Kay's finance chair hopes Kay can make a runoff...

Patrick Oxford... Pat Oxford... a big Giuliani guy... a big Bush pioneer... is Kay's chief fundraiser... and his comments are pretty amazing (link). Excerpt follows...

Rising, falling

A series of public polls this week have shown Hutchison's campaign in trouble. Three showed Hutchison with less than 30 percent support, and two had Medina within eight percentage points of her.

On Monday, a local survey in Collin County, the fifth most Republican county in the state, found Medina and Hutchison tied with 22 percent support each.

Houston lawyer Patrick Oxford, one of the statewide coordinators for Hutchison's campaign acknowledged she is having problems.

“We're behind,” he said. “There's a huge D.C. headwind that Kay is fighting.”

Oxford said he does not believe Medina can get more than 20 percent of the vote, but, “it's great to be the protest candidate when protest is in the air.”

Hutchison's mission at this point, Oxford said, is to keep Perry from winning outright March 2 and prepare for a runoff: “Hit the second with momentum and go from there.”

I think it is pretty obvious that Kay was in trouble before Debra Medina's melt down, but Kay is still in trouble since most polls show that Medina's second choice candidate is by a large margin Rick and not Kay. Rick is honing in on 50%. Kay before this Medina stuff blew up was just hoping to get ahead of Medina and miraculously pull something off in the run off...

Let me just boldly say right now. There will not be a run off. Rick has got this thing wrapped up assuming he doesn't self destruct...