Rick Perry vs World

07 June 2012

Bill King brings the silly

I read with distaste Bill King's Houston Chronicle editorial this morning suggesting that we change the primary system. Among other silliness in his opinion, "fixing the primary system" is a misguided focus and furthermore is rife with opportunities to really screw up our elections.

Like, oh, say California screwed it up. Less than 5 minutes later, I read this in Roll Call:

Rep. Gary Miller (R) not only survived his jungle primary in the totally new, Democratic-leaning 31st district, the endangered lawmaker also finished first and is set to face Republican state Sen. Bob Dutton in the November general election. Redlands Mayor Pete Aguilar (D), the favorite to advance in the top-two primary, finished about 1,000 votes short of underdog Dutton after three other Democrats swallowed up a quarter of the vote.

Recap: the district has a Democrat majority. Yet the general election will contain two Republicans. Only California could come up with such a genius nominating system!

This new nominating system was designed by California Democrats to produce more centrist nominees. How did that work out?

the new nominating system...was sold to voters in 2010 as a way to ensure that more moderate candidates could win and that those who chose not to affiliate with either party would have a greater chance to win, Los Angeles Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman said.

But after an early look at state legislative and Congressional elections across the state, Bauman said it's likely that not one unaffiliated candidate advanced to the Nov. 6 general election. And it's unlikely independent voters' first chance to participate in California primaries in 14 years led to higher turnout.

We shouldn't just run around changing the rules of the election because they didn't produce the nominees that Bill King would have picked.

RELATED: Cory Crow's take is worth a read.

Posted by Evan @ 06/07/12 03:16 PM | Comments (0)

Four county DFW #txsen results

If you haven't seen the Texas Tribune's map of how Texas voted in the #txsen primary, it's a great way to visualize the data. Incidentally, I'd argue that a map of election day vote will have the highest prediction value for the runoff. It'd even be interesting to which counties swung the most to Cruz between the early voting period and election day.

Let's look at results from runoff battleground DFW. Cruz led the region, followed fairly closely by Dewhurst. In 3rd place in all the big DFW counties was Leppert -- a bad harbinger for another statewide office, and perhaps not even a good sign for another more regional office.

Dallas County
Dewhurst 24,801
Cruz 23,368
Leppert 23,201

Leppert didn't even get 2nd place in his own county where people saw him in action as mayor. That doesn't hold well for any future run.

Tarrant County (Fort Worth)
Cruz 30,499
Dewhurst 29,151
Leppert 21,814

Leppert got the endorsement of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. It didn't matter much. Still in 3rd place.

Collin (Dallas suburbs/Plano)
Cruz 16,578
Dewhurst 14,331
Leppert 12,640

Collin County would be almost as much home territory as Dallas or Leppert. He still got 3rd.

Denton (DFW suburbs on FW side)

Cruz 12,464
Dewhurst 11,271
Leppert 9,575

Posted by Evan @ 06/07/12 02:47 PM | Comments (0)

05 June 2012

Dewhurst "booed lustily" at Republican state convention

Last night in conversation someone mentioned the Republican state convention. Wait...didn't David Dewhurst get booed at the convention a few years ago?

Yes, Dewhurst did get booed in 2008.

Dewhurst was booed lustily later in the speech when he proposed putting Texans' fingerprints on drivers' licenses. It was the first time in at least eight years that an elected Republican was booed so loudly at a state convention.

It's interesting that Dewhurst proposed putting fingerprints on IDs to the state convention. Did he think he was going to get a good reception with that?

Interestingly, Ross Ramsey from Texas Weekly/Texas Tribune captured the same boos, but noted that Dewhurst got cheered for denouncing one of Rick Perry's signature proposals.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst brought out the boo-birds with a line about Real ID and Texas Driver Licenses with fingerprints on them (and got a standing O with a line blasting the aforementioned TTC).

Posted by Evan @ 06/05/12 04:00 PM | Comments (0)

Tom Leppert post-mortem

Here's my post-mortem on Tom Leppert's campaign. It's from about 5 weeks before the election.

Posted by Evan @ 06/05/12 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

01 June 2012

Ted Cruz taxes

Paid archive.

Posted by Evan @ 06/01/12 11:38 AM | Comments (0)

31 May 2012

What will Rick Perry do?

