Houston Blogs: Prof13

The Last Days of the Perry Campaign: End Game in South Carolina

Premature obituaries are not uncommon in politics.  The former Vice-President and 1960 Republican presidential nominee wrote his own after losing the 1962 California governor’s race; bitterly vowing to the press that they “would not have Nixon to kick around anymore” since he was finished with elective politics.  We know how that turned out.  In 2007 John McCain was labeled a political corpse in June when he ran out of money and let most of his staff go.  One year later he had locked up the GOP nomination.  Newt Gingrich suffered the same prediction in 2011 when most of his staff quit his flagging campaign; but last night he was still alive and kicking in a one-hour interview with Piers Morgan on CNN.  

While acknowledging these mistaken predictions of political death, it is increasingly evident that, short of divine intervention, Campaign Perry is going to end in South Carolina next Saturday night.  There remains great uncertainty as to whether Mitt Romney can win his third straight contest and be unstoppable in his drive for the nomination, but even if he falters, it is now clear that Governor Perry will not be the alternative the anti-Romneys rally behind.   When Rush Limbaugh, who begged our governor to get into the race eight months ago, compares his former favorite to Fidel Castro for his attacks on “vulture capitalism,”  the game is over.  

Coming off a 0.7 percent showing in New Hampshire, polling in the low single digits in South Carolina, and running out of cash before the expensive Florida Primary on January 31, Governor Perry has no options left other than surrender. 

Which leads to the next question:  What went wrong?  Just five months ago Rick Perry had roared ahead of Mitt Romney in every national poll and seemed to have a clear path to the nomination in Tampa.  There have been a number of explanations, including his painful back, overrated successes based on winning elections in a very red state, bad advisors, etc., etc..  After 20 plus years of teaching a Political Marketing class at UH, let me throw in my two bits. 

First, let me credit Campaign Perry with getting some important things right.  They correctly sensed that Mitt Romney was a weak frontrunner in a weak field and thus the nomination was very much winnable.  They correctly judged that they could quickly raise the money needed to launch a national campaign.  They realized they could wait until August to formally enter the race and easily catch the field. 

However, these big pluses were more than offset by the critical errors of the Perry campaign.  Whether due to the governor’s very limited experience in competitive Republican primaries (the March 2010 contest against Kay Bailey Hutchison and Debra Medina being the only one), there were a number of avoidable mistakes that sunk the campaign.  Let me focus on just one:  Getting blindsided on the illegal immigration issue. 

Much comment on the Governor’s poor debate performances has focused on the 57 second “oops” moment when he forget the name of the third federal department he was going to eliminate.  But well before that brain spasm, his political stock had plummeted.  Perry’s collapse came after the Tampa debate where he totally mishandled the immigration issue.  In that venue, Perry not only defended the Texas Dream Act, but also lectured his conservative critics as “heartless” for questioning a program that has let a few thousand young adults qualify for in-state tuition at public universities.  This self-inflicted wound reflected the candidate and his campaign’s failure to do due diligence on his vulnerabilities before getting into the primary debates.  If such had been done, Team Perry would have known they were going to get hammered for this relatively modest program and would have been primed to rebut the attacks.  This failure is mystifying to me because:

A)  Rick Perry’s track to the nomination rested on his Tea Party credentials. 

B)  Numerous studies have documented the extreme hostility of Tea Partiers to any moderate policies addressing illegal immigration.      

C)  That being the case, a competent campaign and candidate would have been prepared to minimize the damage, not magnify it, as happened in Tampa. 

To me, that was the real “oops” moment.  This mistake did huge damage to a promising campaign, because it cost the Governor much of a national base that was just warming to his candidacy.  Of course, he compounded that error in the following weeks, but nothing was as damaging as the mishandling of the Dream Act issue.  Like Michael Dukakis and the Willie Horton issue in 1988, this one will become a classic example of how to fumble an issue with enormous consequences. 

Finally, there is great irony in Governor Perry, who has been endorsed by the controversial anti-immigrant Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, getting skewered as the liberal on the immigration issue.  Politics can take some strange turns. 

Dr. Richard Murray

The End Game: Rick Perry and Ron Paul in Iowa

Today, Politico, the online website has a story on Rick Perry’s Last Stand in Iowa.  While the story has a few positives for our governor (Newt Gingrich’s bubble is bursting), the thrust of the piece is that Perry’s intensive retail campaigning and major media buys are just too little/too late to reverse the deep self-inflicted wounds from September and October.  I concur with that judgment, but would add a major factor in the likely demise of Campaign Perry in the Iowa is the presence of that other Texas elected official in the race, Congressman Ron Paul of the 14th District.  Let’s focus on the intertwined history of these two veteran Lone Star State politicians.

First, some commonalities:  Both are conservative Republicans who have each won more than 10 elections.  Each has served more than 20 years in public office.  They are men of modest financial means who must raise funds from contributors to remain viable presidential contenders.

Now, a few of the many differences:  Ron Paul is fifteen years older than the 61 year old  Rick Perry, and looks it.  Perry smiles a lot, Paul scowls.  Congressman Paul is a national politician by background and focus, with a consistent 35 year message aimed at curing what he sees as the deep problems of modern America (a debased currency, an imperial military than has gotten us into needless foreign wars, a loss of personal liberty, etc., etc.)  Governor Perry has been almost entirely focused on state politics since he arrived in Austin in January 1985, and has had virtually nothing to say about national issues until George W. Bush left the presidency 26 years later.  Perry’s recent national message has been mixed.  At first it was going to be all about jobs, or the lack of them under President Obama.  But lately, with his campaign in a death spiral, the Governor has sought to redefine himself as the champion of conservative “values,” a recalibration aimed at evangelical voters thought to be critical in the Iowa caucuses.

Differences in style and message are further reflected in the reality that these two Texans really do not care for each other.  That fact is not helpful to Rick Perry at this point, as Ron Paul keeps hammering his home state governor at every opportunity.  Add to that the fact that just  when the Governor absolutely has to have a credible comeback in Iowa to get his campaign off life support, it is Congressman Ron Paul’s support that is soaring.  Nate Silver, the numbers guy who has a great track record predicting recent elections, now gives Ron Paul a 44% chance of winning the Iowa caucuses on January 3rd, with Mitt Romney having a 32% probability.  And Rick Perry?  Still stuck in low single digits behind Gingrich and Santorum. 

Pre-election primary and caucus polls are notoriously unreliable until shortly before voting occurs, but we are now entering the window when these surveys do take on value. Add to that the reality that the Paul campaign in Iowa is extremely well organized to turn out their people on a cold January night, plus the Congressman has the bucks to go toe-to-toe down the stretch on TV and radio, and you can see why Mr. Silver likes the older Texan’s chances. 

This latest turn of events should be immensely satisfying to Ron Paul.  Remember that after Governor Perry got in the race in August and shot ahead of everyone in the polls by September, the good doctor from Brazoria County was widely written off as the crazy old uncle in the race.  He might provide some entertainment, but would never get into the Perry/Romney top tier league.  Things have surely changed in the last 90 days.  If Ron Paul finishes ahead of Rick Perry, which seems highly likely at this point, it pretty much puts the nail in the Governor’s campaign coffin.

A final note:  Part of Dr. Paul’s satisfaction at the reversal of fortune in Iowa comes from the fact that it was Governor Perry’s political operatives who signed off on the Texas congressional map that effectively eliminated the 14th District of Texas – the district that has been electing Ron Paul to Washington ever two years since 1996.  Given that Texas got four new seats after the 2010 census and the old 14th had plenty of people to justify it’s continued existence, wiping the district out had to be a deliberate choice aimed at ending Ron Paul’s elective political career.  Now Paul can repay the favor in Iowa.

Dr. Richard Murray

Rick Perry’s Last Stand: The Iowa Alamo

 

After last night’s debate in Washington D.C., the Republican race for the presidential nomination is finally beginning to gel.  There has been only one constant over the last year:  Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is a solid first-tier candidate and the pick of most insiders to end up as the GOP nominee in Tampa next year.  But insiders no longer pick presidential candidates and there is clearly a stable 60% - 70% or so of Republicans that have not warmed to his candidacy. 

 

The instability of this anti-Romney majority has been reflected in their shifting support from one person to another as the preferred alternative.  Many flocked to The Donald earlier in 2011 when Mr. Trump toyed with getting in the race.  When that did not materialize, Michelle Bachmann surged only to fall as fast as she rose.  Then it was Rick Perry’s turn as he roared ahead of Mr. Romney in polls taken after the Texas governor declared his candidacy in early August.  But, like Bachmann, he fell from favor in September/October after a series of debate performances that ranged from mediocre to bizarre.  Then it was Herman Cain’s moment.  But if Rick Perry could have a 53 second Oops on live TV, Mr. Cain topped that with a five and a half minute brain freeze on videotape when discussing U.S. policy toward Libya.  His campaign hit the skids and has not recovered.  Opening the way for …. Newt!  The former Speaker of the U.S. House, written off by yours truly and most other pundits after his staff fired him in late spring, has risen from the ashes to become a co-leader with Mitt Romney is this week’s polls. Meantime, Governor Perry has been downgraded from “Contender” to “Pretender” by U. of Virginia’s Larry Sabato, one of the most astute analysts of presidential elections.

 

So today’s question is:  Can Rick Perry get back in the race where he is polling 4^th or 5^th in a less than stellar field?  Probably not, but there now is one and only one way he can reemerge as the non-Mitt alternative.  Perry absolutely has to win the Iowa caucus on January 3^rd.

