Rick Perry vs World

09 February 2010

Perry ad "Tough Decisions"

I think I've seen this ad before in this campaign, but I guess he's ahead so there's no reason to do anything crazy.

Posted by Evan @ 02/09/10 09:13 AM | Comments (0)

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 years
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, Indiana

2006 = GOP holds California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota

There 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.

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)

[Previous 10 Entries] [Next 10 Entries]

SITE MENU

+ Rick Perry vs World
+ About Me

+ Archives

+ Email:
perryvsworld* at *gmail dot com

ADVERTISING

SYNDICATION

DISCLAIMER

Rick Perry vs. World is powered by Nucleus.

Site design and Nucleus customization by Kevin Whited.