Rick Perry vs. The World
08 February 2010
Beldar on White
Beldar, nom de plume of Houston lawyer Bill Dyer, analyzes the gubernatorial contest. Though I hope it won't surprise you, dear reader, that I prefer my own analysis, he does tell a better story than I do.
Although he's unconventional in many respects, Bill White is the most viable and attractive candidate the Dems have run for any state-wide Texas office in quite some time. I know Bill reasonably well: He was the editor in chief of the Texas Law Review in 1978-1979, one year ahead of the editorial board on which I served. A few years later when I was at Baker Botts, I was heavily recruited by him and his then-law partners at Susman Godfrey. I like him and I respect him. Bill is industrious and just wicked smart -- as smart as anyone I've ever met, period.
Thus, I’m one of many conservative and Republican Houstonians who happily voted for Bill for mayor twice. I wish him well in life. I’m grateful for the good he's done. Yet I will not vote for him for any state-wide or national office -- precisely because he is indeed a devoted member of the Democratic Party.
White was a cabinet undersecretary (Energy) in the Clinton Administration, and he's now running for a place on the political ticket (Dems) that hasn't won a contested race in a Texas state-wide election since the early 1990s. I believe he'd govern as a progressive Democrat at either a state or national level, in a way that Houston's local politics simply wouldn't have permitted him, or anyone, to do as mayor. And I just have no confidence that he would — or would even want to — stand up against the leaders of the national Democratic Party; I just can't see him defying the national party line on anything important.
I think this highlights Bill White's problem. If he wants to win, he's going to need to convince Texans that he's less than a standard issue nationl Democrat. It sounds like he's not convincing the folks that know him personally. Which, perhaps isn't too surprising if he's emphasizing to reporters how liberal he grew up.
Posted by Evan @ 02/08/10 02:04 PM | Comments (1)
Christy Hoppe writes up Sarah Palin's stumping for Perry in Cypress.
From a tactical perspective, would you rather have HW Bush's endorsement or Palin's?* Let's put it this way: I don't think HW is going to draw 8000 people.
* For the record, I think maybe the only photo I've ever taken with a politician was with HW in early 2000.
Posted by Evan @ 02/08/10 11:52 AM | Comments (0)
Kay's Super Bowl ad
I didn't see this during the game. If you watched the Super Bowl with other people, you probably didn't even notice the ad as it doesn't leap out and grab your attention...unless you are someone who watches the Super Bowl for the ads that is.
The concept was good, but I think it was pretty easy to miss some of the attacks on Perry. Until I watched it the second time for this post, I missed them. Even people who paid half-attention might have missed the whole concept. There were some Perry signs way off in the background, but I would've tried to make the concept crystal clear from the start.
Kay's team has now dropped some pretty significant portion of their media budget on two spots: the national championship game signs ad (with Go Horns addition) and now the Super Bowl ad. It seems to me that if you're going to do that, you should try to go for gamechanging spots. The concept for the national championship game ad had the potential to do that (though it obviously didn't), but this ad didn't.
I was going to comment that this is a philosophical difference between the campaigns: Rick's team generally microtargets, whereas Kay is willing to drop the big bucks for the mass marketing approach. I'd tend towards microtargeting, but then I realized it could be a strategical difference. If Kay's goal were to expand the primary electorate, then mass marketing could be more relevant.
Except that Kay hasn't really been running an expand the electorate campaign, has she?
PS. How much do you think they laughed about naming the characters in the ad after Rick's campaign team?
Posted by Evan @ 02/08/10 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
I was born in Texas.
I'm not ashamed to admit it. Apparently, that makes me a racist.
Posted by Evan @ 02/08/10 11:26 AM | Comments (0)
Shami vs White tonight
Farouk Shami and Bill White will have their only debate tonight at 7 pm in Fort Worth. You can watch them live on the interwebs.
Posted by Evan @ 02/08/10 08:26 AM | Comments (0)
Jay Cost Owns
Sometimes I think about commenting more on national politics. But then Jay Cost writes things like today's post and I remember that there is no analyst more cogent.
Posted by Evan @ 02/08/10 08:07 AM | Comments (0)
07 February 2010
White: Perry is going to beat Hutchison
Bill White is predicting publically that Perry will beat Hutchison.
Posted by Evan @ 02/07/10 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
05 February 2010
Friday ads
Kay Bailey on reducing abortion
This ad seems a month too late. At this point late in the race, she's trying to explain/obfuscate an issue like abortion?
Perry's camp says Hutchison's been taking lots of expensive first-class flights on the taxpayers' dime when she could've flown Southwest.
