COMMENTARY: W. GARDNER SELBY

Selby: Plan to bring Netroots to Austin hatched over Chicago pizza

Five Austinites touted River City's virtues online

Austin-philes can guess why the nation's liberal bloggers decided to hold their third annual conference in the state capital.

Start with refreshing Barton Springs. Add smoked barbecue. Toss in Scholz Garten, Las Manitas and the Broken Spoke.

But the essential reason Netroots Nation 2008 leaped to Austin lies with a few politicos who attended last year's Netroots 'dig (then called YearlyKos) in Chicago.

In one of that city's famous pizza joints, the Texas travelers — former Austin state Rep. Glen Maxey, groundbreaking political blogger Karl-Thomas Musselman and veteran door-to-door activists Mark McCulloch and Fran Vincent — agreed that Austin could host the left-leaning do in superior fashion.

They also hoped this year's confab might elevate the U.S. Senate candidacy of Democratic state Rep. Rick Noriega of Houston. The challenger to Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, has leaned on online fundraising.

They then created a Web site making a case for Texas, featuring an opener invoking late Democrats such as longtime U.S. House Speaker Sam Rayburn and former Gov. Ann Richards — with text posted next to a photo of the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue on Lady Bird Lake.

"You may have an image in your mind of us that has something to do with horses, oil wells and cactus," their pitch said. "We have a different image of ourselves — a lot of folks working really hard to come out from under the aberration that turned our blue state temporarily red."

That "aberration," of course, refers to Republicans holding every statewide office since early 1999, majorities in the Texas House and Senate since 2003, and a majority in the congressional delegation since 2005.

At the state level, many Democrats feel like they've been reeling for a long time. And liberals know they're in for a struggle before things turn their way; it's almost always been like that.

Despite that reality, die-hards have poured themselves into encouraging people to run for office, partly through participation in grass-roots groups such as Democracy for Texas.

Journalist Marla Camp, formerly on Democracy for Texas' steering committee with Maxey, Musselman, McCulloch and Vincent, said they pursued the Netroots convention with confidence partly because the Texas group drew 1,000 people from across the country to Austin for DemocracyFest 2005.

"We already had a reputation," Camp said.

In their Netroots pitch, they promised to provide one volunteer for every 5,000 bats under the Ann Richards Congress Avenue Bridge.

Surprisingly, the national chiefs of Netroots hadn't been wooed via a Web site before.

Significantly, too, the Austin pitch landed just as the Netroots crew realized that initial hopes of holding the '08 meeting in New Orleans wouldn't gel. The hotel offering a contract lacked sufficient space for every blogger to pile into a room at the same time, said Nolan Treadway, director of logistics for Netroots.

Treadway said the Texans' Web site made it clear that Austin was primed for laptop luggers. The proposal boasted: "We're wired, linked, and networked — the most wired community in the nation."

Noting that the Austin Convention Center provides a Wi-Fi signal, Treadway said: "Things like that made us feel like our bloggers would be welcome."

Seems that only one obstacle stymied the Austinites who courted Netroots.

Their Chicago pizza crust was too thick.

"I don't think any of us were prepared for that," Vincent said. "It was pretty obvious most of us weren't going to make it through more than one slice."

Still, an inspiring pie.

wgselby@statesman.com; 445-3644