AUSTIN – Texas Democrats, outgunned for 15 years, today began presenting their slate of statewide candidates amid renewed hopes – though they still face daunting odds.

Many long-suffering Democrats are pleased that Houston Mayor Bill White, who is expected to announce his bid for governor Friday, would put someone well-known and well-financed at the top of their ticket next year.

But while that would solve one of their problems from four years ago, the party hasn't won a statewide race since 1994 and is still struggling to offer other statewide candidates who could gin up some excitement – or at least help in certain areas or portions of the electorate.

As candidate filing for the March party primaries began, Houston lawyer Barbara Ann Radnofsky formally unveiled a bid to unseat two-term Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott. Also, Houston energy lawyer Jeff Weems filed for the Texas Railroad Commission seat now held by Republican Victor Carrillo.

Radnofsky, who lost in a landslide to Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison in the 2006 U.S. Senate race, quickly went on the offensive against Abbott, a highly popular figure in the state's reddest precincts.
She accused Abbott of ignoring evidence of sexual abuse of youthful offenders in Texas Youth Commission lockups and of using the power of his office to go after poor black and Hispanic voters in supposed prosecutions of vote fraud.

"The current attorney general turned his back" on chilling evidence of TYC cover-ups brought to him by a Texas Ranger in February 2006, Radnofsky said.

"That same month, the Texas attorney general went into East Texas unsolicited … and then maliciously … chose to target minority and elderly women who were in turn assisting the homebound [to] cast their mail-in ballots," she said. She called Abbott's move "abuse of discretion and a waste of a whole lot of money."

Abbott's campaign replied that Radnofsky's real beef is with a Democratic district attorney in West Texas who didn't prosecute the Ranger's findings of misconduct by TYC employees.

Abbott strategist Jason Johnson said it was Abbott who convened a grand jury and is prosecuting the cases. The GOP incumbent works hard to protect youth, he said.

"To date, the attorney general has arrested over 1,500 sexual predators," Johnson said. "So if the best that she can do is make false attacks that are not based in reality, it's a pretty good indication of why the Democrats are concerned that they don't have their A team on the field."

Johnson also defended Abbott's prosecution of 26 Democrats. In most cases, the voters were eligible and votes weren't changed, but the people who collected the ballots for mailing were prosecuted for failing to properly sign the mailing envelope.

"It's a red herring," Johnson said of Radnofsky's charge that Abbott acted for partisan political reasons. "The reality is the attorney general has and will continue to vigorously enforce the election law," Johnson said.

Weems, the Railroad Commission hopeful, said the three incumbents spend too much time raising money for their next campaign and "enforce rules unevenly" in regulating oil and gas producers.
He said the commission should closely monitor drilling by natural gas companies working North Texas' Barnett shale fields.

"You have to make sure that your drilling activities don't pollute the freshwater zones because Fort Worth and surrounding areas rely very heavily on the freshwater aquifers," Weems said.

The candidate filing period ends Jan. 4.