Here's a graphic, via Awful Announcing, of where things stand in the Texas Republican Senate primary, which takes place today:
Besides the two main challengers to fill Kay Bailey Hutchison's seat – so-called "establishment" Republican David Dewhurst and tea party favorite Ted Cruz — there is another notable name on the right. That would be former ESPN college football analyst Craig James.
Public Policy Polling puts him at 3 percent in what has been a particularly embarrassing campaign thus far. He's trailing "Undecided" and barely beating "Other." James is viewed favorably by a solid 14 percent of those polled. Among non-tea partiers, he wins even less support — about 1 percent.
Things have gotten so bad for James that PPP is polling him against former Texas Tech head coach Mike Leach, with whom James had a highly publicized scuffle in 2009.
Some background: Adam James, Craig's son who played at Texas Tech under James, claimed among other things that Leach "put him in a pitch-black shed" after he was diagnosed with a concussion. Leach sued Texas Tech for wrongful termination after the school fired him. He also sued Craig James, ESPN and a Dallas PR firm, Spaeth Communications, that Craig James had hired. He blamed the controversy on Craig James' lobbying for more playing time for his son.
PPP's poll showed that James is up 2-to-1 on Leach — but that 57 percent are still unsure.
Oh boy. At least it's not as bad as this informal poll by the Dallas Morning News, in which Leach took more th 95 percent of the vote.
This exchange, with MSNBC's Chuck Todd recently, should give you a little inclination of how the campaign has been going.
On Wednesday, James told MSNBC's Chuck Todd: "We didn't hire a PR firm." But when Todd pressed the issue, noting that James had indeed hired Spaeth Communications, James acknowledged that he had. "There are PR firms for what I needed," he said. "We needed somebody who could represent us."
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