A lot of rumors have been floating around that Chris Bell changed the night of his speech to the state convention because of a.) a possible floor fight over the candidacy of the new state party chair and b.) to disenfranchise rural and distant delegates. The Agonist did a little reporting on this today and yesterday and here's what we found out. (I do live in San Antonio, Texas you know.)

First off, there are some Gammage dead-enders who just won't let go. They began the whisper campaign against Mr. Bell, implying he wants to disenfranchise rural and distant Texas delegates by moving up the speech to Friday. A party insider informed me that "Chris's speech will be on Friday because that's when the state party has asked him to speak." Adding, "Friday night is traditionally the night where the gubernatorial nominee speaks."

I want to make something clear, I have nothing against Bob Gammage personally. He's an honorable man. I do have a problem with many of his supporters who hide behind anonymous names and damn near slander myself and other Bell supporters. Sore losers, if you ask me.

The timing of the speech is more about tuning the Democratic party to the media and the media cycle than any Gammage dead-enders conspiracies of disenfrachising rural delegates. Again, our insider tells us, "Better to have an entire news cycle to ourselves than to get one column inch at the bottom of an article about the presidential hopefuls that will be the big draw on Saturday."

That would seem rather self-evident, yes?

When I contacted the Bell campaign their response was a simple, "That's when the Texas Democratic Party asked Chris to speak, and he was happy to agree to their request."