocate of GOP efforts to bring more Hispanic voters into the Republican fold.

After co-founding ART in the mid-1970s and signing on as the group's executive director at former U.S. Senator John Tower's request, Newton spent the next 30 years raising millions of dollars to help elect Republicans at the state, federal and local levels as Texas evolved into a two-party state. During that time, Newton offered strategic guidance to numerous Republicans he'd already helped elect and candidates that ART was backing with cash that he'd played a pivotal role in generating for the organization. When Newton started raising money for ART after the 1974 elections, Republicans held only three seats in the Texas Senate and 15 in the House. Tower, who'd been elected in a special election in 1961, was the GOP's only statewide official in the state until Bill Clements' initial election as governor in 1978.

Canseco, who faces Republican activist Jim McGrody in a GOP primary contest that others such as Bexar County Commissioner Lyle Larson have thought about entering, is hoping that the second time's a charm after losing his debut political race in a primary runoff for a congressional seat in a neighboring district in 2004. Canseco plans to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money - or more - on his bid for CD 23 in next year's election.

Canseco was elated by the addition of Newton to his campaign team - calling the longtime fundraiser and strategist the "Godfather of Republican politics in Texas." Canseco said Newton had compiled a winning record in political races that was "unparalleled and unmatched" in this state.

“For over 40 years, Norman Newton has been Mr. Republican in Texas," Canseco said. "Because of his hard work, his tenacious attitude, and his brilliant campaign strategy, we have watched him transform the Republican Party in Texas."

Whoever the GOP nominee may be, Republicans will have their work cut out for them in an attempt to reclaim the CD 23 seat from an incumbent whose special election victory capped off an improbable comeback less than nine months after he'd lost a Democratic primary rematch to U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar in a separate district. Rodriguez, a former state House member, held the CD 28 seat for eight years before Cuellar ousted him in a bitter primary fight in 2004.

After Rodriguez failed to even come close in the primary race against Cuellar last year, the prevailing sentiment from San Antonio to Austin to Washington was that his political career appeared to be dead before the Supreme Court decision provided an opportunity for a resurrection in CD 23.

Rodriguez pulled off an upset in the special election with a substantial infusion of funds from Democrats at the national level - and he'd raised more than $1 million for his re-election bid by the end of June - the most reported by any contender for Congress in Texas at that point in time. Rodriguez still had more than $500,000 in his campaign war chest at the midway point of 2007.