 

The Iowa caucuses do not select presidential nominees.  Mike Huckabee won handily four years ago, but finished third behind John McCain and Romney for the Republican nomination.  What the Iowa caucuses do is eliminate candidates and Rick Perry is posed for ejection if he does not score a victory in the land of corn, hogs, and ethanol.  Sure, Perry’s prospects do not look good, as he runs in low-single digits in recent state polls.  But there is a possible path back from the brink.  Here’s how it works.

 

The Iowa caucuses draw only about 20% of the state’s Republican voters.  Those who show up on a cold midwinter night to stand up and be counted are disproportionately evangelical Christians.  In 2008 they made up 60% of attendees.  Evangelical Christians have an especially hard time getting behind Mitt Romney.  He ran 10 points behind the underfunded Huckabee four years ago despite spending millions of dollars and many days in Iowa.  Romney has been coy about whether he will make a hard play for the caucus vote this year, while working very hard to ensure that his early lead in the first primary – New Hampshire – holds up no matter how things play out in Iowa. 

 

Romney’s strategy is to make a late entry into Iowa, and lead the field with just 25% of the vote while evangelicals are split in their preferences.  If that happened, and Romney followed up with an expected win a week later in New Hampshire, the former Massachusetts governor would likely have unstoppable momentum going into the South Carolina Primary on January 21 and the big Florida vote on January 31^st.

 

So where does Rick Perry’s faint hope for a comeback lie?  In a sense with one man, Bob Vander Pleet.  Mr. Vander Pleet was almost single-handed responsible for stopping the Romney effort in Iowa four years ago and seems just as determined to repeat that role this year.  Vander Pleet, vital to Huckabee;s success in 2008, faces a challenge in 2011 because there is not a single strong favorite among evangelical voters.  Knowing that a split opens the door to Romney, he is trying to get evangelicals to coalesce behind a single candidate before they head to the caucuses in 44 days.  That what the Values Forum was all about a few days ago in Iowa where Perry, Gingrich, Cain, Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul audited for the evangelicals’ backing.  A couple of days ago, the group announced the first cut dropped Ron Paul and Herman Cain.  That leaves Perry, Gingrich, Bachmann, and Santorium. This opens a crack in the door for the Texas governor.

 

Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum are great on issues like banning gay marriage and abortions that evangelicals care about, but both have been lagging badly in state polls despite intensive personal campaigning.  If neither gains traction, that leaves Newt and you-know-who.  I found it quite interesting last night that Governor Perry’s opening featured a wave to his smiling wife Anita in the balcony and a notation that they first dated 45 years ago and have been married 29 years.  For some reason Newt did not mention first dates or how long he has been married to the third Mrs. Gingrich.

 

So here’s the play:  If Perry can perform reasonably over the next few weeks – as he did last night in the foreign policy debate – he has a decent shot of edging out the baggage-encumbered  former Speaker for Vander Platt’s group’s support.  And with that,  Perry could pull off an Iowa upset and head to South Carolina with a decent chance of establishing himself once again as the anti-Romney alternative.

 

Will this happen?  Not likely, but plausible.  In any case, we now know the Alamo for the longest serving Texas governor is a thousand miles north/northeast of San Antonio.  Let’s see if he fares better than Travis, Crockett, and Bowie in 1836.      .      

Can Rick Perry Get Lucky in Vegas?

Governor Perry’s luck has run hot and cold since he got in the presidential race in early August.  He was hot as a Texas pistol in August and early September, but his fortunes turned when he joined his fellow Republicans in the televised debates.  He started slow at the Reagan Library get-together and then momentum in Tampa and Orlando.  Last week Perry was pretty much a bump on the log in Hanover, New Hampshire while Herman Cain and Mitt Romney outshined our longest-serving governor. 

The debates have assumed an out-sized role in the Republican process this year.  There are more of them (about 20) than ever before, and twice as many people are tuning in compared to 2008.  That’s bad news for Rick Perry, who has conceded these events do not play to his strength.  But with a dozen more debates scheduled, he cannot continue sleep-walking through these two-hour programs and keep his flagging presidential campaign afloat.

This reality puts great pressure on Governor Perry’s performance tonight.  A couple of factors might work in his favor when he takes the stage at the Venetian Casino.  One, his poor previous performances have lowered the pundits’ expectations bar, so if he has even a half-way decent debate he will get some positive feedback.  And two, with several candidates skipping the Vegas show, the Texas governor will get more opportunities to contrast his conservative record with the more moderate positions of Governor Romney.  Conversely, another poor performance will make it much more difficult to keep raising the money needed to go toe-to-toe with Mitt Romney in expensive media markets like Florida.

The press made much of Rick Perry’s success in the July – September period when he raised more money than Romney ($17 million versus $14 million) and ended up with more money in the bank.  But a closer look at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports show major potential weaknesses in Perry’s ability to keep raising new money.  Half his money came from Texas, mostly in large donations.  This suggests he has picked the low hanging fruit in his home state.  And most of these Lone Star donors have :”maxed out” with $2500 contributions, which means they cannot make additional contributions for the rest of the nomination cycle.  Romney has a lower percentage of folks who have given the maximum, and a much broader national base of contributors.  Plus, the former Massachusetts governor has great personal resources he can turn to as in 2007-2008 when he pumped $40 million into his campaign.  Perry has no personal wealth to tap in a pinch.

Romney also has another edge.  The former governor’s wife has followed the rule book perfectly for political spouses – show up, smile, and never step on your mate’s cape.  Anita Perry did not get the memo.  Last week in South Carolina Anita Perry moved herself to tears over how badly the media and fellow Republicans were treating her husband and family, then went on to imply that God had called Rick Perry into this presidential race.  Voters don’t like whiners, and rarely attribute the candidates they have to choose among as reflecting divine intervention. 

The uncommitted money folks that Rick Perry and Mitt Romney are pursuing are not likely to be impressed by Rick and Anita Perry’s debut on the national stage.  Savvy investors don’t invest in amateur campaigns, and the Perrys seem to have road into town on a turnip truck. 

That said, I do not conclude that the Perry campaign has moved into the Dead Man Walking stage.  Rick Perry will be the only viable candidate on stage tonight who can wage a 50 state campaign with Mitt Romney.  Romney remains stuck at about 25 percent in national polls, which means most Republicans are still resisting accepting him as the inevitable nominee of their party.  And Herman Cain’s campaign is unlikely to stand the heat of being a first tier contender. 

So, Governor Perry can still rally from his recent swoon.  But he needs to roll sevens not snake-eyes tonight.        

Dr. Richard Murray

Rick Perry’s Big Night: 10/11/11

Presidential nomination contests grind out over the course of a year or more – a political marathon unique to American politics.  But along that long road, there are occasional moments when everything can change suddenly and irreversibly for a candidate or campaign.  Governor Rick Perry faces one of those moments at 7PM, CDT tonight when he takes the stage in Hanover, New Hampshire with seven other Republican presidential contenders.  After a great rollout in August and excellent fund raising numbers posted by the end of September, the Perry campaign has hit a very rough patch.  A mediocre debate performance at the Reagan Library in California, followed by a weak showing in Tampa, and a disastrous outing in Orlando, triggered a freefall in support.  From leading the field in September polls, Perry has fallen behind his principal rival, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and newcomer Herman Cain, a former business executive.  New questions about the Governor’s viability as a national candidate have been raised by his family’s hunting lease on a property marked by a racial slur painted on an entry rock, which may or may not have been painted over years ago.  And, one of his pastoral supporters, Reverend Jeffress at the First Baptist Church in Dallas, threw more fat on the fire by labeling Mitt Romney’s Mormon church as a “cult” outside of Christianity with the Governor in the audience. 

Tonight’s debate thus comes at a critical time for Rick Perry.  Can he stop the bleeding away of support from Tea Partiers unhappy with his support of in-state college tuition for children brought into Texas illegally coupled with his opposition to a fence along the Mexican border?  Can he reassure potential donors that he has the smarts to not only prevail over his Republican rivals, but also mount a winning campaign next fall against President Obama?  Can he lay out a plausible economy strategy to counter Herman Cain’s catchy 9 – 9 – 9 overhaul of the U.S. tax code?  And can he do these things and look presidential at the same time?   We’ll find out in a few hours.

My take on the Governor’s problems is they are serious to be sure, but not necessarily fatal.  He walks on stage tonight as the only contender who has shown he can raise the money needed to fight a 50-state campaign against the well-funded Romney effort.  Perry has a competent staff in place, and 25 years of campaign experience where he has bested every opponent.  His drop in support has not yet benefitted his principal rival, Governor Romney, who seems unable to draw more than 25 percent support after running for president for five years.  Mr. Cain has no money and no staff, and seems unlikely to gather either in sufficient degree to be a credible contender in expensive state’s like Florida, which has scheduled a key primary in late January. 

These factors mean a comeback is quite possible for Governor Perry, if he turns in a solid performance in Hanover.  But …., if he steps on his body parts tonight ala Orlando, the game will be up.  Why? Because we will see a one-two-three sequence of punches that will knock Rick Perry out.  One – conservative pundits like Sean Hannity and Erick Erickson will pile on within minutes of the wrapup.  Two – national poll numbers will drop further.  Three – the money will dry up and the campaign will sputter and die.

So, tune in tonight.  There is a lot riding on this debate for the Governor, for the Republican Party, and for the United States of America.  

Dr. Richard Murray

Rick Perry Surges Ahead in New Polls: Is America Ready for Another Texas Governor in the White House?

