MORITZ: Newcomer in governor race wants to bring 'Joy' despite grim outlook for Democrats
AUSTIN — Going up against perhaps the nation’s best-known Texas Democrat in the March primary for governor, former broadcast journalist Joy Diaz made scant mention of Beto O’Rourke.
Instead, the 45-year-old political novice presented herself as something of a latter-day “happy warrior,” even incorporating her first name into a campaign slogan in what she hopes will be a matchup against two-term Republican Greg Abbott next year: “Texas Needs Joy.”
Whether Diaz proves to be the “joy” Texas might be starved for remains to be seen.
But three months before the primaries and 11 months before November 2022, polling suggests the coming campaign could be anything but blissful for whichever Democrat leads the Texas ticket. The same day Diaz announced, a Quinnipiac University Texas Poll showed Abbott trouncing O’Rourke, the odds-on-favorite for the nomination. And Democratic President Joe Biden remains a millstone around his party’s neck, especially in red states like Texas, heading into the midterms.
Unlike O'Rourke, who in the 2018 race for U.S. Senate gave the best statewide performance of any Texas Democrat in nearly a generation, Diaz enters this year's race for governor largely unknown politically, except as a former reporter for Texas Standard, the public affairs show produced by the Austin public radio station KUT, which airs on stations in 32 cities across the state.
She left that job last month.
Diaz's name began circulating as a potential candidate in an almost subterranean fashion earlier in autumn among some Democratic operatives while O'Rourke was still playing peek-a-boo about whether he would challenge Abbott next year.
But after O'Rourke ended the suspense Nov. 15 and made formal his plans to run, such national news outlets as USA TODAY, The Washington Post and The New York Times featured prominent stories on their websites. Much of the Texas Democratic establishment rallied to his cause. Even state party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa, who holds a post that traditionally stays neutral in the primaries, rushed out a statement calling O'Rourke a "champion of hardworking Texans" and praised his skills as a charismatic campaigner.
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If Diaz was disappointed that her announcement Wednesday at the popular Austin beer hall, Sholz Garten, generated far less buzz, she didn't let on. Her fight, she said, was not with O'Rourke but with Abbott. And she made no effort to draw a contrast between herself and her follow Democrat.
Instead, she echoed many of the themes O'Rourke has already staked out: The state's electric grid remains vulnerable to severe weather and Abbott has not aggressively addressed it, the governor's response to COVID-19 has been inadequate and he has played political football on the twin issues of immigration and border security.
Diaz will likely also find herself in a deep hole when it comes to all-important campaign cash. O'Rourke raised $2 million from 20,000 individual donors within 24 hours of entering the race. In his 2018 U.S. Senate race, O'Rourke collected upward of $85 million.
But Diaz could be positioned to exploit a potential Achilles heel O'Rourke has among Democrats. In the 2018 primary, O'Rourke cruised as he won more than 60% of the statewide vote. But in the heavily Hispanic counties along the border, his margin over another candidate with almost no political experience, Sema Hernandez, was tantalizingly close.
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Many pundits said Hernandez's last name gave her a boost in places like Brownsville, McAllen and Laredo. Diaz's last name could be similarly advantageous this cycle.
So perhaps it's no coincidence that Diaz said her first trip as an official candidate would be in Laredo. It appears she wants to start out bringing "Joy" to South Texas.
John C. Moritz covers Texas government and politics for the USA Today Network in Austin. Contact him at jmoritz@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @JohnnieMo.
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Newcomer Joy Diaz faces uphill road in Democratic primary for governor
