Rick Perry vs World

05 October 2010

Mobile phone on the drive home links.

1. Omar Gallaga writes social media for the Statesman.

Perry and White both use smart phones to keep followers updated via Twitter and Facebook (White has an iPhone, Perry a BlackBerry). Their staffs tote equipment to send videos, photos, status updates, e-mails and blog posts from the road.

If I were betting, I'd say that Blackberry users are probably more Republican while iPhones are more likely Dems. Some of that probably has to do with youth, but I bet it is true even controlled for age. Might be wrong though.

2. Peggy Fikac picked up RickvsKay's post to argue that looks have nothing to do with Perry erasing the gender gap. I'm...not going to touch this one.

3. In case you missed it in the primary season, Rick Perry really doesn't care if he doesn't receive a single newspaper editorial board endorsement.

4. Bill White's latest ad:

Thought this was one of White's better ads. I was surprised at the explicit mention of hurricane profiteering.

5. Peggy Fikac looks at transportation funding options.

Posted by Evan @ 10/05/10 05:27 PM | Comments (4)

04 October 2010

Latest polls, latest campaign finance reports...

...both favorable for Rick Perry.

30 days out campaign finance reports are in:

Rick Perry
Money raised: $8.3M
Cash on hand: $10M

Bill White
Money raised: $4.7M
Cash on hand: $2.8M

We'll get one more report in 3 weeks.

That is definitely not a plus for Bill White. But the relative advantage in cash on hand for the final ad blitz may mask some of White's strength. A good portion of Bill White's support has come from Steve Mostyn, who has been spending millions on 3rd party ads, some from through Back to Basics PAC and some through the DGA*.

Meanwhile, the WFAA-Belo Texas Poll has Rick Perry breaking the all-important 50% mark.

9/27-10/2, poll by David Iannelli
704 likely voters, +/- 3.7% sample error, out of a 1000 RV sample

Rick Perry 50
Bill White 36

Texas Right direction or not?
52% Right Direction
36% Not

Favorable/Unfavorable
Rick Perry
56% favorable
37% unfav

Bill White
46% fav
32% unfav

14 points seems a bit high. But when you're about to spend $10M on ads in a month that say Bill White supports ObamaCare (and 65-70% of people are against it), it's probably a nice thing to see.

* Just for the record, while the linked-to post contains conjecture, per OpenSecrets it is also a fact that Mr. Mostyn has contributed at least $400k to the DGA. I would prefer to not be threatened and subpoenad by a trial lawyer like Steve Mostyn did to Texas Watchdog not too long ago. Ah, our legal system!

Posted by Evan @ 10/04/10 11:52 PM | Comments (0)

Gallup's generic ballot

Gallup released their generic ballot today:

46-43 among registered voters
53-40 in a high turnout election
56-38 in a low turnout election

W and Rove got tons of flack for taking a partisan tone into their first mid-term election in 2002, but Obama is doing exactly the same thing. Independents are disillusioned with his performance, and there is no communications plan in the world that can turn that around in a month. He has no choice but to permanently ditch the post-partisan message, roll up his sleeves and play partisan pitbull.

When you get into a month before election, partisan kneejerk emotions do startkicking in. It even happened in 2006, when some late nationwide polls showed a relative resurgence in Republican fervor...right before Republicans got crushed.

As for Texas, if you don't think this is going to trickle down into the Texas House races, then you are quite the gambler.

Posted by Evan @ 10/04/10 06:33 PM | Comments (0)

LATimes takes the bait

Last week I wrote:

So is the DGA targeting Perry? Maybe...but likely not because there are much smarter places for the DGA to spend its money (FL, CA, OH, MA, PA, IL, MD, etc off the top of my head). It is much more likely that an uber-rich political donor is using the DGA to temporarily conceal the source of the money. That way, the media won't report who is funding the attacks, just that the DGA is spending money. Not only does it more or less conceal the source of the funds, but it leads political reporters who aren't paying attention (what's up WaPo?) to write about how the DGA is targeting the campaign, thus creating the illusion that DGA thinks the race is winnable.

Today, the LATimes writes:

Last week, the Democratic Governors Assn. sent a strong message that it thinks the race remains prime for an upset, paying for a television ad that attacks Perry as an out-of-touch career politician. The group -- also targeting races in California and Florida -- has contributed $2 million directly to the White campaign, more than it has ever given for a Texas gubernatorial race.

White is "by far the strongest candidate [in Texas] that we've had in decades," said Nathan Daschle, the association's executive director.

It's sad when thwarting disclosure has the side-benefit of misleading journalists.

Posted by Evan @ 10/04/10 06:27 PM | Comments (0)

Lots of folks searching for Bill White and Rick Perry

If google hits are anything, voters are really starting to search for Bill White and Rick Perry starting the last few days. The trend is up over last week, and way up over last month.