Today, two new surveys were released showing Governor Rick Perry with statistically significant leads over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, with Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann trailing in third place, followed by Congressman Ron Paul of Surfside.  What should one make of these new numbers?

First, a few words of caution about presidential nomination polls in the year before the party conventions are held:  First, there is often great volatility in such surveys.  Swings of 20 points often occur within a few days.  Second, these polls have limited predictive value in identifying the eventual nominee.  Four years ago, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York seemed to have a solid 20 percentage point lead for the Democratic nomination over freshman Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.  We know how that turned out.  And on the Republican side, Senator John McCain had been written off as Dead Man Walking by August 2009, as he badly trailed Mitt Romney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former Tennessee Senator Thompson.  But by March 2008, the Arizona Senator had made the greatest comeback since Lazarus and was sailing toward the GOP nomination.

Granting the limitations of early surveys in presidential nomination contests, today’s results do have important implications.  In my opinion, the most impressive thing about these numbers is the weak showing of Mr. Romney.   The former governor has now been running for president for four years, spending more than $200 million promoting his candidacy since 2007, but is now stuck with only about 20 percent support from likely Republican primary voters.  That is bad news any way you cut it.  Romney cannot claim few know him; he is, in fact, the best known of the declared Republican contenders so his weak showing cannot be due to most people having no opinion of him one way or the other.  So getting just one in five party voters at this juncture means quite a lot.  The Romney camp is going to have to make a decision shortly as to whether or not to engage Governor Perry, or to continue their “Mittness Protection Program” of maintaining a low public profile, ignoring the other Republican contenders, and only occasionally surfacing to level a few blasts at President Obama. 

Romney aside, Governor Perry’s surge since entering the race two weeks ago is impressive.  He has gotten a lot of free (or “earned”) media play since the Pray for America event here on August 6^th, and this has the governor to draw support from across the conservative Republican spectrum.  And, given that fact that about 80% of the Republican base vote comes from self-identified conservatives, that has given him a strong early lead.   

Governor Perry’s good poll numbers will help him in the next stage of the marathon he has entered – raising enough money quickly to keep up with Mr. Romney in financing a national campaign.  The next few weeks will be crucial in that regard.  Federal election rules require reports on funds raised by announced candidates to be filed every 90 days.  We are currently in the July 1 – September 30 quarter, so the Texas governor has five more weeks to get cash into his campaign coffers before filing his initial report with the Federal Election Commission.  That early October FEC report is very important for Governor Perry.  If he can match or exceed Mitt Romney’s 90 day numbers in just 50 days, this will further maintain his momentum as we move toward the 2012 caucuses and primaries. 

In addition to having only a few weeks to get contributions, the Perry camp does face some obstacles in the money chase.  Texas is a big state with lots of major Republican contributors, but the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush donors cannot be counted on to swing automatically behind the current governor.  There is some bad blood between some “Bushies” and Governor Perry.  (Note Karl Rove’s blast at Perry after the Governor’s Ben Bernanke remarks).  Republicans also draw a lot of money from big Wall Street interests and attacking Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Bank is not likely to sit well with those folks.  And while most pundits write off Congress members Bachmann and Paul as fringe candidates too far out of the mainstream to be nominated, both have passionate small dollar followers, giving them a broader base of financial support than Governor Perry has ever established.

Still, the United States is a huge country and there are a lot of big and small donors out there that really, really, want to defeat President Obama in November 2012.  Governor Perry’s immediate task is to find enough of them in the next weeks to put a formidable national campaign together.         

Dr. Richard Murray

Governor Perry On the Verge: The Prayer Meeting at Reliant Stadium

We can’t say that the eyes of the nation will be focused on Reliant Stadium tomorrow when Governor Perry’s prayer meeting kicks off, but we can say the eyes of political pundits will be closely following what happens in the big building on Kirby at the South Loop.  While no presidential announcement is expected (that would create some church/ state issues), there is a lot riding on this event for our long-serving governor.

Jason Embry of The Austin American Statesman filed a story this morning titled “Perry’s Sureness Falters under National Glare.”  Embry says the normally surefooted Perry has been a bit shaky lately as he moved ever closer to tossing his cowboy boots into the Republican presidential arena.  Embry cites his contradictory positions on New York’s new gay marriage law – first he thought that was New York’s business which was fine with him as an advocate of states rights.  Then, when conservative foes of the dreaded “gay lifestyle” took issue with his stance, Governor Perry cleared his throat and decided this was actually a matter of human rights, not states rights, and he was now for a constitutional amendment that would overturn the New York law along with a half dozen other states’ statutes.  So much for having the federal government get out of the way of states wanting to exercise their Tenth Amendment rights.

The Governor is discovering that running for president is going to be very different than seeking office in Texas.  You need a lot more money, and have to raise it in much smaller checks than Rick Perry is used to getting from big donors.  The national media are both more numerous and much more confrontational than the state press corps.  Now you have to engage your opponents, unlike last year’s campaign where Governor Perry could avoid debating Bill White, his Democratic challenger.  The travel, the frantic pace, the larger staffs to manage – all very different than anything Mr. Perry has experienced to date.

Because Governor Perry is getting in the race relatively late, and is not known to most national Republicans, he has a lot riding on how he handles the launch of what now seems an almost certain presidential campaign.  That makes the stakes pretty darn high tomorrow.  The Governor’s people obviously thought the risks of convening Christians to pray for the nation outweighed any downside to the event.  I question their judgment on that point.

Asking people to come to Houston in August during the hottest, driest summer in Texas history carries risk.  What if nobody shows up, or, more likely, far fewer than the 70,000 plus Reliant accommodates?  We already know most of the politicos are skipping the event, including Lt. Governor David Dewhurst and Texas House Speaker Joe Straus.  What is the program, and how does the Governor fit into it in a positive way?  A former Aggie yell leader, Governor Perry feeds off crowd response as when he lights up Tea Party rallies with his anti-Washington attacks.  Can he hit that spark with this crowd?  We’ll see.  And how does the national press report the event and his role?  Check the Sunday headlines and talk shows from Washington, D.C..  Can he use this event to promote his central campaign theme – that he is effective manager of a state that has created hundreds of thousands of jobs on his watch.  Or will he come off as Bush Lite – “W without the brains” as his critics like to say?

We’ll find out on Saturday.

Dr. Richard Murray    

Rick Perry's moment of decision

Jay Root has a story in the Texas Tribune section of today’s New York Times examining Rick Perry’s years as a Democratic legislator in Austin in the 1980s. The story makes the point that Mr. Perry’s party switch in September 1989 was extremely timely, given the state’s shift to the Republicans in the 1990s that would put the convert into the lt. governorship in 1999 and thus in position to succeed George W. Bush after the latter’s election as president in 2000. There’s more than a bit of irony in the fact that Governor Bush beat Vice-President Al Gore, who, twelve years earlier, had recruited State Representative Rick Perry to co-chair his Texas bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Twenty-two years after his party-switch, Governor Perry faces another huge career choice. Does he honor his oft-repeated pledge to Texas voters last year to serve out his four year term as governor? Or does he reprise his 1989 strategy and find an earlier pledge (Mr. Perry had previously denied any interest in changing parties) was no longer binding and declare his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination?

The next three weeks should give us the answer. Why now? Because while the national Republican field remains unsettled with opportunities for later entrants to join the hunt, the realities of the nomination cycle will force the three current fence sitters, Perry, former GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to get in or out by August. And for Governor Perry, with a highly publicized national prayer gathering at Reliant Stadium on August 6th, that is pretty much his de facto deadline for joining the race.

I have been bearish on the Governor joining the field for several reasons. In no particular order, these are:

1) Another Texas Governor for president? There’s still a lot of heartburn within the Republican Party about George W. Bush. Been there, done that and it did not turn out very well. Texas swagger ain’t as popular in 2011 as 12 years ago.

2) Governor Perry does not enjoy anywhere near the support within the state that George W. Bush had in 1999 when he launched his presidential bid, nor has he, until very recently, cultivated the national contributors required to fund a conventional presidential campaign.

3) Michelle Bachmann. The Minnesota Congresswoman has stepped into the tea-party void created by Ms. Palin’s indecision, and has moved into the lead in recent polls in Iowa. Getting past her will be essential for a credible national campaign by Governor Perry.

4) Perry’s weakness with Independents is no big deal in Texas where winning the Republican Primary has been key to state electoral success, but there are proportionally fewer Republicans nationally than in Texas. That makes Independent voters a critical segment of the electorate, a fact which makes the governor a less appealing candidate for those party leaders who want, above all else, to nominate someone who can defeat President Obama in November 2012.

5) Add to that Perry’s weakness in the Midwest and Mountain West where the most competitive state Electoral College battles will be waged, and you can begin to see why today’s Intrade betting odds on Governor Perry give him less than a one-in-five chance of winning the Republican nomination, and make him a 14-1 long shot for winning the Oval Office.

That said, these are better odds than the Mr. Perry faced three months ago when folks like Governors Mitch Daniel and Haley Barbour were still potential candidates. It is also now clear than the Governor is seriously assessing whether to get in or out. I’m sure he’ll pray on the matter, but I also expect he will pay close attention to current efforts to see if he can line up enough “bundlers” to finance a late-starting national race.

Bundlers are key players in the “silent primary” that occurs before any votes are cast in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina. Because presidential candidates can take no checks larger than $2500, they have to have tens of thousands of donors to finance the hugely expensive race for the nomination. No conventional candidate can raise the needed funds without help from the hundreds of people who not only can write the $2500 checks, but who also can line up dozens or hundreds of friends and associates to do so and “bundle” these checks together and deliver such to the campaign they are backing.