It was a pretty good spot. It seemed like all those newspaper clips were from 2000 though...and while I was watching this, I thought, "if voters were going to be convinced by this, wouldn't it have worked one of the first few times?"
Bill White
This ad is a million times better than Bill White's first ad, which has gotten worse everytime I think about it. Truthfully, I would've found some better pictures though.
Posted by Evan @ 02/05/10 04:36 PM | Comments (1)
04 February 2010
What are Bill White's chances?
In a commentary on one of my posts, the Rick vs Kay blog writes:
I think almost any Republican... even a yellow lab... could beat any Democrat for governor in Texas this year. Once Rick's peeps ran some ads against Bill White... and he is probably a richer target than even Kay... Bill White would also fall into the Chris Bell category...
Bill White is not Chris Bell. Chris Bell was a perennial candidate who got elected to Congress by cutting a backroom deal to endorse Lee Brown, but then lost his own re-election primary by 2-1. He failed to convince even the Democratic establishment that he had a chance, and thus couldn't raise any money.
Gubernatorial races are also distinctly less partisan than federal races. You're more likely to see Republicans wins in blue states (and vice-versa) for governor's mansions than for senate races. That's because federal races more often turn on hotbutton issues. "Socialization of healthcare"/"privatization of Social Security"/abortion on the federal level are significantly more polarizing than issues like education on the state level.
In other words, RvK's statement sounded overconfident to me. So I checked some election results. Specifically, I wanted to find gubernatorial elections where a party won the governor's mansion in 1) a hostile political environment in 2) a non-friendly state or a swing state. I chose 2002 and 1994 as good GOP years, and 2006 and 2008 as good Dem years.
Good GOP yearsThere were no defeats of incumbent governors on that list, except for 1994 in Alaska, which was due to a split in the GOP vote. And, by the way, if you were criticizing 2002 as an example of a strong GOP year, you're right: it wasn't that favorable to the GOP.
2002
Democrats picked up Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Tennessee. All were open seats.1994
Democrats picked up Alaska (3rd party candidate split GOP vote), held Nevada, Florida, Arkansas, Georgia, Nebraska, Colorado.Good Dem years
2008 = GOP holds Vermont, Indiana2006 = GOP holds California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota
I expected to find more examples of Republicans winning governorships in difficult states during difficult cycles for them. After all, Republicans held Mass for a long time...but it turns out that those races where Republicans won governorships in blue to purple states were not in very difficult climates. And likewise with Democrats, when they actually won difficult races in red to purple states, they were generally not in favorable climates for the GOP. 2002, for example, really wasn't a very favorable GOP environment, but still, the Democrats didn't actually defeat any incumbents in non-blue states. If you used 2004, the Democrats did pick up Montana, in an open seat election where the incumbent governor retired after having approval ratings in the 20s.
Why am I mentioning this?
First, a caveat: I think it's important to put too much importance into election results on specific questions like this. It's a very small sample size, and can thus be misleading.
However, even with the caveat, this data shouldn't be too surprising. It's hard to win elections in states where the partisan balance is against you, especially in a difficult political environment. Texas is still a red state. We haven't had a Democratic statewide officeholder in over a decade. California, by comparison's sake, has never had nearly the monolithic one party domination of its statewide officeholders that Texas has. Demographics are changing, of course, but Republicans still have a sizeable structural advantage.
It is possible that the political environment will turn less toxic for Democrats. And sometimes black swans occur that will change the president's approval ratings, eg. 9/11. It certainly can't get too much worse than losing Ted Kennedy's seat, and even with that, Rasmussen has White only 10 points behind.
All of this is not to say that Bill White doesn't have strengths; he does. He is what I'd term a corporatist; he likes big business, and as Mayor of Houston, he did whatever possible to try to win over the big business establishment. By and large, he succeeded. As a result, he will be well-funded. He's already proven he can raise money.
Bill White is also the kind of guy that the Texas media establishment loves to love. He's a Harvard, Texas Law guy who was a trial lawyer, worked for Bill Clinton and then started an oil company (which hasn't been successful) before being picked to run the holding company of a rich Lebanese family. He's successful, educated, and can project the moderate image that the establishment likes. The Houston Chronicle is a Bill White sycophant (leading Cory Crow -- not a Republican -- to memorably term the Chron "Mrs. White"). The Texas media isn't exactly in love with Rick Perry (assuming he wins); you can pretty much guarantee favorable coverage for White.
