CD-27 Runoff: Cloud Running Strong Campaign....

"And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart."
Galatians 6:9

In the race to succeed the disgraced Blake Farenthold, the Trib takes notice of Michael Cloud's surprisingly strong first round performance:

In December, U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold drew national attention when, in the middle of a sexual harassment scandal, he announced he was not running for another term. Yet the race to replace the Corpus Christi Republican has been one of the state's most under-the-radar contests.

That was, in part, because many have assumed Bech Bruun, the former Texas Water Board Commission chairman and most prominent candidate in the 6-way Republican primary, was a safe bet to take over the seat.

But last month, Bruun just narrowly placed first in the March 6 primary with 36 percent of the vote. Close behind him was former Victoria County GOP Chairman Michael Cloud at 34 percent.

That margin surprised more than a few political insiders in the state, who assumed Bruun, who has ties to the state's GOP leadership and has racked up a string of prominent endorsements, would either avoid a runoff entirely or come much closer than he did to drawing the majority support needed to do so.

But Cloud is putting up a tenacious fight that is leaving more than a few Texas political insiders less sure of who might win the GOP nomination in the May 22nd runoff.

....

Cloud, a current member of the State Republican Executive Committee, had been running for the seat since early October, two months before Farenthold announced his retirement. And Bruun said that while he decided to run after Hurricane Harvey hit the region in late August, he held off from announcing his run for Congress until December, when his time at the water board was winding down.

....

Cloud is running as "a constitutional conservative," with an emphasis on border security and scaling back the power of the federal government. And he argued in remarks in Port Lavaca in February that his early bid suggests an added layer of sincerity in his campaign.

"If you followed the race, we got involved back in October," he said. "The landscape was completely different, and then news happened that shifted the race. That news happened a week before the filing deadline."

He then implicitly criticized the other candidates who entered the race in that time period, including Bruun.

"We got in the race because I looked at what was happening in our nation, and I felt like we needed something to happen," he added. "And I felt like we needed to send people who had the courage, who had the conviction to stand up to a culture of corruption in Washington, D.C. So that's what got me into this race, that was the message from the beginning."

....

But Cloud had clearly built a following with his head start. He also has the endorsements of former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, one of the country’s most prominent libertarian-leaning politicians; David Barton, an influential evangelical activist and author; and the four Republican candidates who did not make the runoff.

Farenthold, the scandal-tarred incumbent, has not endorsed in the race and neither candidate appears to be pursuing his support.

Bottom Line:  On the one hand, you've got a personal friend of Ron Paul.  On the other hand, you've got a Todd Hunter crony who's a key player in Texas' corrupt water polices.  This decision isn't difficult.