The Midday Brief: Jan. 30, 2012

Your afternoon reading:

• "Newt Gingrich is making the case that Romney can’t get a majority at the convention, his small circle of advisers are already eyeing favorable states in March and April, and those close to the former back-bench bomb thrower are testifying to his legendary perseverance. … Gingrich’s campaign is pointing to a group of Southern and Southwestern states with contests in March and April in which it thinks it will take at least a plurality of delegates: Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas." — Newt Gingrich's long march, Politico

• "Looking more closely at the numbers, more than 60 percent of Texans age 50 and over opposed the idea of Rick Perry running for re-election. So did more than half of college graduates, 75 percent of those with education beyond college and 59 percent of those earning more than $100,000 annually. 'Your likeliest voters don't want him to run — the educated, the older, the richer,' said Micheline Blum, who directed the poll. 'There isn't any group that wants him, really, to run.'" — Perry re-election? He'd like you to think so, San Antonio Express-News

• "The state's premier labor group endorsed Paul Sadler for U.S. Senate on Sunday. The biennial convention of the Texas AFL-CIO Committee on Public Education put its weight behind Sadler, a Democrat, as the best choice to succeed retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican. The labor federation and its regional councils represent about 220,000 union members. Democrats haven't won statewide in Texas since 1994." — Texas AFL-CIO endorses Sadler for U.S. Senate, The Dallas Morning News
  

• "Democrats have three top candidates to choose from in the primary race for the U.S. Senate, but their ultimate choice will probably say more about the party's future in Texas than who goes to Washington next year." — Democratic hopefuls reflect on the party in Texas, The Associated Press

• "Texas Gov. Rick Perry will speak during the Conservative Political Action Conference next month in Washington, D.C., the American Conservative Union announced today." — Perry to address CPAC conference, Austin American-Statesman

New in The Texas Tribune:

• "Every Texas Democrat who has run for statewide office in the last 18 years has been defeated. Every Democrat on the ballot this year hopes to bust that slump. And it may be hard to believe today, but Republicans in Texas have suffered a longer drought than what Democrats are currently facing." — Democrats Wait for the Political Winds to Change

• "Providing legal status to the illegal immigrants in the Houston area could mean $1.4 billion a year in revenue for government agencies, a business group says. But others say its report doesn’t factor in costs of services for the group." — A Divide on the Payoff of Legalizing Immigrants