White's not a bad candidate. While not a first-tier challenger, he will run a smart race, being careful to put distance between himself and national Democrats. All told, I'd put White's chances of being governor in 2011 as about 18% right now. 1 in 6 ain't too bad, but that 18% chance is almost entirely due to the political environment improving for Democrats over the next 9 months.
Posted by Evan @ 02/04/10 03:52 PM | Comments (0)
Going back to the past: Coke Stevenson
LBJ biographer Robert Caro answering his critics in 1991 about why he painted Coke Stevenson in such glowing terms.
Posted by Evan @ 02/04/10 12:32 PM | Comments (0)
03 February 2010
Debra Medina 2010 = Ron Paul 2008
Why the calamity in the media? Medina is 2010's version of Ron Paul running for president. Yeah, she picks up the Ron Paul crowd plus the protest vote, but there's a ceiling on her candidacy. A large percent of Republicans aren't going to vote for a candidate who pledges not to support the Republican nominee.
A few weeks ago I believe I said I'd bet anyone that Medina be under 12% on election day. I still think that's a fairly safe bet.
Posted by Evan @ 02/03/10 05:25 PM | Comments (2)
New Rasmussen general election poll
A few minutes after I posted that Rick Perry is now the strongest general election candidate, Rasmussen has now released his own general election poll.
Perry 48
White 39
Other 5
Not Sure 3
Hutchison 49
White 36
Other 7
Not Sure 7
Medina 41
White 38
Other 6
Not Sure 16
Posted by Evan @ 02/03/10 10:05 AM | Comments (0)
Perry is a better election candidate than KBH
Perhaps this is already obvious, but I think I'll say it anyway: Rick Perry is now the most electable candidate in the Republican primary.
Kay Bailey Hutchison went into the primary as the stronger general election candidate, albeit with an asterisk that we needed to see some proof that her campaign skills hadn't atrophied since her last real race in 1993. Her advantages were clear: a long-time reputation as a moderate, the highest favorables of any Texas politician over a long period of time, and the backing of much of the state's big business and media establishment.
However, during the course of the campaign, Hutchison's favorables have declined. Further, she's muddied up her reputation as a moderate. Meanwhile, her media spots have been widely panned and her debate performances have been lackadaisical. And that's not even mentioning minor failures like her campaign announcement. It's no surprise that the last Rasmussen poll essentially had her running even with Perry against White.
No Message
After watching this primary season, I have zero confidence in KBH to put together a coherent message. She's literally been thinking about running for governor against Rick Perry for 9 years, yet she has no message. None. I don't get the impression that she thought about what she wanted to do as governor before running; if she has, she hasn't really given us any clue as to what exactly that would be. What would she focus on? I don't know. And if she does have a message, then she's failed at articulating it.
Instead, it seems like we're seeing a Kitchen Sink strategy: throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. While it's possible that she has simply failed strategically during the primary and can still put together a winning message in the general campaign, it seems significantly less likely.
History
KBH won her senate seat in a crazy multi-candidate special election; the runoff was against an appointed senator (appointed senators have a horrible record winning re-election) in what was becoming a red state at a favorable time for the GOP while Clinton was unpopular. After beating Ronnie Earle's indictment against her in 1994, she has faced nominal opposition only. [Full disclosure: I remember nothing about her race for treasurer two decades ago.] She's proven that she can use her approval ratings and fundraising to avoid opponents, but hasn't really proven (and especially not recently) that she can win a 1 on 1 competition against a non-token Democrat.
Have Perry's opponents been better? For sure, Chris Bell was an underwhelming candidate, who by his own admission would have been outperformed by a corpse. Even the 2006 general, however, was higher profile than any of KBH's opponents since the special election. While Tony Sanchez is largely panned by Texas Democrats now, he spent $70 million or so in 2002 trying to take Perry down and came up completely short. Meanwhile, Perry ran a solid race against John Sharp in 1998. He's had more meaningful opponents and has proven he can win in the general election.
In sum, I think Kay Bailey has already lost much of the advantages she would have brought to the general election. Going into the race, we knew she had a popular image, but outside of being a moderate, it wasn't a very defined image. Given that she hasn't run a competitive campaign in 15 years and that her primary campaign has been an absolute messaging and performance disaster, we have to have some skepticism about the current state of her campaign skills. I think most Dems still want to run against Perry, but I think they are about 6 months behind the times.
Posted by Evan @ 02/03/10 09:53 AM | Comments (0)
02 February 2010
Money totals, 30 days out
The 30 days before the election campaign finance reports are out.
