Rick Perry vs World

13 December 2010

Matt Angle, head coach of Texas Democrats

Ross Ramsey writes a column for the TT/NYT on Republican dominance of Texas. Solid enough piece, given the audience. However, I confess to being confused by this:

And what are the Democrats doing in response to their epic failures at the state and local level? Nothing.

There's no equivalent to a head coach. Usually thats the highest-ranking elected official from the party, but the Democrats dont have one.

Power in the Texas Democratic Party is fairly concentrated in Matt Angle's hands. He controls the money, he recruits candidates, he endorses candidates, and most of the recent strategic plans for Texas Democrats have been his.

Democrats I've talked to think that Matt Angle is the head coach. I think the only reason they don't say so more often publically is precisely because of his position. Getting the head coach mad at you might reduce your playing time.

Posted by Evan @ 12/13/10 03:17 PM | Comments (1)

Cornyn talks 2012 Senate map

Senator Cornyn talked to RollCall:

In a 30-minute interview with Roll Call Thursday, the Texas Republican declined to predict the outcome of elections 23 months away. But he made clear only one result is acceptable heading into a cycle that has a favorable map for the GOP.

Cornyn said it would be a "disappointment" if Senate Republicans are still in the minority in 2013. "I think we've got very good opportunities for pickups in '12, and another reason I decided to stay on was I think we have an opportunity to turn the corner and get in the majority," he said.

I remember Cornyn admitting early last cycle that it was impossible for the GOP to capture a majority in 2010. Not only was that shown to be incorrect, but it's not the sort of thing that campaign committee chairs normally says.

In the same vein, it's a little unusual for the chairman to predict a majority. He's set the bar by which he will be judged, when the macro political conditions are what will largely determine whether the GOP takes the Senate.

Finally:

Cornyn's top five takeover targets are Democratic-held seats in Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio and Virginia.

What about Montana, which is a state McCain actually won, unlike Ohio and Virginia. Florida and Wisconsin, as well as Michigan, should also be pretty high on the radar.

Posted by Evan @ 12/13/10 02:58 PM | Comments (0)

Party-switching: GOP House supermajority reached

South Steps' post reminded me that I'd meant to post on Ritter's switch and Peña's* possible switch.

The 100 Republican mark is mostly psychological. Yes, 100 votes are needed for constitutional amendments and to tap the Rainy Day fund, but historically this hasn't been a big deal.

First, Ritter has confirmed that he is switching, giving the Texas House GOP 100 members. Why did he do it? Here's the Austin Chronicle's take:

[Ritter] also told KFDM news that in the last decade his district went "from a solid Democratic district to a solid Republican district."

Hmm. Time for some fact checking. In the last election:
1: Jefferson county returned two Democratic state reps, Ritter and his neighbor Joe Deshotel.
2: Jefferson voters broke 50.47% for Gov. Rick Perry, 48.15% for Bill White. So White actually performed better there than he did statewide, where he only got 42.28%.
3: According to the Jefferson County Clerk, there were more straight-ticket voting Democrats than Republicans.

The AusChron take is technically correct (there's a reason Ritter didn't even have an R opponent), yet totally misses the point: no one has a re-election district right now. What happened in Ritter's old district doesn't matter, because redistricting is going to happen before 2012.

I haven't delved into the maps too much at this point, but it is pretty clearly that Ritter had a good reason to switch. He's a white Democrat in an area that is less Democrat than it used to be and which isn't rapidly growing. Frankly, it's not quite clear that switching parties will be enough for Ritter to survive.

Current rumor is that House Republicans won't be able to draw a map that will be able to pass. With 99 Republicans in the House, it's pretty difficult to draw a map with 99 Republican districts to match those folks. Whether Texas House and Senate go to the LRB or they pass their own maps, there will be some difficult decisions to be made, so Ritter will be under a microscope. Still, switching parties at least gives him a chance at survival; his political career was almost definitely over if he didn't switch.

As for Peña, it's awfully hard to believe that he is planning on running for re-election if he switches parties. Surely he knows his area better than I, but it's highly unlikely that Texas House re-election is his motivation if he switches. Despite that, his switch would certainly be a coup for the Texas GOP, and he's seemed to be headed more that way over the past several months, not just since the election.

* Note to journalists: stop substituting Pena for Peña. Pena means something along the lines of pain, punishment or embarrassment. Peña can have several meanings, but usually it means something more like group of friends.

Posted by Evan @ 12/13/10 02:41 PM | Comments (0)

Daily Draft Marco Rubio reading

Over on Draft Marco Rubio, I have a post on why the news that Barack Obama will raise $1,000,000,000 for his re-election should point Republicans towards Marco Rubio.