Even if all systems are go for Governor Perry, if his current outreach to these key financial people is not successful, look for him to decline entering the race. But if the money seems to be there, he has apparently decided to take the plunge. It worked very well 22 years ago. Let’s see how 2011 plays out.

Governor Perry and Higher Education Reform: Are There Presidential Implications?

In previous posts, I have argued that Governor Rick Perry’s push for top-down reforms in higher education is politically tricky.  Key elements of the policy changes the Governor is promoting are unquestionably popular with many voters.  Lower tuition, faster tracks to finishing four-year degree programs, rewarding good undergraduate teaching by tenured faculty – all sound good to most voters.  But there are two big downsides to this effort which has mostly focused on the state’s two public flagship universities, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M.  

The first is these efforts, most advanced at Texas A&M, are almost certainly not going to work.  Elite academic institutions operate in a market where academic “stars” simply have the greater bargaining power vis-à-vis elected politicians.  Push the highly productive research scholars too hard and they will take their marbles and move on, taking with them grants, research teams, and hard-won academic status.  Another reason elected leaders have little leverage in dealing with elite public universities is state government is putting fewer and fewer tax dollars into these institutions.  When UT and A&M were getting most of their funding from the Texas Legislature, one could make a good case that who pays the piper calls the tune.  But public funding for UT and A&M has plunged over the last 20 years and now accounts for a small fraction of the cost of operating these schools.

The second downside is that while the general public, to the extent they are paying attention to the academic reform effort, likes much of what is being talked about, many powerful alums do not appreciate Governor Perry meddling with “their” university.  This has been particularly evident in the quick opposition of UT’s Former Students Association – a 200,000 plus group.  The political significance of this is the fact that the UT alumni includes some of the most influential and wealthy people in our state.  And that fact bears directly on Governor Perry’s presidential prospects. 

How’s that?  A little background:  I’ve taught presidential election courses for 35 years, during which time the process has changed enormously.  Leaving aside the rare self-financing billionaire candidate like Ross Perot, one of the greatest challenges serious presidential candidates face these days is raising the money for a nomination campaign.  Superficially, Rick Perry would seem to measure up well in that respect.  He is the governor of a huge state with lots of wealthy people; he has raised about a hundred million dollars for his numerous statewide campaigns; and he does not have to leave office until January 2015.  But….  As a long-serving governor, Mr. Perry has accumulated a lot of enemies over the years, including well-heeled supporters of retiring U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.  Nor has he ever been close to the Bush family and friends – another important financial constituency for a Republican presidential race.  

Another financing problem for Governor Perry is rooted in his deep, but narrow, fundraising base in Texas.  He has raised a great deal of money from a relatively small number of supporters in his campaigns.  That model works fine in Texas where homebuilder Bob Perry can give Rick Perry (no family relationship) a million dollars for a single election.  But in federal elections, the largest individual contribution a candidate can accept for an election is just $2,500.  To fund a decent presidential campaign that has to fight across the country in key early states like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and Florida takes tens of millions.   That, in turn, requires thousands of donors typically assembled by a few hundred “bundlers” with track records of raising the money from traditional contributors.   Many of these bundlers are already committed to other GOP contenders, and it is not clear where Perry bundlers could find large numbers of folks to chip in $2,500 each for a long-shot presidential race.  Circling back to the academic dustup, adding UT alums to your enemies list is not a way to grow that funding base. 

The bottom line in life is often about money, and presidential politics is no exception.  That reality is not, in my opinion, a plus for our governor.   It is just one of several reasons why I do not believe he will launch an active campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.  But I think we will have several more weeks of Governor Perry’s “media tease” now that The Donald has left the spotlight.  And why not?  The local media need a story, and getting some national play keeps the Governor in the mix for the vice-presidential sweepstakes where you only have to get one vote to be on the national ticket.  And if a Yankee Republican with weak Tea Party credentials gets the nod in Tampa next year, you have to think the nominee will take a long hard look at America’s longest serving governor.  

Dr. Richard Murray     

Governor Perry and Higher Education Reform

Earlier this month I posted an entry about Governor Rick Perry’s efforts to reform higher education in the state from the top down, starting at Texas A&M University (TAMU) and moving on to the University of Texas at Austin (UT).  Since then the Governor has reignited talk that he might just, maybe, possibly, reconsider his oft-stated position that he already has the greatest political job in America and has no interest in moving into the White House in 2013.  I think Mr. Perry is mostly a “media tease” ala Donald Trump, and now Rudy Giuliani, that is quite unlikely to end up with a real campaign for the Republican presidential nomination later this year.  And remember, no one is drafted for the presidency these days.  If you don’t run, you don’t win.  

OK, he will either run or not run for president, but what about Governor Perry’s plans to reform higher ed in Texas?  My take is this is mostly an effort to leave a “legacy” or lasting mark after serving as the state’s chief executive for nearly twice as long as any previous governor.  His first big effort – the mammoth  Texas Transportation Corridor project – crashed and burned, very nearly costing Mr. Perry reelection in 2006.  Now with no money to spend, the Governor has turned to reforming public higher education in Texas, starting at his alma mater, TAMU, and moving on to their nemesis, UT at Austin.  This had produced push-back on both campuses – especially at UT where the alumi association has come out with guns blazing against the Governor’s plans for their campus.

As mentioned, the politics of higher education are tricky.  Much of what the Governor has talked about – holding faculty accountable, valuing undergraduate teaching over research, increasing enrollments at the flagship universities and lowing the costs of degrees sounds great to most voters.  But these popular ideas are absolutely in conflict with how elite universities in America operate.  Elite status is not conferred by enrollment increases, having senior professors teach lots of undergraduates, and at the same time cutting the requirements to graduate with a four-year degree to save students money.  Personally, I like some of the “reform” proposals that are floated like valuing classroom teaching more, but after 45 years in this business, I am a realist.  What the Governor is proposing is just not going to fly, and if his hand-picked regents push the reforms advocated by the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin, they can blow up one or both of the best public universities in America. 

Why?  In part because of the “star system” that largely defines prestigious universities.  Stars are dominant scholars and researchers in their fields.  If they are in the social sciences and humanities, they are the folks who publish in top journals, write books that other scholars read, and create works of art and literature that are reviewed by serious critics.  In the sciences and engineering, they run large labs, funded with competitive grants, that support large teams of associated researchers.  Every now and then one of these stars or their team hits a home run and wins a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize – the ultimate pieces of academic prestige.  That, in turn, brings great benefits to the universities they are associated with.  These institutions’ degrees become more valuable, meaning very bright undergraduate and graduate students compete for admission, which in turn helps attract higher quality faculty.

The problem the Governor and his reform allies run into is that academic stars are the ultimate free agents.  They can pick up the phone and move on very short notice.  There are always new schools on the make around the country, and nowdays more foreign universities want to emulate the American higher education model and compete for movable stars.  Push these academic heavy hitters to change the way they operate (low teaching loads, rewarding research, etc.) and they will abandon ship.  And if they start leaving, particularly because of political pressures from outside the academy, this sets off a vicious cyclical effect that can quickly damage a top-tier university.

When I came to the University of Houston in 1966, the President of Texas A&M, retired General Earl Rudder, was often quoted telling new faculty “Highway Six comes into College Station and it goes out.  If you don’t like it here, leave.”   A couple of years later, TAMU was censored by the American Association of University Professors for trying to force out a tenured professor.  The fallout seriously damaged the school as it took years to get off the  AAUP “black list” and resume its climb to academic achievement.   I don’t think many Aggie alums want to go back to the 1960s and risk the hard-won status their school has achieved since the 1980s.   Certainly their counterparts in the UT Former Students Association have made their intentions very clear to the Governor – Don’t mess with Texas – as in the University of Texas.

So what does this academic quarrel have to do with everyday politics outside the Ivery Tower?  Actually, quite a bit as I discuss in a week or so..   

Dr. Richard Murray

Texas Governors and Higher Education: Rick Perry Wades into the deep Water at UT and TAMU

The Houston Chronicle’s City and State section headline this morning is “McKinney on way out as chancellor at A&M.”  This is the latest in a series of stories that touch on Governor Rick Perry’s increasing focus on effecting major changes – and the resulting pushback - at the state’s two flagship public universities – Texas A&M (TAMU) and the University of Texas at Austin (UT).   What’s going on between the Governor and state’s top research institutions?  Here’s my take.

Governor Perry has long wanted, in my opinion, to be a transformational chief executive who leaves a lasting public policy record from his tenure in office.  But as a conservative opposed to new taxes, he has found himself boxed in by the reality that big new policy initiatives usually cost big money.  That has severely limited his ability after eleven years in office to find a “big new thing” that would assure him a place among the state’s leading chief executives. 

Mr. Perry’s first such effort came to grief with the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC).  That massive public infrastructural plan finessed the tax problem by relying on billions in tolls from users to finance the construction and maintenance of the biggest individual state transportation effort in the history of the United States.  The TTC turned out to be a political disaster that offended just about every significant interest group in Texas  impacted by the proposal.  Fortunately for the Governor, the Legislature killed the TTC before it cost the governor his job in 2006, although he limped to reelection with just 39 percent of the vote when three opponents divided the sizeable anti-Perry vote that year. 