Rick Perry
$735k raised
$1.9M spent
$10.5M cash on hand
Kay Bailey Hutchison
$270k raised
$3.4M spent
$10M cash on hand
Debra Medina
$146k raised
$108k spent
$68k cash on hand
The Dem reports are not yet available online, so I'll have to trust Matt Stiles:
Bill White
$755k raised
$209k spent
$6.4M cash on hand
Farouk Shami
$3k raised
$1M spent
$1M cash on hand
A few quick thoughts:
1. Hutchison dropped in the polls while spending $3.4M against Perry's $1.9M. Ouch.
2. Shami spent $1M after spending $3M up to this point. If he is going to spend $10M as he's promises, that means we've got at least $6 million in Shami ads coming in the next month.
3. White was the slight winner for the fundraising period.
4. I see it occasionally remarked that the GOP winner is hurt by a primary, and I've already written on the topic. However, I think it's slightly more likely that Bill White sustains any damage by having to spend for a primary. I just can't ever see Perry or KBH lacking for funds. I can see Bill White lacking for funds -- possible, though not very likely -- because he has to prove he has a chance at winning, assuming he wins the primary.
Posted by Evan @ 02/02/10 08:01 PM | Comments (1)
As if on cue, hours after I posted my criticism of Richard Murray's assessment of the Democratic primary, he again posted on the subject.
I'll probably offer some thoughts when I have more time, but I thought it was fair to note that he posted again.
Posted by Evan @ 02/02/10 07:39 PM | Comments (0)
Rasmussen: Perry lead at 15, runoff possible
2/1 Rasmussen poll, 538 likely primary voters
Perry 44
Hutchison 29
Medina 16
Not sure 11
Possibly the more important number would be the job approval number"
74% Approve (18% strongly)
25% Disapprove (9% strongly)
Edit:
For trend purposes, here are the 1/17 results, with numbers in parenthesis from the Nov poll.
Perry 43 (46)Perry had a 68% job approval in the 1/17 poll.
Hutchison 33 (35)
Medina 12 (4)
Undecided 11 (14)
Posted by Evan @ 02/02/10 04:12 PM | Comments (0)
01 February 2010
On the Democratic primary
I've been meaning to comment on ABC13 political analyst Richard Murray's "assessing Bill White's chances in the March Democratic Gubernatorial contest" for awhile. His conclusion that Bill White is likely to win seems reasonable. He provides 6 reasons:
1. White has name ID in Houston.
2. Other than White and Shami, the other 5 have no money.
3. White has only Shami to beat.
4. Self-funders frequently lose.
5. Bill White can raise money.
6. Bill White is good at campaigns.
If I were teaching a college class, and a student turned this analysis in, I'd give them a D+. Yes, it's pretty bad.
Of course Bill White is likely to win the Democratic nomination, but most importantly he is favored because he has the backing of the Democratic establishment. I can't think of a single endorsement Shami has gotten or is likely to get that brings votes. Bill White is the former chair of the Texas Democratic Party. He worked for Clinton. He's raised money for lots of Democrats currently in office, so it's not surprising that they will endorse him. Union leaders remember him as party chair, so they'll endorse him (I seem to recall Shami recently complaining that a union didn't even give him a chance to compete for their endorsement). Local Democratic county chairs will endorse White and tell their friends. And so on and so forth. All of this generally has a pretty significant effect in politics.
Now let's turn to Murray's stated reasons, since they do not provide much support to his conclusion. #1 is indisputable, but lacks context. How much of the Dem primary vote is the Houston metro region? Murray didn't tell us, but my back of the envelope calculation suggests that it is only about 20%. So, White starts out with a fairly small advantage in name ID. Yet I would guess that the CHI has a favorable name recognition as high as that, so if Shami can establish Farouk Shami = inventor of the Chi, he's probably not as far behind in name ID as it might seem. If my group of female friends is any example, there's a pretty dedicated fanbase for Shami's invention.
2 and 3 are self-evident. 5 is a truism, and 6 is Murray's opinion based on a sample size of...one competitive race. And that race was almost 7 years go against Orlando Sanchez and Sylvester Turner. Yes, both those candidates had already run for mayor once and lost; they were, it could be argued, re-tread candidates. Frankly, neither ran a good 2003 mayoral campaign -- Sanchez essentially mailed it in, but still made the runoff. And Sylvester Turner shocked me and failed to even make the runoff.
As to self-funders frequently losing, Murray states that "big personal spenders lose three times out of four on average." You see the problem with that right? If you said, "compared to what?" then you win. Yes, big personal spenders frequently lose, but if you compare them to non-big personal spending first time candidates, they have an amazing record at running for office.
