Courtesy of Daniel Mayer (CC-BY-SA)
Texas State Capitol
Yesterday, Texas Governor Rick Perry moved one step closer to re-election with his first-round victory over U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Over the past nine months, we witnessed a skillful campaign conducted by Perry and a surprisingly ineffectual campaign on the part of Hutchison, who at this time last year was widely considered to be the favorite to become the next governor of Texas. Perry’s ability to link Hutchison to the unpopular (among Republican primary voters) U.S. federal government and Washington D.C. political culture; Hutchison’s inability to convince a sufficient number of voters that Perry should be fired and replaced by her; and the failure of a large number of moderate Republican (“November Republicans”), independent, and Democratic voters to turn out to support Hutchison at the polls; all combined to seal the fate of her quest for the governorship.
Finally, the Republican Primary broke all spending records for a party primary in the state. When the final numbers are tallied later this month, the three Republican gubernatorial candidates will combined have spent between $45 and $50 million on their respective campaigns.
In the Democratic primary with more than three-quarters of the vote (76%), Bill White handily defeated Farouk Shami, whose error prone campaign resulted in Shami’s garnering a meager 13% of the vote despite spending what will in the end be close to $15 million. That is, when the final numbers are tallied, Shami will have spent approximately $150 for every vote he received.
Today marks the unofficial start of the general election campaign between Perry and White. Over the next eight months, we can expect the Perry camp to work to tie White to the national Democratic Party and President Barack Obama (neither very popular in Texas) and frame the November election as a choice between the current Republican/ Perry model of government in Texas and the Democratic/ Obama model of government in Washington D.C. To have a reasonable chance of victory, White will have to re-orient the focus of the gubernatorial campaign as well as to convince voters simultaneously that a White administration would be very distinct from the Obama administration and that Perry’s deficiencies (e.g., cronyism, poor performing public schools, limited social services) as governor are sufficiently severe so as to merit his replacement by White.
At present, and with plenty of time to go until November, one has to give the initial advantage in the gubernatorial race to Perry. Even after being the target of Hutchison’s numerous attack ads which have saturated the media throughout the state over the past two months, Perry retains the support of approximately 50% of the electorate.
White, of course, clearly has considerable room to grow, as he is not especially well known by many voters outside of the Houston metro region. He will also have the financial resources needed to mount a very credible state-wide campaign and represents the Democratic Party’s best hope of winning the governorship since then Governor Ann Richards lost to George W. Bush in 1994. Nonetheless, in addition to having to deal with Perry’s attempts to link him to the national Democratic Party and President Obama, White also will for the first time have to seriously defend some of the more controversial elements of his six-year tenure as mayor of Houston (e.g., Houston’s status as a “sanctuary city”, the city’s ticking pension time-bomb which White left for current Mayor Annise Parker) as well as of his activities in the private sector and Clinton administration.
Mark P. Jones is a Baker Institute Rice Scholar, as well as professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at Rice University.