That's all from me for a few hours, I'm finalizing my Wharton MBA application.

Posted by Evan @ 10/04/10 11:52 AM | Comments (0)

01 October 2010

Start of October weekend links

1. Am I really defending the DGA here? I guess I am. Politipinion has rated the DGA's anti-Perry attack ads as "pants on fire." Really? For what?

You think injecting 11- and 12-year-old girls with a controversial drug, without a parent's consent, is a good idea. You think it's right to use a government takeover of Texas homes and property so foreign companies can get rich. You spend taxpayer money on a fancy mansion while Texas faces an $18 billion deficit. On the issues, 25 years as a politician has changed Rick Perry, for the worse.

To be honest, the problem with the DGA's ad is more that it is lame and unlikely to be terribly effective than that it is false. I would probably rate it more like half-true. My understanding is that there was a parental opt-out to the vaccine executive order. As for the rest, it might be highly exaggerated and xenophobic, but eminent domain is essentially a government takeover. Perry is spending taxdollars on a fancy mansion: I'm happy that he is, because it'd be really embarrassing if Perry pulled a Huckabee and lived in a trailer, but it isn't false.

If I were a liberal trial lawyer bankrolling the DGA ad, I'd be annoyed that my millions were being used for a lame ad, not that it was ridiculously untruthful.

2. Dallas Voice talks to Annise Parker with a heavy focus on gay issues. Not terribly surprising for a gay community newspaper, I suppose.

Parker came out in high school. In college she founded Rice University's first LGBT group and began her political career as president of the Houston Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.

During each campaign, the GLBT Political Caucus and her partner, Kathy Hubbard, have always been included in her literature.

"That way I owned it," she said. "Kathy describes our relationship as not being out of the closet but being out on the front lawn," she said.

...

With the November election approaching, Parker said she is remaining officially neutral in the state's races.

"To represent my city I have to get along with everyone," she said.

As mayor of the state's largest city, Parker said she's had more contact lately with Gov. Rick Perry than former Houston mayor Bill White.

"But I am absolutely livid that Rick Perry has an attack ad on Bill White that features me," she said. "I don't want to be used as a wedge in that campaign."

Parker said that Perry used a quote of something she said while controller. She said it was not out of context and might have even been impolitic to say at the time.

As I've written about before, when it became clear that the next mayor of Houston would be one of three Democrats, I thought it was pretty clear that Parker was the best choice of the three for mayor. She is who she is: a fairly no-nonsense, candid politician.

She had been criticizing Bill White's administration as mayor for years, but for some reason the Austin press corps didn't notice. When she inherited lots of problems, she wasn't just going to keep quiet.

3. Michael Landauer at the DMN:

I have voted for Rick Perry in all but one general election for statewide office.

But one thing troubles me this year more than in years past. I have joked that if Jesus Christ himself were governor, I would not want him to serve more than 10 years because no one should be able to appoint ALL the members of the state's important boards and commissions. At least Jesus probably wouldn't have to raise money for his campaigns. But Rick Perry does, and he looks to his appointees. A new report by Texans for Public Justice finds that 20 percent of Perry's money has come from people he has appointed to jobs.

I find this strange. It begs the question: compared to what? Is it different than any other governor? Would Bill White be different? Based on his time as mayor, White would probably be worse.

I'd note that that $17M contains things like $600k from Phil Gramm's leftover Senate campaign funds. Wow, so scandalous!

4. 4 years ago we had the real men of genius parodies that skewered Chris Bell and Carole Strayhorn (sorta). This year, the Perry campaign has parodied the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World.

Truthfully the real man of genius ads were better. Funniest part was definitely the end.

Posted by Evan @ 10/01/10 11:38 PM | Comments (0)

Cato gives Perry a B

Libertarian thinktank Cato ranked Rick Perry the 8th-11th (4 way tie) best governor in the US from a limited government perspective, giving him a B overall. Only 4 governors earned an A. Here's what they said about Perry:

Governor Perry has generally avoided tax increases during his long tenure, but he has not cut state taxes or reduced the size of state government. In 2003, he signed into law a package of tax and fee increases. In 2006, he approved a major business tax overhaul that replaced the corporate franchise tax with a modified gross receipts tax called the Texas Margin Tax. The new tax hit a much broader array of businesses and increased state-level taxes by more than $3 billion annually.41 The $3 billion of added state revenues was used to reduce local proper-ty taxes, but the overall effect of the package has been to centralize government power in the state and reduce beneficial tax competition among local jurisdictions. In 2009, Perry supported an increase in the exemption amount for the Margin Tax. On spending, he has presided over moderate increases in the Texas general fund budget. In 2010, he proposed an amendment to the state constitution to require a two-thirds vote in both legislative chambers to increase taxes. He has also proposed an amendment to limit increases in the state budget to no more than inflation plus population growth.

