If you haven’t been following closely, let me set the stage briefly for you on this year’s Republican Primary for governor of Texas. You’ve got incumbent Rick Perry seeing re-election to a third full term (as lieutenant governor when then-Gov. George W. Bush was elected President, Perry ascended to the post in 2000 and was elected in his own right in 2002 and 2006).

In a very unusual challenge, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a sitting senator from the same party, is taking on Perry. Hutchison’s campaign has never quite seemed to be able to get over the hump, and in may be in part because she’s splitting the anti-Perry sentiment with a little-known third candidate named Debra Medina.

Medina is where things get really interesting. She’s a tea party candidate who has shown herself to be favorably disposed toward 9/11 Truthers and Obama Birthers. And now we learn that she’s making an appearance this weekend in San Antonio with the leading lights of a group of state nullificationists called the “Oath Keepers.” Real fringe stuff.

But for all her associations with the fringe, media in polling around 20 percent and is with striking distance of Hutchison for second place. Worth keeping an eye on this one.

David Kurtz

David Kurtz is Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Talking Points Memo where he oversees the news operations of TPM and its sister sites.