Politico: Texas seat within Dems reach

by Former Rep. Martin Frost

I received an e-mail from one of my law partners in Denver recently asking me about Houston Mayor Bill White, who was in town raising money. Basically, my partner wanted to know who White is and why he is running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat in a reliably Republican state for a vacancy that did not yet exist.

The answer is that White may be the next Fred Smith, the founder of the revolutionary package shipping company FedEx, who correctly saw opportunity when no one else did. White started running a year ago for a vacancy that would occur if Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison finally acted on her off-again, on-again desire to run for governor of Texas in 2010, and if she decided to resign her seat early in order to seek the Republican nomination against incumbent Gov. Rick Perry.

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