TX Senate: Days of unrest in Camp Noriega

Start with an unflattering Texas Monthly piece on the Noriega Campaign, mix in blog reaction from some of his strongest supporters which agrees, for the most part, with the following John Spong assessemnt:

Alas, what was whispered in those phone calls was a different c word: “chaos.” You had already been through three campaign managers and two chief fund-raisers. You were spending money hand over fist, but your fund-raising efforts had gone belly-up. Then I spent primary day with you, traveling to various Houston polling places, and saw a campaign stalled at the fork between viability and Radnofsky Land. Here we were in your hometown, your political base, and nobody knew where you were going or how to get there. Your driver got lost more than once. We almost ran out of gas. Your advance team sent you to shake voters’ hands over lunch at an empty soul-food kitchen. Your spokesperson trumpeted the early returns from “Bex”-ar County. Then, at your victory party, at a Houston Heights-area bar—in a development that was in no way your fault but sure seemed to carry poetic import—the cable went out, and no one could watch the election returns. The night’s biggest applause came not when you announced that you’d avoided a runoff, but when the TVs came back on.

And what you have is a candidacy that's hovering around the 37% range in the general unless they turn it around. In case you're not paying attention, that's Radnofsky v. Hutchison territory.

Now, I don't believe for a minute that Noriega is as bad a candidate as Radnofsky. He's certainly not perfect, and I have severe issues-based disagreements with he (and his supporters) but, as a candidate, he should be stronger than his is turning out to be.