So with tolls out along with taxes, what’s left on the positive side?   The answer seems to be reforming the state’s higher education system from the top down, starting at TAMU and UT.  All the regents at these and every other public university system are now Perry appointees and he has put in place, first at A&M and now at UT, folks who want to carry out a new vision of higher education.  The afore-mentioned Texas A&M Chancellor, Michael D. McKinney, a physician, former legislator, and chief of staff for Governor Perry, has been the point person in this new gubernatorial endeavor. 

Key elements of this plan of the Governor and the conservative think-tank Texas Public Policy Foundation would cut higher education costs and refocus faculty efforts on classroom teaching.  That combination sounds good to many Texans, but it runs headlong into the prevailing ethos at America’s top tier research universities which UT and TAMU have spent decades trying (now successfully) to join.  That being the case, it is hardly surprising that Chancellor McKinney’s five-year effort, supported by the A&M regents, has faced a powerful pushback from university administrators, senior faculty, and major supporters of Texas A&M.  They see this new initial as utterly at odds with the hard-fought progress their university has made to join the ranks of the nation’s elite institutions.  That progress depends heavily on attracting and retaining academic “stars” able to attract major research dollars, along with stellar graduate students and post-docs, which all brings prestige to the institution they choose to affiliate with.  The Perry/Texas Public Policy Foundation model, with its stress on less expensive undergraduate education is in direct conflict with the prevailing top-tier rankings that are enormously important in American higher education.

Why should anyone in Texas care about such academic ratings?  For pretty much the same reason people care about ratings in college athletics.  Schools that have great sports reputations like Ohio State and Oklahoma attract star athletes that win games and bring prestige and status to their institution.  Schools with great academic reputations like Harvard, Chicago, and Berkeley get academic stars that win grants, train the best young minds in their fields, and, occasionally, win Nobel Prizes.  These same stars also create incubators that spin off new ideas and products that have – over time – huge economic payoffs to the local communities and states where they are based.  Think Silicon Valley and its proximity to three top-tier research institutions.

A few schools like Stanford play in both the big-time academically and athletically.  That  is where TAMU and UT want to be and remain in the 21^st century.  Anything that endangers that model of dual success is going to meet strong resistance as Governor Perry is beginning to find out. 

There are dragons lurking out there in the ivory tower woods, so proceed with caution if at all into these forests.  (TO BE CONTINUED)

Dr. Richard Murray

David Dewhurst for Governor of Texas? Something to Think About.

Yesterday, Colleen McCain Nelson, an editorial writer at the Dallas Morning News, posted a blog posing the question “Is David Dewhurst ditching his Senate bid to run for governor?”   She notes in a recent interview with an Austin TV station Dewhurst said “I need to make a decision in June whether I’m going to run for the U.S. Senate in 2012 or stay right where I am and run for governor in 2014.” 

That’s an interesting comment since it challenges the conventional wisdom that the Lt. Governor has firmly settled on the open senate race next year rather than staying in place and running for reelection or for governor in 2014.  If the latter turns out to be the case, that sure changes the political landscape in Austin, starting in 60 days or so.  What’s up here?

Let’s discuss a couple of possibilities on why Dewhurst might opt for Plan B - a run for governor – rather than taking a shot at Kay Bailey Hutchison’s D.C. job.   First, maybe the 2012 senate primary is looking less attractive.  It seems clear than there will be a number of other contenders in the March 2012 Republican Primary, which increases the likelihood that while Dewhurst would lead the field, he would fall short of 50 percent and be forced into a runoff.  That runoff is almost certain to be pushed back because of the need to have a minimum 45 day window between the first and second round of voting so military personnel overseas have ample time to get and return ballots.  A longer runoff window with a much smaller turnout than the first round (due to the absence of presidential candidates on the runoff ballot), could well benefit a tea party-backed challenger in a late April or May vote. 

The other possibility is that while Mr. Dewhurst thinks he could still win the Primary and General Election in 2012, going to the U.S. Senate in 2013 has lost its appeal.  My guess is this is more likely the case.  Current betting odds (see the website Intrade) favor a GOP takeover of the senate in the 2012 election, but with the reelection of President Obama.  Joining a divided government facing mostly unpleasant choices in Washington may not have much appeal for a then-to-be 67 year old freshman.

Conversely, Mr. Dewhurst may see far brighter prospects for finishing his political career here in Texas.  As he leads the Texas Senate through his fifth regular session, he surely knows the fiscal problems facing Texas, while daunting, are much more easily addressed than those in the nation’s capitol.  After all the unpopular cutting is done in 2011 and 2013 with Governor Rick Perry in office, 2015 might be an excellent time to move into the state’s CEO job.  By then the odds are that the state’s economy will have largely pulled out of the recession with some recovery in revenues.  There is also a great likelihood that the tea party passion will have faded three years from now and that some modest revenue increases can be passed if dedicated to popular programs like restoring funding for public schools, building roads, and improving nursing home care for aging Texans.  In short, the next governor could be a builder again, not a cutter.  And Texas has liked progressive conservative governors like John Connally, who spend more money, but do so on programs that were popular with voters.

If David Dewhurst does take the governor fork in the road this June, that will create an interesting dynamic in the 2013 regular legislative session.  As readers of this blog know, I think there is virtually no chance Rick Perry is going to be on the 2012 Republican national ticket.  That means he will still be governor two years from now during the regular legislative session.  That 2013 session is going to have a wrestle with terrible budget issues once again.  The Governor cannot easily go back on his “cut government down to size” strategy, so he’ll have to take even more heat from the going number of Texans concerned that his cuts in valued programs are too deep.  Dewhurst, if he still leads the Senate, can define himself as the more reasonable alternative – still for conservative government, but with some relatively painless ways (think legalized gambling) of getting more money into the state budget.  Governor Perry could still veto any such efforts, but that might well make him unelectable in 2014.  And I don’t think Rick Perry will want to end his 30 year winning streak by getting in a race he will probably lose in 2014.  That clears the path for David Dewhurst to prevail in an open primary and extend the 20-year winning streak of his party in Texas governor General Elections.   

Dr. Richard Murray

 

The Governor and the Budget: What’s Rick Perry’s End Game?

I’ve taught Texas government classes for over 40 years, and one of the key points in my lectures has been the weak powers invested in the governor’s office in Austin.  Back in 1875 the framers of the Texas Constitution – mostly conservative Democrats angry at the Reconstruction era Republican governor – tried to so weaken the chief executive position that it could never again be used to, as they saw it, run roughshod over the states’ citizenry.  They did a pretty good job.  Texas governors usually ranked 49^th or 50^th in formal powers compared to their counterparts around the country.   That ranking seems badly out of date this year, as Governor Rick Perry is the most important political actor in Texas as we wrestle with the most serious budget issues since the Great Depression.  How did that come about?

Some of Mr. Perry’s current power reflects the gradual strengthening of the formal powers of the office, with the most significant being the lengthening of the term of office from two to four years.  Coupled with the absence of term limits, this has helped Governor Perry stay in office far longer than any governor in the state’s history.  And with that long tenure has come the ability to appoint every member of every board, commission, and other oversight body that runs the state administration system.

The increasingly partisanship in Texas politics has also strengthened the Governor’s hand.  With the Bushes out of elective office and the senior U.S. senator retiring in January 2013 after being drubbed by Rick Perry in the March 2010 Republican Primary,  Governor Perry is now the unquestioned leader of the Texas Republican Party.  With the GOP holding 101 of 150 Texas House seats and 19 of 31 Senate positions, this is a very good time to be the number one Republican in the Lone Star State.

Add to that the Governor’s ability to define himself back in 2009 as one of the national leaders of the emerging Tea Party movement, and you’ve got a greatly strengthened political player at the center of the budget fight.  That battle also plays to the great negative power the framers of the Texas Constitution left in the hands of the governor – the ability to veto legislation, including the two-year state budget.  In that regard, Governor Perry has shown a greater willingness to veto legislation than any previous chief executive, giving him great credibility in the coming battle over the state’s spending and taxing plans for the next two years. 

The outlines of that confrontation are now clear.  The Texas House, with its super-sized Republican majority, will pass a bare-bones budget that slashes spending for schools, health care, prisons, and universities.  The Senate, which requires a two-thirds vote to pass the budget, will not approve the House budget.  They seem inclined to restore about half the money cut from the current budget and pay for it by dipping deeper into the $9.4 billion rainy day fund (Governor Perry has OK’d spending $3.2 billion) and finding some additional revenues while avoiding a straightforward tax increase.  Obviously, the Governor starts off where the House is in the budget fight.  But where does he end up?

As a veteran politician, Governor Perry has to balance two conflicting interests.  On the one hand he wants to keep his national credentials as an original Tea Partier by hanging tough on cutting spending and not raising taxes.   But he also knows the failure to pass a budget would badly damage his already tarnished reputation within the state (he got the lowest statewide vote percentage of any Republican in November 2010).  So, while he can veto the budget, that does not end the issue as is often the case with other legislation.  There has to be a state budget one way or the other, and the Texas Senate knows that just as does the Governor.   This sets up a classic game of political chicken that will play out over the next weeks of the regular session and, in the opinion of many observers, into one or more special sessions this summer. 

Until we are further along in this process, the Governor will continue to keep his cards close to his chest.  In the end, he will have to give up something – a few billion more from the rainy day fund and some one-time gimmicks that push costs into the next fiscal biennium seem most likely – but that will just postpone the underlying budget problem until the next regular session in 2013 when there will be much less money left in the rainy day account and no budget tricks left in the bag.  Of course, the Governor might be thinking he could have moved on to the national stage by then.  And pigs might also be taking flight.  

