http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-p...rses-dewhurst/
AUSTIN — Former state Sen. Mike Richards, who has worked closely with both Republican candidates for lieutenant governor, endorsed David Dewhurst over Dan Patrick on Monday, giving a boost to a campaign struggling to catch up before the May 27 runoff.
Richards, who served in the 1980s in the same Houston-area Senate seat that Patrick now holds, did not provide much of an explanation for his choice.
“For 12 years, I was in the radio business with Dan Patrick. I was also privileged to serve for five years as an advisory board member of Falcon Seaboard, David Dewhurst’s company. No one in Texas knows these two men up close and personal as I do. That’s why Cynthia and I unequivocally support David Dewhurst for re-election,” he said in a statement.
Reached by cell phone, Richards reiterated that, “I was in business with both men, I watched how they did business, I watched how they treated people, and I’m in a position that no one else in Texas is in, to make a judgment between the two men.”
He called Dewhurst “brilliant, analytical, thorough, dispassionate, has enormous intellectual capacity, just an awesome office-holder.”
Richards has long been an ally of Dewhurst, and even stood in for him during a debate against Ted Cruz for the U.S. Senate in 2012. He represented the Senate’s seventh district for just one, redistricting-shortened term, between 1981 and 1983. Patrick has held the seat since 2006.
Patrick received 41 percent of the vote in the four-candidate March primary, while Dewhurst got 28 percent.