Given that White left Houston bankrupt, any attempt to get to the right of Perry would boomerang. Still, rather interesting that three Democrats nationwide beat Perry on a libertarian scorecard.

Posted by Evan @ 10/01/10 09:04 PM | Comments (0)

30 September 2010

Rothenberg: No more time to cut through the clutter

Stu Rothenberg:

You'd never know it from the avalanche of TV ads, direct-mail pieces and phone calls that voters will receive in October, but most campaigns have only another week or two to change the likely outcome of their contests.

Sure, the midterm elections are still five weeks away, but the combination of early voting in many states and the difficulty of cutting through the coming clutter means that the best opportunity for campaigns to change voter attitudes is quickly coming to an end.

Every election cycle is different. Society changes, all the external factors change. More government influence in society and greater competition for Congress in an all-or-nothing binary system of control ===> more spending in elections ===> diminishing returns for every additional marginal dollar spent on ads at the end of an election cycle.

It's not a groundbreaking thought, but I don't see most people talking about it. Especially the pundits, who frequently think that American elections are exactly the same as when they were a young beat reporter in the 70s or 80s. Heh.

Also in Rothenberg's column:

In Texas' 17th district, Democratic Rep. Chet Edwards bought almost 7,000 gross ratings points between Aug. 27 and Sept. 27 on Waco broadcast TV, pummeling his Republican opponent, Bill Flores.

Unfortunately for Edwards, Flores bought about 4,000 points, and the NRCC chipped in about another 1,500 points. American Future Fund checked in with about another 1,000 points during the same period (None of these figures include the cable TV purchased by the candidates or the political committees). Voters, in short, have already heard many attacks.

If the polls suggesting that Flores is leading by 15 points are correct, Edwards is done. I'd be surprised if he managed a Houdini-like escape. Even against Wohlgemuth, he was never in such bad shape.

Posted by Evan @ 09/30/10 04:03 PM | Comments (0)

"big gay breakfasts", money, Kay 2012 and more

1. "Bill White's big gay breakfast in Austin," was the headline in the Dallas Voice. The title amused me.

2. Well that's just shocking:

Perry, the longest serving governor in state history, has appointed nearly 4,000 people to nearly 600 boards, commissions, task forces, groups and departments. Of those, one in five returned the favor with campaign cash.

Wait, wait, out of all the people Perry has appointed (he's made about 6000 appointments in total, some of them reappointments) only 1 in 5 have donated money to him? Generally speaking, folks who get statewide appointments are successful folks, or people with expertise in a specific area. In other words, the sort of civic-minded folks likely to have money who commonly donate to political campaigns. And only 1 in 5 of them have donated money to Perry? Even after receiving a statewide appointment, only 20% have given money? Sheesh, there are direct mail donor lists where you could get a 10% response rate on a single (albeit amazing) piece of direct mail...

I'm curious, but I bet that both Richards and W had higher than a 20% giving rate from appointees.

3. Olympia Snowe is worried about her right flank up in Maine. Rick vs Kay has found two examples of Kay Bailey Hutchison apparently not being worried in the slightest bit...so perhaps she isn't running for re-election?

4. I just saw this over the AP wire:

Democratic challenger Bill White said Thursday that he wants to know whether campaign contributions influenced any of Perry's appointment decisions. He says it cannot be a coincidence that so many Perry donors are appointees.

Does Bill White really want to be talking about cash for appointments right now? Bill White ran for mayor on the slogan "Let's Get Houston Moving" or something like that. Transit was his big issue, yet his appointments ruined Houston's METRO. Every day we have news of another Metro problem.

This actually seems to be a recurring problem with the White campaign. It's not enough that a campaign attack is effective...it also has to work in your favor. They don't seem to have thought about attacks cutting both ways. Maybe they believed their own hype?

Posted by Evan @ 09/30/10 03:13 PM | Comments (0)

29 September 2010

Lloyd Doggett and Nancy Pelosi for governor of Texas

Nancy Pelosi still wants to be governor of Texas, according to the AP:

Texas is suing the federal government over $830 million in aid for schools that has been tied up in political wrangling.

A state-specific provision in the federal law requires Gov. Rick Perry to promise Washington that Texas will maintain certain state education spending levels through 2013.

As you may recall, Lloyd Doggett got Nancy Pelosi to write a provision only for Texas that requires levels of spending in order to receive federal education aid.

If I were the Bill Flores campaign, I'd be hammering on this.

Posted by Evan @ 09/29/10 12:07 PM | Comments (1)

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