In the three-way Democratic race to challenge Republican Morgan Meyer, investment banker Shawn Terry has out-raised his opponents since he announced his candidacy last July.
Since then, he has grown that advantage, out-raising Joanna Cattanach in the money race by more than 2-1 and Tom Ervin by more than 5-1. That has allowed Terry to sell himself as the more viable candidate who can raise the kind of cash necessary to beat Meyer, a three-term incumbent, in House District 108, which includes the Park Cities, Uptown, and parts of downtown and Old East Dallas.
But as the race heads into the final weeks before Election Day on March 3, the other two candidates in the race are saying it’s not all about money and turning up the heat on Terry.
Ervin’s most recent mailer emphasized the need to “get big money out of politics and stand up for progressive ideas.” He said that’s what he’s been doing through face-to-face conversations and phone calls throughout his campaign — though he said the mailer was not a shot at Terry. (Incidentally, his mailers are made of recycled paper and soy ink in an effort to “live out” the campaign’s values)
“If we think this is about money, we’re going to lose all the time,” he said. “We need to focus on the right amount of money and the people we want to represent.”
Cattanach, who was the Democratic candidate in 2018 and lost by only about 200 votes, said the infrastructure she laid out during her last campaign is paying dividends. When she block walks the district, she said, people remember her face.
“They know me when I walk up to the door, they yell at me and say ‘Hey, Joanna,’” she said.
She’s using the data from her last campaign to fine-tune this year’s approach. Last week, she said, her campaign knocked on more than 9,000 doors.
She’s also made smart decisions about how to use her money, Cattanach said, investing in digital ads that highlight her last campaign and bill her as the “healthcare champion," promising to lower prescription drug costs, protect people with preexisting conditions and expand Medicaid.
“We invested in telling a story to people that I’m a Democrat they can trust,” she said.
On the flip side, her campaign has also spent money to emphasize Terry’s Republican past to voters. In a recent mailer, her campaign posed the question “Can we trust him?” and highlighted Terry’s 1998 run for Congress as a Republican. In that race, Terry received an A rating from the National Rifle Association and voiced support for private school vouchers and a constitutional ban on abortion.
Terry said he now supports background checks on every gun purchase, gun safety research, gun storage and safety requirements, and red flag laws that would take weapons out of the hands of persons deemed a danger to themselves or others.
“She’s using a rating from 22 years ago because she’s running a campaign based on distortion,” he said. “I guess I must be the front-runner because she’s attacking me. She needs to distort the record about me because running on her own record is a losing effort."
For his part, Terry has sent out his own mailer. In 2014, his daughter, Alex, was at the University of California, Santa Barbara when a gunman fatally shot three women outside her sorority house. Terry said he became active in gun violence prevention after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in 2012, but the shooting at his daughter’s sorority pushed him to jump into the political arena.
Featuring a picture of his daughter, the mailer reads: “I can’t believe Joanna Cattanach would stoop so low as to question my dad’s sincerity on reducing gun violence. He will do everything he can to stop the NRA and strengthen our gun laws.”
Cattanach said her mailer asked a legitimate question.
“I’m distorting no record, we’re simply asking the question," she said. “I’m confused as to where the attacks are.”
She added that Terry’s campaign has sent multiple mailers about her. One mailer read: “Don’t believe Joanna Cattanach’s attacks.”
“Seems to me, I’m the one being attacked here,” she said. “I’m a proud Democrat, I have been my entire life. There’s a clear choice, and I’m the Democrat voters can trust.”
But Terry, who said he sent the mailers to defend himself, said the last election proved that Democrats in the district need something different.
“Beto [O’Rourke] won the district by 12,000 votes,” he said. "She lost a race she should have won, and that’s why people want a different nominee.”
Cattanach said Terry was misrepresenting how difficult the race was two years ago and accused him of trying to “short circuit” an election now that it has become more competitive. The Democrats didn’t field a candidate in the district in 2016, and the 2014 candidate, Leigh Bailey, was beaten by 20 percentage points.
“The notion that this should have been flipped gets lost in the facts. No one faced a 20-point district," she said. “Coming in when it’s seemingly easy doesn’t earn you a lot of respect. You have to earn that at some point. You can’t just buy it.”
Still, Terry said he has more crossover appeal to voters as a fifth-generation Texan from a working-class family who started a successful business.
“I bridge that diversity. [House District] 108 has working class people as well as doctors and CEOs, and I think I can speak more effectively to them than anyone else in the race."
Cattanach said she also can win over Republicans and work with them in the Legislature. She grew up in Blum where her dad was a welder and a horse trader. Because of that, she understand rural issues like the importance of public education and the dire need for medical facilities in those areas.
“We proved in the last campaign that there is a lot of crossover appeal,” she said. “It’s a little dangerous to say a progressive can’t win.”
“I’m gonna win,” Cattanach said.
