A political shootout in a south Texas district

Personal politics
Dan Wright, Cuellar’s campaign manager, downplays the support Rodriguez has received from Capitol Hill Democrats, noting that Rodriguez has strong personal ties with many of them after serving eight years in Congress. Wright also argues that Cuellar won’t receive any backlash for his ties to Bush, arguing that the president -- even in this Democratic district -- is still popular in Texas. Indeed, Bush beat John Kerry in this district, 53-47 percent.

And experts doubt that Cuellar’s vote in favor of the CAFTA accord will haunt him, since he represents Laredo, a major border city that sees billions in trade cross between the United States and Mexico. “He doesn’t represent Detroit. He represents a border city,” explained Larry Hufford, a political science professor at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. “The CAFTA vote isn’t going to hurt him as much as it would in Ohio or Pennsylvania.”

Hufford adds that Cuellar’s biggest advantage is that Laredo residents enjoy having one of their own serving as their congressman. “Politics in South Texas is personal,” he said. “It has little to do with your political philosophy.”

But allegations of betrayal and party disloyalty aren’t the only parts to this story that anger Cuellar’s critics. After election night two years ago, Rodriguez actually held a slim 145-vote lead. But Cuellar demanded a recount, which produced an astonishing result: 177 new votes were found in Cuellar’s home county, and all 177 of them went to Cuellar, eventually giving him an advantage over Rodriguez after a recount.

That caused some observers to recall past instances of voting irregularities in South Texas. “It did just smell like Ballot [Box] 13 in the LBJ race,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, referring to the infamous box of additional votes that appeared in a South Texas county, helping Lyndon Johnson win his Senate seat in 1948.

Rodriguez filed a lawsuit, but after a second recount and a state appeals court ruling in July, Cuellar was declared the winner by 58 votes.

The Morales factor
This time, analysts don’t expect the Cuellar-Rodriguez race to be as close, due to Cuellar’s fundraising advantage, the federal money he’s brought back to the district, and the expectation that -- as the incumbent -- he’ll dominate in his hometown of Laredo and improve his standing in San Antonio, Rodriguez’s hometown. “It is funny that people are commenting that this is a competitive race,” said Wright, Cuellar’s campaign manager. “It is nowhere near competitive.”

Another thing that could help Cuellar is the third candidate in this Democratic primary: Victor Morales, the Texas schoolteacher who ran against former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm in 1996 by traveling throughout the state in his white pickup truck. Hufford, of St. Mary’s University, doesn’t expect Morales to be much of a factor in this race, though he says he could draw some anti-Cuellar votes away from Rodriguez.

But Rodriguez says he’s unfazed by all of this, and he believes Cuellar’s conservative voting record will more than compensate for any of the disadvantages he faces. “This is about his record. If he had the right record, it would have made it difficult for me, and I might have reconsidered [running].”

And had he done that, he would have deprived us of the first contentious race of 2006.

Mark Murray covers politics for NBC News.

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