For Adkisson, race could be his last, best shot

When you talk to local political watchers about Tommy Adkisson's bid to unseat Nelson Wolff as county judge, the term “suicide mission” comes up a fair bit.

Even Adkisson admirers, who point to the grass-roots loyalty the veteran county commissioner commands on the south and east sides of San Antonio, concede that an Adkisson win would be a shocking upset on par with the 1985 Villanova basketball team knocking off Patrick Ewing's Georgetown Hoyas.

To be sure, personal frustration played a role in Adkisson's bombshell move to take on an old friend and fellow Democrat. During the 2010 election cycle, Adkisson told the San Antonio Express-News that he was already looking ahead to 2014 and the possibility of succeeding Wolff.

“That would be the most natural thing, and likely,” he said.

Adkisson was not merely annoyed that Wolff decided to seek a fourth full term. He also became convinced that Wolff's plan included a scenario in which the county judge would come up with an excuse to step down sometime during his next term and set up his son, County Commissioner Kevin Wolff, as his successor.

Such notions, which Adkisson has aired publicly over the past couple of days, make him sound a tad paranoid and feed the perception that his decision to run was irrational.

But underlying all the emotion (and Adkisson is an emotional man who bursts into tears like Adrian Peterson bursts into an open field) is a cold political fact.

Adkisson surely understands that Latino voters dominate Bexar County Democratic primaries, and that dominance will only grow in the coming years. Anglo judicial candidates routinely talk about how difficult it is to win a local Democratic primary against a Latino opponent.

It's an issue that compelled former County Court-at-Law Judge Karen Crouch to switch to the GOP this year after two decades in the Democratic Party.

Over the past 12 years, Wolff has constructed a force field around the office of county judge, but as soon as he steps down, Democratic candidates will start bum-rushing the fortress. Bottom line: If Adkisson had waited four more years for Wolff to retire, he probably would have encountered opposition from a slate of young Latino contenders.

Anglo males are something of an endangered species in local Democratic politics. It might sound crass to say so, but facts are facts.

Adkisson surely recognizes that. So he took a calculated risk that he'd fare better in a one-on-one match between two Anglo graybeards than he would in a wide-open race four years from now.

If you throw out the ethnic component, it's similar to what Carlos Uresti did in 2006 when he challenged Frank Madla, an entrenched state senator from his own party. While other local Democrats patiently waited for the seat to open up, Uresti got the jump on them and knocked off Madla in the Democratic primary.

The odds (and the fundraising dollars) will be against Adkisson in 2014, but a rational argument can be made that this was his last, best shot.

The Novak factor

GOP state Senate candidate Mike Novak lost his old Commissioners Court seat to Adkisson in 1998, and Novak's current campaign is an intriguing subplot in the Wolff-Adkisson saga.

Novak's campaign to knock off freshman Sen. Donna Campbell — and outpace fellow challenger Elisa Chan — rests on his ability to appeal to moderate San Antonians, and that means pulling some local Democrats over to the Republican primary.

Unfortunately for him, Wolff will need those same voters to stay home for the Democratic primary because he's facing an in-house challenge from Adkisson.

Of course, these things can cut both ways, and when I spoke Monday to local GOP godfather Jim Lunz, he argued that Wolff might be the one who gets hurt because some independent-minded moderates — who would ordinarily be inclined to support Wolff — will be lured by Novak to the Republican primary.

Either way, these two races are joined at the hip.

ggarcia@express-news.net