Posted by Evan @ 12/13/10 01:23 PM | Comments (0)

11 December 2010

Mark McKinnon misses his own point

Mark McKinnon's column yesterday in the Daily Beast was about how Marco Rubio is a "lock" to be the VP pick for a Republican.

Look at all the boxes he would check:
• A Tea Party favorite
• And a young, fresh face
• With a solid conservative record
• From the critical state of Florida
• He has a compelling American story
• And a rationale greater than himself for running, and for governing
• He appeals to the base
• He appeals to younger (and older) voters
• And he attracts Hispanic voters

With a warm, easy, and uplifting rhetorical style, the 39-year-young conservative is this generation's John F. Kennedy, though from a decidedly different neighborhood. Born not of the privileges of wealth, but of the privilege of being "a citizen of the single greatest nation on earth," Rubio is the son of hardworking Cuban exiles. A father of four, he and his wife live in a working-class neighborhood just four blocks from where his parents lived.

It's a little difficult for me to understand how McKinnon can devote an entire column arguing that Rubio deserves to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, yet somehow misses the clear point: Marco Rubio should run for president.

Posted by Evan @ 12/11/10 02:33 PM | Comments (0)

Will Peña switch parties? Unlikely

Talk of Aaron Peña switching parties has been the talk of Austin all day, since Paul Burka put up and then took down a post speculating on the switch.

From the Rio Grande Guardian:

"I am out of state with my wife on a mini-vacation. With so many calls coming in, I cannot simply ignore the speculation any more. As a result of the devastation in the general election, where Texas Democrats lost their conservative and much of the moderate wing of their party, I responded to questions posed by the Rio Grande Guardian as to what the future holds for the party.

That article caused a lot of speculation and the Texas Tribune, in a podcast, and Texas Monthly's Paul Burka, in a blog, asked questions about my future. Although Paul took his post down soon afterwards, it opened up the floodgates and I have received over 50 calls, from Democrats and Republicans alike. Many of the Democrats are still thinking the party can be reformed and that perhaps, in a decade, we can be competitive again. Many of the calls from Republicans, including lawmakers, were that our community can still have a seat at the table now. Why wait a decade when you can have opportunities now? And so, after the large number of calls today and the growing speculation, I can say I am taking the matter under consideration and I will issue a public statement in the coming days, one way or the other. I am who I am and my intention is to represent my community and to give them the best possible advantage under the current environment."

I have no doubt as to the sincerity of Peña's statement, but I think that when he gets home and looks at these numbers, he'll be likely to end up staying a Democrat if he wants to run for re-election.

First, 2008 election results for HD40, the district Rep. Peña represents in Hidalgo County:

McCain 22.3%
Obama 76.9%

Cornyn 19.7%
Noriega 78.5%

Those look bad, right? Well, HD40 is split between CDs 15 and 28, and it's even worse there:

Congressional Rs 18.5%
Congressional Ds 79.9%

85% of that vote was in a district where the Republican candidate had a Spanish last name, and he underperformed Cornyn and McCain. This is a district with 88.5% Spanish last names.

Believe it or not, those numbers underestimate how difficult it would be to win this district as a Republican. But the current HD40 numbers are not so important when you consider that we are entering into a redistricting cycle. So let's look at Hidalgo County as a whole.

In 2008, Democrats won straight party voting in Hidalgo County by a margin of 61,896 to 20,201, or roughly 75% to 24%, out of 132,626 total ballots cast. However, by the time voters got to the State Rep races, there was quite a bit of dropoff, and the total State Rep undervotes was 24010. That means that only 108616 votes were cast in Hidalgo County State Rep races... so the straight party Democratic ticket voting alone was 57% of all state rep voting.

Now there is one big caveat to that: three of the four 2008 state rep races in Hidalgo were unopposed. However, even if we take an undervote number from the opposed race and extrapolate it out, then we find that straight ticket Democratic voting is 49.1% of the vote. Put another way, Democratic straight party ticket voting alone was over 98% of the vote necessary to win the election.

So if the Rep is thinking about running for re-election to the state house, it seems unlikely that he would switch.

Posted by Evan @ 12/11/10 12:53 AM | Comments (1)

08 December 2010

On KBH, re-election, and fundraising

Todd Gillman and Dave Michaels in today's DMN:

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has been coy about whether she'll retire or seek another term, will begin replenishing her war chest today at a $1,000-a-plate breakfast in Washington.

She could be gearing up for a 2012 re-election bid, or testing the waters to see how hard it would be to raise the millions needed after her drubbing in the March gubernatorial primary. She could simply be gathering the resources needed for routine political travel and staff, or intentionally sending an ambiguous signal, to avoid irrelevance in her last years in office.

