To this Lone Star Democrat, George W. Bush is no Texan

AURORA, Colo. -- Boyd Richie is one Texan who'll be delighted when a certain Texan from Crawford is no longer living in the White House.

He also wants to set the record straight about George W. Bush.

"He's not really a Texan," Richie said. "This is a guy who has passed himself off as a Texan. He thought it would be good for his career to buy a ranch and cut some brush. That has not been good for Texas."

Richie, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, and other Democrats from the Lone Star State threw a lot of verbal jabs at the Bush administration during a breakfast meeting on Monday, the opening day of the party's national convention in Denver.

Texas has the third-largest delegation at the convention, behind California and New York. The state brought 193 delegates to Denver, but when alternate delegates, family members and other guests are included, the Texas delegation numbers more than 240.

The group will spend the week listening to lots of political speeches and doing lots of schmoozing with other Democrats from across the country. The highlight will come Thursday night, when Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to accept a major party's nomination for president.

"This is history in the making," said Richie's wife, Betty Richie, a party activist and member of the Democratic National Committee.

The main attractions at the Texas delegation's breakfast meeting on Monday were two politicians who had been on Obama's short list of vice presidential contenders.

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, were eventually passed over for the vice presidential slot in favor of Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.

"We didn't make it all the way because Barack Obama chose the best candidate of all," Edwards said.

Obama faces an uphill battle against Republican John McCain in Texas, but national Democrats shouldn't write off the state just yet, Boyd Richie said.

The hard-fought primary between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton generated a lot of excitement in Texas and resulted in a large turnout at the polls.

Now, the Obama campaign "has got an opportunity to really put Texas in play if they will take advantage of it," Richie said.

To be competitive, however, "they've got to have Obama in Texas," Richie said. "At the very least they've got to have Joe Biden."

"Texas can be in play," he said, "but it is up to them to achieve that."

(E-mail Michael Collins at collinsm(at)shns.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)