I listened to his speech from the 2012 Texas Dem Convention and he's a decent speaker. Certainly he was chosen to connect the the Latino/hispanic communities, but he is seen as a rising star in Texas.
I would think that associating yourself with the national Democratic party by being their keynote speaker would pretty quickly quash any rising star in Texas.
States can shift very far and very fast. Just look at Arkansas and West Virginia, states that Democratic nominees for President could not win without... until 2008.
Could it be that the Republican Party is getting stale and corrupt in Texas? Texas isn't Mississippi where people will vote for a crook or bungler of their own ethnicity rather than vote for an effective reformer who does not look like the voter.
I speak of the political long term. In electoral politics 1976, the last year in which Texas voted for a Democratic nominee for President and in which California and Illinois both voted for a Republican in a non-blowout election, might as well be ancient history.
