Anyone Know Who Charles Culberson Backs?

Hey, it's not like every Republican doesn't run with the "I met Reagan once" thing (Photo by Richard Whittaker)

Texas may have dealt with that old problem of the dead voting, but it seems they're still endorsing. Yes, it seems that Gov. Ann Richards has come out in favor of Randi Shade.

A campaign flier from the Shade campaign (entitled "Vote Democratic! Vote Randi Shade for Austin City Council!") pulls a great big quote from a 2003 Austin Woman magazine in which the deceased governor praises her work in AmeriCorps back in the 1990s. Shade (who name-dropped the former governor a lot during her appearance on City Hall Hustle) doesn't mention she was appointed by Gov. Rick Perry to the Texas Commission for Volunteerism and Community Service in 2003, but you pick your governors, we suppose. Mind you, considering Kim (a former staffer to Sen. Judy Zaffirini, D-Laredo) has been endorsed by nine local Democrat groups to Shade's four (correction, five), that Vote Democratic thing in a supposedly non-partisan race may be a bit of a stretch.

Thin gruel for the Shade campaign, which seems to be hoping the Kim campaign pulls itself apart (and ignores Shade's own campaign finance "oversight.") Which comes back to a conundrum puzzling many pundits: Apart not being Kim (and attempting to convince people she's not Jason Meeker), do voters have a clear idea who Randi Shade is? This may be Kim's campaign to lose. But have there been enough self-inflicted (and/or campaign-staff inflicted) wounds for that to happen? And has Shade really done enough to make her the new choice? Or will Ken Weiss split the protest vote enough to force the widely-feared run-off?