Dr. Richard Murray

 

City Council Balks at Redistricting Plan that Adds Two New Seats: Can They Stop that Train?

Last week a mini-revolt broke out on Houston City Council.  Several members attacked Mayor Parker’s announcement that her administration will continue with redistricting plans to add two new seats to Council despite the surprising news that the April 1, 2010 census count tallied 2,099,451 people in the city, not the 2.2 million expected.  That number was relevant because a 1979 deal to get U.S. Justice Department approval to annex Clear Lake required Houston to add two more district seats to the nine being created at the time when the city’s population reached 2,100,000.  So we ended up 549 folks short, giving an opening for some council members to urge dropping the proposed expansion.  That would be a bad idea, in my opinion, for a bunch of reasons.

First, Houston, like many other jurisdictions, will appeal the census count.  These appeals typically do not add lots of folks, but consultant Jerry Wood has already indicated he can find more than 549 people who were residing in Houston eleven months ago and were not counted.  I have every confidence he can easily document there was more than enough of an undercount to get over the 2.1 million trigger, so the factual basis for not proceeding is likely to go away pretty quickly. 

Second, the census showed Houston did add nearly 146,000 people between 2000 and 2010, or more than 14,000 per year.  That growth is continuing, and this will be reflected in the annual updates of estimated population provided as of July 1 each year.  Those estimates will show, year-by-year, Houston has grown way beyond the 2.1 million level.  So are we to wait ten more years to complete a binding legal deal executed 32 years ago that was affirmed by voters?  I don’t think so.

Let us suppose a majority of council refuses to follow through on the nine-to-eleven expansion of districts.  That refusal will absolutely assure the City is sued.  A trial, at great expense, will follow sometime down the road   As an expert witness in redistricting litigation since 1971, I do not think the defenders of no action can find a credible expert to testify that, as of whatever day in 2011 or 2012 or 2013, when the expert is in the witness box, that there are fewer than 2.1 million in the city.  That means the city almost certainly loses the case, and then must compensate the attorneys who brought the action, as well as cover their own litigation expenses.

Finally, adding a couple of new seats will address some of the present inequities of the council map.  For example, District E routinely elects a member from Kingwood, an upscale White area with newer homes and infrastructure.  But that same member also represents many low-income Hispanic residents who have a very different set of concerns than city residents living in the pine forests near Lake Houston.  Which area is an incumbent member from District E going to give more attention to:  the high-vote neighborhood where she/he lives, or a low-vote, inner city Latino community?  I think you know the answer.

So, adding the new districts is the right thing to do because it is legally required, because fighting a lawsuit is expensive and divisive as well as a losing proposition, and because it is simply good for a majority of city residents.  The bottom line:  let’s drop the complaining at City Hall, and get on with shaping a slightly larger and more rationally crafted council.         

Dr. Richard Murray

Why Houston Can Send a Hispanic to Congress next year

My political science colleague at Rice University, Mark Jones, posted a February 18th blog entry on the Baker Institute for Public Policy entitled “Why Houston won’t send a Hispanic to Congress.”  While I have great respect for Professor Jones, I disagree with his analysis on several key points. 

First, he states that the redistricting process is expected to produce two additional Hispanic majority districts, one of which “will be in the lower Rio Grande Valley, where any district is by definition a Hispanic-majority district…”   I don’t see that happening.  There are presently three districts that share the lower valley – the 15^th (Hinojosa – Democrat), the 27^th (Farenthold – Republican), and the 28^th (Cuellar – Democrat).  All are over-populated, but by only 285,477 people, which is far short of the required 698,490 population for a new district.  Additionally, the lower Rio Grande has three districts only because each runs considerably north to get the needed population to justify the 2003 lines crafted by former House Majority Leader Tom Delay.  But reaching far out from the lower valley brought in more Anglos, and it was these white, non-Hispanic voters who unseated longtime incumbent Democrat Solomon Ortiz in November 2010, replacing him with a conservative Republican, Blake Farenthold.  Rather than trying to create a new majority Hispanic district with the modest population surplus available, the 2011 redraw is more likely to pull the three existing districts back toward the lower valley, thus increasing the likelihood that the majority Hispanic population there can elect three candidates of their choice, which probably won’t include Mr. Farenthold, whose politics are closer to Rush Limbaugh’s than his grandmother’s, the Texas liberal icon,  Frances “Sissy”  Farenthold.   

Second, the Houston metro area has plenty of surplus population available.  The nine area districts have 914,129 more people than needed for an ideal district, which equals 1.3 new districts.  The three Democratic districts (Al Green – 9^th, Sheila Jackson-Lee – 18^th, and Gene Green – 29^th) are only slightly overpopulated (+ 36,353), but several local Republican districts have significant over-populated areas that are trending Democratic.  First among these is two term incumbent Pete Olson’s 22^nd District which has a surplus population of 212,389, including fast-growing minority neighborhoods in Fort Bend and Brazoria County.  These precincts are filling up with middle class Black and Hispanic voters who have high turnout in presidential years like 2012 and 2016.  Congressman Olson’s future would be a lot easier if he could detach these communities from his existing district.  But where would they go?  The local Democratic members don’t need more people, and what other Republican incumbent wants to add hundreds of thousands of new minority residents?  Zero, in my estimation.

That leads to my third point.  There is considerable logic for Republican map-drawers to move selected Democratic areas out of existing districts (think Montrose coming out of John Culberson’s 7^th District) into one of the existing Democratic districts or a new majority Hispanic district.  Such a shift would shore up the six metro area Republican districts for the next 10 years,  strengthen the GOP’s credentials with the state’s growing Latino population, and likely sail through pre-clearance at the U.S. Department of Justice.

This realignment would require a large shift of Hispanic population from Gene Green’s existing 29^th District, but that could be balanced off by adding previously Republican areas like Spring and the northern part of Sheila Jackson-Lee’s 18^th District to make up the loss of the southern part of his existing district.  That would result in a more mixed 29^th, with more Black and Anglo residents, but still a district likely to return a popular Anglo Democratic member to Washington, D.C.

I am not, let me make clear, saying this is what is going to happen.  But it well could happen because it suits the partisan, racial/ethnic, and incumbent interests.  Now let’s see what happens.

Dr. Richard Murray

 

Why the Texas Monthly Got It Wrong about David Dewhurst (Part 2)

The February issue of Texas Monthly featured its 2011 list of the twenty-five most powerful Texans. Neither Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, nor Lt. Governor David Dewhurst made the cut. Maybe omitting Joe Straus is warranted because of his junior status, laid-back style, and the serious flaw lines that cut across his 150 member body. But leaving David Dewhurst off the list is journalistic malpractice in my opinion.

As noted last week, the Lt. Governor is a savvy veteran entering his fifth regular session with a deserved reputation as an effective inside player in his 31-member chamber. With Texas facing huge issues that require legislative action (as much as a 27 billion dollar budget shortfall, and fitting four new congressional districts into the state map, to name two), for the Monthly to leave out the most powerful legislator in the Lone Star State is bizarre to say the least. No other Austin player figures to have anywhere near the same positive impact in shaping budgets, redistricting maps, and resolving dozens of other difficult issues as the incumbent lt. governor.

Note I said positive impact. Governor Rick Perry has a legislative role, as his presentation of his state budget yesterday made clear. But the Texas Legislature historically ignores the executive budget and works off its own basic starting document crafted by the Legislative Budget Board, whose members are selected by the Speaker and Lt. Governor. Nor does the governor have much impact on the final shaping of that basic budget document which is done at the end of the session by a select conference committee of five legislators from each house appointed by Speaker Straus and Lt. Governor Dewhurst. That conference committee, working behind closed doors, is where the legislative sausage gets made, and no one has more influence in that vital process than David Dewhurst.

Texas governors do have the legislative veto, and Rick Perry has used that more extensively than any modern chief executive, but this is essentially a negative power – useful in punishing enemies and blocking new laws, but not particularly effective in shaping public policy. And the veto is less effective in budget matters because the state absolutely has to have a budget in place for the fiscal year that begins on September 1, 2011. No governor wants to, or politically can, take the heat for public schools not opening in August, or thousands of the state’s vendors not being paid, or hundreds of nursing homes closing across Texas.

We can expect the Austin press will continue covering the out-of-state travels and Tea Party pleasing pronouncements of Governor Perry as he hypes his new book and slyly signals his possible interest in role on the national stage. This makes the Governor and the Austin press corps both seem important. But this is largely posturing. Back on Earth, the Ireland-based betting operation, Intrade, puts the current odds on Mr. Perry being the 2012 Republican presidential nominee at less than one in a hundred.

Meantime here in Texas, the Lt. Governor is minding the store in Austin. Of course, the decision of senior U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison not to seek election to another term has major implications for Mr. Dewhurst and his role in the current legislative session. Friends of the Lt. Governor say he would like to conclude his public career by returning to Washington, D.C., where he served as a junior CIA officer and State Department official three decades ago.

Mr. Dewhurst, who looks about fifty, turns 66 this summer, so if he is going to act of these inclinations, 2011 is the year to move. With four successful statewide elective victories and a personal war-chest sufficient to fund a U.S. Senate race, Mr. Dewhurst is the odds-on favorite to succeed Senator Hutchison. But that race could be more difficult than one might think, because of the realities of the Texas Republican Primary and Runoff system. More on that later.

