Jaworski's Campaign Officially Begins

He's been running hard already for quite some time, but today Joe Jaworski officially kicks off his Texas State Senate Campaign down in Galveston.

Jaworski's been busy lately. Last Friday he sent a letter to Governor Perry, calling on him to get something going on help for Texas families affected by Hurricane Rita, which you can read here, in PDF format, and some reporting on it by Matt Glazer here.

Earlier in the week, some information about an in-district poll done by Hamilton Campaigns came out and the 400 registered, likely voters had some responses that can only be described as encouraging. For instance, incumbent Senator Mike Jackson's re-elect is at 48%. 49% had no opinion about Senator Jackson. I think my favorite stat was this: "Jackson’s name identification is lower with self-identifying Republicans (43%) than with self-identifying Democrats (57%)."

I asked Jaworski for some rumination on his campaign's official launch, and he had this to say:

The Jaworski Campaign for Texas Senate is focused on bringing positive and honest change to our Legislature in Austin so Texas can remain the great State we all want her to be. Over the past year, voters all over the District and State have shared with me their concerns and best ideas, and with less than a month to go before I officially file for this seat, I am holding a kickoff party tonight in Galveston to celebrate what this campaign is about: service to the District in which my family lives. The good times party in Austin has gone on way too long, and the voters in Senate District 11 deserve a Senator who will never forget why he was sent to Austin – to serve the people in his District.

When you take the realities of the district, Jackson's vulnerability, Jaworski's campaign finance success, and you combine it with the kind of candidate he's shaping up to be, it is easy to get excited about Jaworski's campaign. He's pulling news coverage, he's picking up earned media, and he's got the attention of the TexRoots as well. We all know that real, legitimate campaigns begin long before the "official kickoff" but it is a moment worth marking — now the race begins in earnest.