As far as fundraising goes, this is about the least committed fundraising possible. In other words, this is the low-hanging fruit. A $1k breakfast is an easy way to pick up some money from lobbyists: she's still a senator, and one with seniority. She's not even asking for a maximum $2400, just $1k. So she gets to raise a reasonable amount of money from supporters, former staffers and lobbyists with a minimum of effort. So far, this is the only Kay Bailey Hutchison fundraising activity that I have heard of.

Every indication is that Senator Hutchison is exploring running for re-election, but not committed to it. She's flipped on a couple key issues -- earmarking and comprehensive immigration reform -- that are necessary to deprive potential rivals of hot button issues. Still, she knows that she will face a primary challenge and yet she hasn't started fundraising in earnest like she would have if she were 100% committed to running for re-election.

There's certainly plenty of sense to this strategy from KBH's perspective: tack right, work hard, and then check back in around June. Take a poll and see where she's at against her opponents -- and trust me, there will be opponents. What do major fundraisers and donors think? How's the overall political climate? See if any of their messages are resonating or will resonate with primary voters. Is Kay Bailout still remembered and toxic, or a thing of the past? Is Perry rumored to be inclined to work hard against her or mostly sit it out?

The downside is that this captures what lots of Republicans dislike about Hutchison: I'll resign my seat! No I won't! Yes I will but later! No I won't!

If I were to predict right now, I would think it's about 50/50 whether she decides to run again for re-election in 2012, but with a nudge on the scales that says she's more likely to retire rather than face a very uncertain result in the primary. Because that primary is likely to have multiple legitimate candidates from the right who can easily force her into a runoff and then beat her in a runoff.

Posted by Evan @ 12/08/10 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

Draft Marco Rubio

Announcing Marco Rubio vs World!

Ok, ok, that's not really the name. Actually I've spent my spare hours for the last couple days putting together Draft Marco Rubio.

Basically, the more I looked at the Republicans who were running, the more I thought that none of them looked like a winner. Lots of them would have trouble consolidating the Republican base (Huckabee, Romney, etc) or simply have too much baggage to be electable (Gingrich, Palin, etc). Some of them wouldn't be good presidents and some just don't strike anyone as a POTUS.

Marco Rubio has none of those problems. Not only is he likely to be able to raise the money for a run, but he's spent the last two years running against Obama. He doesn't need to search for a message or run a poll. He already has it because he's lived it.

The idea of Marco Rubio running for president seems to initially strike many people as a bit early..."but he was just elected to the Senate!" I had the same reaction when Matt Lewis suggested this last April that Rubio run for president in 2012.

The obvious counter-argument is that he's too inexperienced, and that running this soon might look overly ambitious. For this reason, Rubio's team wants nothing to do with this meme, but the experience factor has been utterly altered by the very man I'd like to see Rubio challenge in less than three years. Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton and John McCain after serving only a few years in the U.S. Senate -- most of which was spent running for president.

Barack Obama's performance as president has underwhelmed the expectations of pretty much the entire political spectrum. But it has nothing to do with age or years in elected office. It has to do with wisdom, competence, and ideology. That's where Obama fails, and where Rubio excels. And arguably Rubio's pre-presidential electoral experience exceeds Obama's anyway.

My hope is that people will watch a few of Rubio's videos (what I call Taking the Draft Marco Rubio Challenge) and then go check out the records and speeches of others running for POTUS. I think

Posted by Evan @ 12/08/10 01:36 PM | Comments (0)

06 December 2010

Require a TX Senate supermajority in the TX Constitution

To follow Friday's post in favor of term limits for Texas' governor, today I argue that the Texas Senate should require a supermajority, but put it in the constitution.

By tradition, the Texas Senate has required a 2/3 supermajority, but it's not a terribly firm tradition. Any session, the majority could decide to do away with the tradition, as they have done at various points in the past.

In my opinion, we should add a constitutional amendment that requires a 60% majority. That's the same as the US Senate (which also once required 2/3). With the current 31 seats, that would require 18.6 votes, or 19.

It seems to me that Republicans would be likely to favor this. Republicans don't trust Democrats not to do away with the supermajority tradition if Democrats ever regain control of the Senate. Moreover, Republicans occupy exactly 19 seats right now, so it's enough to pass bills that are unanimously popular among Republicans.

Democrats might oppose it simply because Republicans currently occupy 61% of seats. It means that Republicans will pass Voter ID -- although Republicans are almost definitely going to pass it anyway. On the other hand, it places a definite goal by which Democrats can regain negotiating power; all they have to do is pick up a single seat in the state Senate. That is a better deal than if Republicans simply decide to get rid of the blocker bill completely.

I like this solution because it firmly establishes a tradition that most favor. Whereas the current tradition doesn't seem likely to remain intact for too much longer, placing a supermajority provision in the Texas Constitution would place the tradition on a much more permanent foundation.

Posted by Evan @ 12/06/10 05:13 AM | Comments (0)