The Fort Worth Star-Telegram today proffers the following headline regarding the Lone Star Gubernatorial campaign:

Strayhorn, Perry lead money race

But now let us turn to the relevant excerpts.

(Rick) Perry, who has been (Texas) governor since December 2000 and is seeking his second full term, received $4.6 million during the past six months and has $11.5 million on hand, including money raised before the current reporting period. (Carole Keeton) Strayhorn, the state's comptroller and a prodigious fund-raiser, raised $2.4 million during the reporting period and has $8.1 million in her account.

Why on Earth does Madame Comptroller receive top headline billing in this piece? She has raised less of late and has less on hand than the man garnering second showing on the marquee. She is hailed as "a prodigious fund-raiser", yet Governor Perry doubled down and lapped her during the most recent reporting period.

And it is not as if her campaign to oust the man in the Mansion was just recently sprung on the public, and she therefore did not have full time and opportunity to wave around her fiscal prodigiousness. She has been running for Governor, incessantly, since November of 2003. Yet she has now fallen behind him on a 2-1 cash basis.

(Editor's Note: This ratio is more than a little ironic (with apologies to Alanis Morissette), as it is precisely how far from accurate Madame Comptroller has consistently been in the only endeavor for which her current gig calls, Texas governmental revenue estimation. If you live by the 2-1 miscalculation, you die thereby as well.)

And the campaign coin trend is surely going against her.

Most of Strayhorn's money came in while she was planning to challenge Perry in the March 7 (Republican) primary. She abandoned that plan Jan. 2 and restarted her candidacy as an independent.

Welcome, Madame Comptroller

One might think that she can now avail herself more fully of Democrat money as an Independent (as she already waded in to those fetid and festering waters long ago), but there are numerous other Burros at what in Texas is a very small Donkey trough, and the newcomer to the receptacle may find the already onced-over pickings a bit slim.

And the providers thereof may be more than slightly wary of the consistently inconsistent Madame Comptroller and withhold their more generous profferings.

Of course, both Republicans that have thus far contributed to her effort, and all the others that prodigiously populate the state, will from this point forward be directing their fiscal efforts elsewhere.

She is certainly "a prodigious" something, but this descriptive will most certainly harm, rather than help, her attempted political ascendancy.

But she receives primary mention in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

And so it goes ... .