The phone rang this past Thursday.

It was Tom Schieffer of Fort Worth, Democratic candidate for his party’s nomination for Texas governor.

He said, in effect, “I’m back.” Well, he had called to remind me that my column of July 12 was in error, when I expressed concern that he might not return to Amarillo after he made an earlier visit.

http://www.amarillo.com/stories/071209/opi_13913363.shtml

I laughed when he told me he was back in Amarillo. I then begged him for a moment while I “wipe the egg off my face.”

Schieffer was back in town for a fundraiser, which is what candidates do when they’re preparing for the big race. They never tell us how much money they raise. Democrats, of course, have a much steeper fundraising hill to climb (so to speak) in heavily Republican Amarillo than their GOP friends.

But I’ll stick with my notion that — as a rule — statewide Democratic candidates don’t spend much time, money or fuel campaigning in a region with so few payoff opportunities come Election Day. For that matter, statewide Republican candidates take this region for granted and, thus, don’t spend much time here, either.