What will Rick Perry do? Now that Cruz surprised lots of people by surviving millions of dollars in attack ads, will Rick Perry double down on his Dewhurst endorsement or cut loose?

The smart move politically would probably be for him to cut his losses and just ignore the runoff. Perfunctory mentions of Dewhurst, and only made when pinned down by reporters.

Does Perry really want to double down for David Dewhurst? I can think of a few good reasons why not:

1. Risk of losing -- if Dewhurst loses (a 50 chance?), I bet some major donors would feel like Perry isn't so unbeatable. Some potential candidates might be tempted to dip a toe in the water and see if they can raise donor commitments.
2. Anger his base -- look at the folks supporting Cruz. They were mostly the people backing Perry when Kay challenged him in 2010. How far does he want to push his luck? If he gets a serious primary from someone more conservative than Kay, people will remember if he goes all out for Dewhurst. Perry has largely avoided angering conservatives so far in his tenure, but there will be anger if Perry goes all out.
3. Dewhurst's racial attacks -- are those ads really the sort of thing Perry wants to be associated with? It was ugly, slimy, dishonest...and it backfired.
4. Does he really like Dewhurst? As I noted before, I've heard of a few people who have heard unflattering anecdotes over the years from Perry about Dewhurst.

And if Dewhurst wins, does Perry really get any credit? Not really, because Dewhurst's millions will be credited. At best a few major donors are kept happy.

Despite those reasons, if I were a betting man, I'd guess that Perry will probably put more effort into the Dewhurst effort in the runoff. It will be a fascinating angle to keep an eye on.

Posted by Evan @ 05/31/12 03:10 PM | Comments (0)

30 May 2012

Prescience?

Lawrence Person over at BattleSwarm tipped me off to a Texas Tribune opinion piece from a year and a half ago which basically predicted the entire Texas Senate race up til now.
< /wry sense of humor >

Posted by Evan @ 05/30/12 02:34 PM | Comments (0)

David Dewhurst v Ted Cruz -- runoff!

David Dewhurst versus Ted Cruz is headed for a runoff. July 31st is 9 weeks away.

Think of last night like a poll. Except that last night was really two separate polls -- both released last night, but from different time periods. In the old poll, Dewhurst was comfortably ahead with an 18% margin. In the new poll, Cruz is just barely 3% behind. The pollster was...the State of Texas.

Which poll best reflects the likely runoff electorate?
Easy call -- give me the most recent poll! It's clear that a massive 15 point swing took place over a very short time frame. If there's no compelling reason to think that the old one is more likely to reflect the future, then you go with the more recent one.

It's pretty unlikely that the early voting better represents the runoff electorate, because that would imply that Dewhurst's supporters are more enthusiastic which is contrary to all evidence.

Here's a few angles for the next 9 weeks to consider:

Turnout
The electorate will look different on a geographical bais. I haven't looked yet at all the legislative races that are going to runoffs, but it looks like the congressional races in 14, 25 and 36 are going to a runoff, as well as SD25. Some areas will turn out more than others. And yes, it's going to be hot in late July. People will be on vacation before school starts. It favors those who really want to vote for their candidate.

Enthusiasm gap
Ted Cruz has a movement of passionate supporters. David Dewhurst has a contingent of (mostly non-Texan) staffers.

David Dewhurst still hasn't given people a reason to vote for him, and as a result has very little energy among his supporters. The Dewhurst campaign spent all their time trying to tear Ted Cruz down. They threw the kitchen sink -- guilt by co-worker association, racial attacks, and Chinese xenophobia. It didn't work, and appeared to work increasingly less as the election went on given the Cruz election day surge.

Dewhurst's support is still dangerously soft. Voters don't identify him with a wing of the party. They don't identify him with any issue. He's been at 90+% name ID throughout the entire campaign and yet never cracked about 50% in any reputable poll. That's a serious sign of danger.

What's the message?

Negative -- Dewhurst already scraped the very bottom of the barrel by resorting to the 11th hour racial attacks that backfired on him. Dewhurst managed to get the media to fixate on a nothing attack for weeks. It was flawlessly executed, with just one basic problem: there wasn't much there there. Although the Texas media is inclined to favorably cover Dewhurst, at some point the press corps will stop covering the rehashing of personal attacks that lack substance.