Whatever David Dewhurst decides to do later this year, he is almost certainly going to be a power player in Texas in 2013 – either as the state’s newest U.S. Senator in Washington, or as the returning lt. governor presiding over his sixth regular legislative session. Let’s see if he makes the Texas Monthly top twenty-list next time around.

Whither David Dewhurst? What’s next for the Lt. Governor of Texas? (Part One)

I don’t think I’ve ever met David Dewhurst, and certainly have not written about him over the years.  That’s an oversight on my part, as he has emerged, in my estimation, as the most powerful shaper of public policy in Texas?  Why do I think this?  Let me list several reasons.

One, since the 1950s, lt. governors in Texas have been the effective leaders of the 31 member Texas Senate.  Mr. Dewhurst thus benefits from a 60 year tradition that started with Ben Ramsey and continued with Preston Smith, Ben Barnes, Bill Hobby, and Bill Ratliff.  In contrast to the often fractious Texas House of Representatives, its legislative partner, the Texas Senate operates like a private club where most business is settled by discussions behind closed doors and a tradition of bipartisanship still prevails on most matters.  The unquestioned clubhouse leader in this operation is the lt. governor, and that reality is widely appreciated by all who come to Austin looking for favors or benefits.

By contrast, the governor of Texas is a more visible position, but that office lacks many of the formal powers chief executives in other states have, especially in the legislative process.  This general weakness is even more the case when you have a governor like Rick Perry who largely avoids the day-to-day legislative process, further empowering the speaker and lt. governor when the Legislature is in session. 

Lt. Governor Dewhurst’s current power is further enhanced by the weakness of the House Speaker, Joe Straus of San Antonio.  Mr. Straus is a relatively junior Republican member, elected mostly with Democratic votes in 2009 after a revolt against Tom Craddick, the previous speaker.  Straus was reelected in 2011, but only after surviving a challenge from Tea Party Republicans who find him too moderate for their taste.  Straus is well-liked by his colleagues, but that partly reflects his low-key leadership style that cuts individual legislators more slack than previous speakers like Craddick and Billy Clayton allowed.  When one adds these personal qualities to the reality that the 150 member House is a lot harder to manage than the much smaller Senate, it becomes obvious why Lt. Governor Dewhurst is the single most important player in the Texas legislative process.

Personally, Mr. Dewhurst has always been something of a mystery man in Texas politics, perhaps reflecting his earlier career as a CIA operative before starting Falcon Seaboard in 1981.  That successful energy and investment company that has made him a very rich man.  His considerable personal wealth has enabled the Lt. Governor to largely self-finance his public career which started in 1998 when he was elected Commissioner of the General Land Office of Texas.  Mr. Dewhurst was next elected lt. governor in 2002, and is now presiding over his fifth regular session of the Texas Senate. 

Most Austin observers give him high marks for effectively steering the Senate through often choppy waters, but none have been as challenging as the problems presented by the current budget crisis.

The Texas Senate and House have staked out initial bare-bones, no new taxes, budget proposals that would essentially stop building highways, close some prisons and nursing homes, further push up tuition for college students, and whack ten billion dollars out of state support for public schools over the next two years.  The severity of these cuts is beginning to produce a push-back, and not just from Democrats, now at their weakest in Austin since the days of Reconstruction.  One of the biggest losers with the initial state budgets, for example, are heavily Republican school districts like Cypress-Fairbanks and Katy that continue to see explosive growth while the Legislature is threatening to cut tens of millions of dollars in state support.  The Republican senators and house members who represent these areas are getting an earful about how bad things will be if anything like these budget proposals are passed this year. 

Lt. Governor Dewhurst, as the most powerful legislator, is now the man on the spot.  Normally, we would expect him, with other state leaders, to resolve the current crisis by making some real cuts in state programs, but soften these by taking some money out of the nine-billion dollar rainy day fund, and raising a few small taxes and fees here and there.  But these are not normal times.  The new Tea Party folks who came to Austin in the 2010 legislative sweep are adamantly anti-tax and opposed to “raiding” the rainy day fund.  Governor Perry, who can always veto any budget passed by the Legislature, has generally echoed that line. 

The Lt. Governor’s dilemma is further complicated by the fact that, after years of waiting for a U.S. Senate to become open, Kay Bailey Hutchison’s retirement now opens that up in 2012.   So, does Mr. Dewhurst seek a moderate middle ground in resolving the budget mess, and further alienate social conservatives and Tea Party Republicans?  Or, does he play to the Republican conservative base in the 2011 session and try to shore up his credentials for the March 2012 senatorial primary.  More on that next week.          

Dr. Richard Murray

Rick Perry for President? Don’t Hold Your Breath on This One

The New York Times new Texas section had a story a couple of days ago about Governor Rick Perry’s positioning for a presidential run later this year.  And today’s Houston Chronicle noted the Governor was at the big gun show in Las Vegas, a thousand miles from Austin where the Texas Legislature is beginning the very hard work of trying to shape a two-year budget that entails cutting billions of dollars from existing spending levels.  So far, our longest-serving governor in state history has limited his specific input to naming a few emergency items dealing with abortion, voter ID, “sanctuary” cities, and defending property rights – an agenda that might play well with the national Republican base in 2011 and 2012.  So, is Governor Perry laying the groundwork for a presidential run like his predecessor George W. Bush undertook 12 years ago? 

Support for a “Perry in 2012” run has a certain logic, starting with the governor’s obvious play to the national Republican activists with his travels around the country and the base-pleasing positions he has staked out in this legislative session.  The Republican field seems weak this year, with no strong frontrunner, and Texas just picked up four more electoral votes, bumping the Lone Star State up to 38, second only to California.

These considerations aside, I remain highly skeptical that Governor Perry will run for president this year or next.  And were he to run, I think his chances for success are exceedingly small.  Why?

First, Texas has a lot of electoral votes, but it is the safest big state for Republicans in 2012 in the country.  Along with most of the South, we’d vote for a ham sandwich next year if the Democratic presidential alternative is, as expected, Barack Obama.  So Governor Perry’s strength in this state and region is redundant.  Second, the Governor has very limited appeal in the almost certain battleground states of the Midwest and the increasingly Hispanic Mountain States of the Southwest.   Three, he has said he is not running, and sometimes we have to take politicians at their word.  Four, recent polls show a majority of Texans do not want him to run.  Five, there are some very tough choices on the state’s agenda this year, like whether to raise more taxes at the state level or cut tens of thousands of education jobs while also paring services to millions of Texans the Governor characterized as “the least among us.”   Governor Perry can stay out of Austin for a while, but he will eventually have to sign off on a budget that will please few and likely will anger many.

There are some other important factors that now operate in presidential politics.  Nobody gets drafted for major party nominations these days.  If you want the job, you have to run for it.  And that campaign has to begin relatively soon if you want to have a realistic shot at the nomination.  Governor Perry’s national travels and leadership of the Republican Governors Association have raised his visibility and helped sales of his full-throated attack on Washington, D.C. in his new book Fed Up, but he is very far from building a national organization that can compete with the first tier GOP field of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin.  Not all these folks may run, but some of them surely will, and they begin the race with assets the Texas governor does not bring to the table.  A bunch of second tier candidates is also emerging, including other governors like Mississippi’s Haley Barbour and ex-governors like Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty, so the field is getting to be very crowded even before our fellow Texan, Congressman Ron Paul, declares his intentions.  In short, there is no sweet spot for this year for the Texas governor, in sharp contrast to the situation George W. Bush faced 12 years ago. 

If I’m correct, what’s up with the Governor?  I think it’s really quite simple.  He likes to campaign and he’s good at it.  He does not like to get involved in the nitty-gritty of state policy making, particularly this year with a lousy state budget picture.  He wants to sell more books.  He wants to be on the eligible list for vice president if a Yankee like Romney or Pawlenty secures the nomination and needs help with the Tea-Party folks.  Sarah Palin will almost certainly decline another VP role, so if someone is needed to fire up the base, Governor Perry might fit the ticket.   I do not think this is a high probability because more attractive veep candidates like new Senator Marco Rubio are out there, but it does have some real possibility of happening next year.  But the 2012 presidential nomination?  Not in the stars for Rick Perry.    

Dr. Richard Murray

Thinking about Politics in 2011: Predictions versus Probabilities

The start of a new year usually occasions an uptick in punditry, as learned (and unlearned) observers predict what might come to pass in the next 12 months.  These folks are responding to a basic human desire – we want to know what the future holds.  Hence the thriving market for prophets, soothsayers, shamans and others over the millennia who claimed to see what was in store for individuals, groups, or societies.  Over the last century or so, we have seen the emergence of new academic disciplines like my own field, political science, that strive to apply rigorous scientific methods to human behavior.   But have these new social scientists improved our ability to forecast future events?  No, and yes.  Let me explain.

If you think a political scientist or an economist can predict the future because of their academic expertise, let me quickly disabuse you of that thought.  A couple of examples are in order. 

Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton were among the most distinguished economists of the 20^th century.  They shared a Nobel Prize in 1997 for their work expanding the mathematical understanding of how to price complicated options that are traded on exchanges around the world.  Based on partly on their expertise, John Meriwether a former Wall Street bond trader, founded a hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management, in 1994.  Scholes and Merton were members of LTCM’s Board of Directors as the firm began applying their sophisticated mathematical models in global trading in various derivatives and other financial instruments.  All seemed to go well at first, as LTCM produced annualized returns of over 40% a year for its investors, after paying hefty fees to the hedge fund operators.  However, in 1998 a global financial crisis that started in Russia triggered LTCM losses of nearly five billion dollars and came close to cratering the entire world financial system.   A quiet, but massive bailout by large private banking interests, at the behest of public officials like Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, averted disaster for the moment, but wiped out Long Term Capital Management and its investors like Scholes and Merton.