Are many self-funders weak candidates? Yes. But more often, they are not backed by the establishment and thus lack tradiotional party support and name ID. To even hope to be competitive, they have to outspend the career politician. And, it appears that Shami will outspend White. Now there is a rapid decline in the marginal effectiveness of campaign spending once you get to a certain point, but in the end, Shami probably will have the name ID advantage.
As I finished writing this post, I read Karl-Thomas Musselman's commentary at BOR on Murray's post. It was significantly better, and is worth reading.
Murray goes on to speculate that Shami is a "stalking horse" for Perry, and that only by running a positive campaign will Shami show that he isn't a stalking horse.
But of course, Murray knows that if you are Shami, you are up against the establishment's pick. Shami must define Bill White, because he is up against the establishment. He's not going to win by running bio spots, he's going to have to go over the heads of the establishment and appeal directly to rank-and-file Democratic primary voters. In short, if Shami doesn't attack, he loses. If Shami doesn't define Bill White as an insider career politician...he loses. It's not rocket science.
And truly, this has been done before by a candidate who seemingly had less advantages than Shami has. Obviously, I'm thinking of Victor Morales in both 1996 and 2002. In 1996, schoolteacher and first time candidate Morales beat the Congressmen John Bryant and Jim Chapman to be the Dem's Senate nominee. And in 2002, Morales led Houston Congressman Ken Bentsen and Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk in the primary election before losing to Kirk in the runoff. And hey, even Gene Kelly managed to be the Dems' Sen nominee in 2000 and push Radnofsky into a runoff in 2006...without doing any campaigning, even as Radnofsky campaigned for a year and had the backing of the entire Democratic establishment.
In other words, very recent history suggests that the backing of the Democratic party establishment may not actually be very valuable, although it's important to note that the Dem-establishment backed gubernatorial candidates won in both 2006 and 2002 without runoffs. So the data suggests that the establishment is able to provide more support in gubernatorial primaries.
I have not seen any of Shami's ads, which seems to be the biggest factor. The fact that Bill White went up on the air today seems to indicate to me that he is worried about losing the primary. Otherwise I would assume that he would be more likely to conserve his money for the general election. I bet two things: that White has polling numbers that worry him, and that the original plan was not to go on the air on Feb 1.
Murray's post seems less like political analysis and more like Bill White cheerleading. And hey, cheerleading is ok, but let's not cheerlead under the guise of political analysis.
Posted by Evan @ 02/01/10 01:10 PM | Comments (1)
Bill White's first ads
Frankly, I wouldn't put Bill White in front of the camera for 25 of the 30 seconds of the ad, especially for the first one. And that facial expression on "we can't afford to stand still" is...strange.
Spanish version:
I thought his accent could use some work. It wasn't exactly the same ad, more a "I'm Bill White, I was born in San Antonio, my parents were teachers, education is the most important subject for our future, let's give our kids the schools they deserve." Actually, that's the script almost verbatim.
Hat tip to Phillip Martin.
Posted by Evan @ 02/01/10 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
The nativist wing of the Democratic Party?
I'm not sure it helps Democrats to have local party functionaries calling voters racists, even if done subtly.*An East Texas Democratic Party county chairman told gubernatorial candidate Farouk Shami in an e-mail that he is wasting his time running for governor because "nobody is going to vote for anyone named Farouk" in today’s post-9-11 political climate.
J. Larry Davis, chairman of the Anderson County Democratic Party, said he made the comments to Shami, a Palestinian-American who founded a billion-dollar hair care empire, as a realistic assessment of what he said are "redneck" attitudes in deep East Texas. He said there was "nothing racist at all" intended by the message.
Meanwhile, Shami has fired back** by saying:
I am more Texan than [Bill White] could ever be.Slampo's commentary on the issue made me laugh.
* Perhaps Mr. Davis was suggesting the idea that voters like to vote for someone like them -- I expressed a version of this idea when I mentioned my surprise that Shami's signs say Farouk and not Shami on them -- but the "voting for someone like me" that voters often have is made up of all factors. Name is only a part of that. Davis' comments seem unarticulate if we charitably assume that this is what he wanted to say.
** I'm not sure what the exact timing is, but Shami was surely trying to pre-empt the talk about his name.
Posted by Evan @ 02/01/10 11:26 AM | Comments (0)
It seems to me that one of the criticisms of Perry has been cronyism. He must not do it very well, since even the TTC builder has decided to support KBH.
Posted by Evan @ 02/01/10 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
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