Positive -- to date, we've heard more about Dewhurst's father fighting in WWII than we have about why he thinks he should be our next Senator. Maybe Dewhurst's campaign can find a positive message.

DFW -- the battleground?

Do Tom Leppert's voters go to Dewhurst because he's the moderate candidate? Or do they break against quasi-incumbent Dewhurst, having already rejected the Dew the first time? I'd say neither -- Tom Leppert was fundamentally a regional candidate. He registered in single digits outside of the Dallas/Fort Worth metro region. Inside of DFW metro, he was never defined by any campaign. He was a relatively popular local mayor who spent mostly on DFW TV and who was favorably covered by the DFW media.

I don't know if Leppert will endorse (I rather doubt it would matter anyway). Though Leppert campaigned as a conservative like Cruz, his moderate record is more in line with Dewhurst. However, Dewhurst's attacks might have killed Leppert's political future, so Leppert might not be terribly inclined towards him.

Cruz beat Dewhurst by 5% in the vote rich Dallas suburbs of Collin County and won by 3% in the DFW suburbs of Denton County. Cruz also won by 2% in Tarrant County (Fort Worth) while losing by 2% in Dallas County. For whatever that's worth, I wouldn't so quickly assume that Leppert's voters will fall to either Cruz or Dewhurst...assuming they even turn out to vote. It's up for grabs.

Money
Dewhurst still has a vast personal fortune that he can draw on, and vast resources afford the potential to make mistakes. The Dewhurst campaign hasn't found a winning message so far. They've been hiding from voters and hoping scorched earth attack ads will win due to voter inattention. They didn't. But when you have tens of millions to throw around, you can afford to make some mistakes. It remains to be seen how much Dewhurst will spend, but I imagine we are likely to see Dewhurst equal the $15 million that he already spent pre-runoff.

Which will prevail?
Cruz has the message, the energy and the momentum, but Dewhurst has the money and the establishment. Going into a late July Texas runoff, I'd rather have the message and momentum every time. Advantage: Cruz.

Texas went a long time without a serious Republican primary, and even Rick vs Kay disappointed. Dewhurst vs Cruz won't disappoint. It's game time.

Posted by Evan @ 05/30/12 01:01 PM | Comments (0)

Early vote versus election day 2012 Republican Texas Senate primary

Early Voting
David Dewhurst 48%
Ted Cruz 30%

Election Day
David Dewhurst 41%
Ted Cruz 38%

David Dewhurst won the early voting by almost 18%. Then he barely won the election day voting by 3%. Every single one of the 7 other candidates on the ballot basically stayed the same. Put more succinctly, David Dewhurst lost over 7% in the final days of the election...and it all went to Ted Cruz.

So what happened?
First of all, Ted Cruz had a good closing stream of endorsements that solidified his claim to be the conservative in the race. Second, David Dewhurst closed with his racial attacks (or dog whistle, if you will). They were universally condemned as false and bigoted.

David Dewhurst failed in his imitation of Al Sharpton racial politics. Dewhurst shouldn't have stooped so low as to try to play on some nebulous race-baiting prejudice that he incorrectly thinks Texans hold.

Right now, Ted Cruz is surging with a massive 15% swing that occurred over just a few days. Grab some popcorn, folks, because this is going to be a fun runoff to watch.

Posted by Evan @ 05/30/12 02:52 AM | Comments (0)

28 May 2012

2012 Texas Senate primary prediction

I had to go on the record about 10 days ago when I got asked for my prediction. My response then was, "David Dewhurst won't break 45%." In the days that followed, the TT, BOR, and PPP polls came out. I didn't see anything that changed my mind much.

The big X factor is how people react to David Dewhurst's Al Sharpton-style race-baiting, and the subsequent newspaper coverage. Dewhurst was long-rumored to be contemplating the race card, and play the race card he did. We're in ugly and uncharted territory. And Dewhurst is spending twice as much on a weekly basis as KBH and Perry did in 2010.

So here we go:

Dewhurst 45%
Cruz 33%
Leppert 18%
Everyone else 4%

Posted by Evan @ 05/28/12 03:26 PM | Comments (1)

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