The Craddick Phone Bank

Combing through a Texas news cycle in which the politics coverage is dominated by the Race for Speaker, I discovered some hilarity in the Austin American-Statesman: Tom Craddick is going grassroots, and having a big old phonebank for some GOTV action.

House allies of challenged House Speaker Tom Craddick today committed to making a blitz of telephone calls to legislators to head off defections and assure his re-election as speaker when the legislative session begins Jan. 9.
...Legislators agreed to telephone 83 colleagues already pledged to Craddick to ensure that none have strayed to GOP challengers McCall or Jim Pitts of Waxahachie, Chisum said.

Aside from jokes about buying pizza for volunteers, I think a story like this showing up in the paper is a mark of desperation. I don't know that I've ever seen a story about the act of rounding up votes being a coordinated event, heralded ahead of time a if some other House members may not have heard about it yet and will show up of their own accord.

If Craddick were entirely confident of his victory, he wouldn't be engaging in antics like this, or at least not publicly. I certainly understand the concept of counting votes, and people round up team players to make calls all the time, but this is just weird.