Political scientists generally don’t make big economic bets, but some of us do try predicting election outcomes.  In the 2000 presidential contest, I attended a political science convention a couple of months before the Bush-Gore election.  A half-dozen political scientists presented updates of their mathematical models for how the elections should turn out based on variables like the state of the economy, presidential popularity. etc..   Five of the six predicted Vice President Gore would win by somewhere between 52 and 57 percent of the vote.   I hope they did not have tickets to his inauguration.

What these examples suggest is not that social scientists or other observers should give up trying to figure out how things are going and where they might end up in a year, or five, or ten years.   Rather, these cases simply show that even very smart people are often wrong about future events.   Some considerable modesty is therefore in order when addressing what is to come.  

 

Can Harris County Democratic Office-Holders Avoid a Wipeout Election in 2012?

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the 2010 down-ballot contests in Harris County where every county-wide Democratic nominee lost to their Republican opponents.  The national Republican tide ran very strong in Texas and Harris County, producing a seven percentage point swing from the 2008 General Election, where down-ballot Harris County Democratic judicial candidates averaged 51% of the two-party vote and won 23 of 27 benches.  Most of those Democratic incumbents will be up in 2012, so they are understandably very concerned after the "shellacking" their party's candidates took here last month.  They have good reason to be worried.

I’ve been pouring over the Harris County precinct returns for a couple of days, and the extent of the 2010 electoral set-back for the local Democrats is profound.  One way to analyze the precinct results is to break the county down into seven sets of precincts and draw a sample of the 885 units that is representative of each grouping.

1 -- Homogeneous Black (virtually no non-African American voters)

2 -- Predominately Latino (Majority Hispanic, but a small, older Anglo vote base is still present)

3 -- Inner city white progressives (Liberal and moderates dominate, but there is a significant            Republican minority in these neighborhoods)

4 -- Affluent Whites (the "country club" areas including the wealthiest Houstonians)

5 -- Middle class Anglo suburbia (relatively few minorities live in these neighborhoods)

6 -- Rural, small city, lower middle class Republican (Hispanics are moving into these precincts,  but few are currently voting.

7 -- Mixed suburbs (These are the new kids on the block as sizeable numbers of minority voters are moving into areas like Bear Creek that were until recently dominated by Anglos).

The 2008 and 2010 county elections were dominated by straight-ticket voting, so comparing how these different areas voted is instructive.  Let’s run through the list and look at relative straight ticket voting in 2008 and 2010.          

 

                                                                       Percent of St Ticket Vote 

                    Percent Voting a St Ticket              for Republicans in:            Net Shift to Republicans

Pct Group            2008          2010                     2008             2010                2008 compared to 2010

 

Black                      81%          84%                        1%                2%                           +1%

Pred. Latino           63%          67%                      20%              20%                      No Change

Inner City Whites  49%          53%                      39%              47%                           +8%

Affluent Whites     59%          61%                      82%              87%                           +5%

Middle Suburbia    60%          65%                      81%              87%                           +6%

Rural/Small City    58%          66%                      72%              80%                           +8%

Mixed Suburbs       63%         71%                      44%              50%                           +6%

These data show straight ticket voting went up everywhere in Harris County, with the biggest increases in the rural/small city areas and mixed suburbs.  Interesting, none of the great improvement for Republicans in 2010 compared to 2008 came from better performance in Black or Latino neighborhoods.  However, in all five other areas there was not only more straight ticket voting, but it swung decidedly more Republican.  As a result, the Republican candidates benefitted from a near-presidential level of straight ticket party voting in a midterm election (84.4%), while the Democratic straight-ticket vote lagged badly, reaching just 61.4% of the 2008 level.

What does this mean for 2012?  If the national political climate is as bad for Democrats two years from now as it was in November 2008, they will do better on average in Harris County, but most party candidates would still trail, albeit by 3 or 4 percentage points, not 10 or 12. 

Of course every election is different, and part of that difference is the general national environment.  In 2010 a sour economy and disappointment in having the Democrats in control of Congress and the Presidency created a big red wave pretty much everywhere but California.  In 2012 the economy will almost certainly be different, although in what direction no one knows.  And with the return of divided government, Republicans now share a significant part of the blame and credit for the direction of national policy.   How that plays out is also unpredictable but generally takes some of the heat off President Obama.  Finally, while Democrats will likely be running with Mr. Obama at the top of the ticket,  the GOP nomination is more up-for-grabs than any time in my lifetime.

 
With President Obama on the ticket, we can expect a very significant jump in African American voting in Harris County.  The bigger unknown is what happens in the Hispanic community, which is twice as large in population as the African American population, but cast only one-half as many votes in 2008 and 2010.  More on that later. 

 

Analyzing the Republican Sweep of Down-Ballot Races in Harris County

A couple of weeks ago I opined that while a Republican sweep of down-ballot offices in Harris County was possible, I did not think it likely.  Obviously, I was wrong.  Bill White carried Harris County as I expected, but every other Democrat on the ballot lost.  What produced this Republican sweep?

One place to start is to look at the history of down-ballot voting in Harris County in the last eight General elections – the presidential years of 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008, and the midterm elections of 1998, 2002, 2006, and 2010.  Let’s start with voter turnout:

 

       Presidential Elections                            Midterm Elections           Midterm Vote as % of

                                                                                                              Previous Pres. Election

            1996       871,656                                1998    549,974                       63.1%

            2000       995,631                                2002    656,682                       66.0%

            2004    1,092,522                                2006    601,186                       55.0%

            2008    1,188,731                                2010    797,517                       67.1%

 

As one would expect, a lot more people show up at the polls when the presidency of the United States is being decided compared to midterms when the big job is not on the ballot.   The midterms, on average, draw about 63% of the voters compared to the previous presidential election.   In general, the lower turnout in midterm elections benefits Republicans in down-ballot elections as we can see from the results of countywide contested judicial elections in Harris County in the last eight General Elections:

 

                      Presidential Years                                               Midterm Years                                 

   Contested        Winners         Average .                   Contested        Winners         Average . 

      Races         Rep       Dem     Rep. %                        Races        Rep       Dem       Rep %

1996        10           9          1         53.2              1998        24           24          0         54.4

2000          3           3          0         53.0              2002        36           36          0         54.8

2004          6           6          0         53.5              2006        14           14          0         52.7

2008        27           4        23         49.2              2010        59           59           0         55.9

 

Total       46          20        24         52.2                            133         133          0         54.5

 

After their near sweep of down-ballot races in 2008, Democrats have won more contested judicial elections (24) in Harris County than Republicans (20) since 1996 in presidential years.  But in the midterm years, Republicans have won every contest, shutting out the Democrats 133 to zero.  On average, Republican judicial candidates have gotten 54.5% of the vote in non-presidential years, versus about 52.2 percent in the higher turnout years. 

Given these patterns, some of the Republican success in 2010 can be chalked up to it being a non-presidential year, but there is more to the recent GOP success than that.  Note the average Republican margin of victory in 2010 – almost 56% - the highest in any of the last eight General Elections.  When one considers that the population of Harris County has been getting steadily more minority since 1996, and minorities vote more Democratic than Republican in local elections, the Republican success is even more notable.  So what accounted for this result?

There is no mystery.  The 2010 election  was driven by national factors that greatly benefitted Republicans, excepting the Northeast and Pacific Coast where President Obama’s popularity has held up somewhat better than the rest of the country.  Texas was in the middle of this anti-Obama, anti-Washington wave that swept across all the South, the Midwest, and the Plains, taking out six Democratic U.S. Senate seats, switching over 60 Democratic House seats, and nearly 700 state legislative seats, including 22 in Texas.

This national tide produced very high voting among Republican base voters, much less turnout from the Democratic base, and resulted in Independent voting breaking for the GOP candidates in 2010.  That added up to the best midterm election for Republicans since at least 1946. 

The clearest evidence of the power of this Republican tidal wave is the dramatic shift in straight-ticket voting in Harris County in 2010.  In 2008, local Democratic candidates started with a 47,549 vote cushion from the 735,387 persons who cast a straight-ticket vote for one of the two major parties.  In 2010, Republicans had a 49,886 margin – a swing of over 97,000 votes than doomed down-ballot Democrats.  Bill White, a popular former mayor at the top of the ticket could get enough crossover votes to pull out a 17,000 vote win in Harris County, but no other Democrat could come close in this year of a strong national tide.   Will this carry over into 2012 and doom the largely Democratic judges up for reelection two years from now?   We’ll speculate on that in a following post.                    

A Republican sweep in Harris County in 2010? Possible, but not likely

Early voting is winding down today, so we have some hard numbers to crunch in trying to figure out how the election will end up next Tuesday.  With the longest ballot in America, Harris County voters face about 70 down-ballot races for county-wide offices this year, far exceeding the number of choices in any previous General Election.  Almost all of these contests are for state district or county courts, and feature candidates, that with few exceptions, are not known to most voters.  Nor do these judicial candidates have much capacity to raise money, so using paid advertising to overcome the lack of name identification (ID in political jargon) is not a realistic option. 

That poses a real problem for voters, which the majority solves by voting a straight Democratic or Republican party ticket. This produces a vote in every one of these contests since both big parties have nominees running for every county-wide judicial contest.  In 2008, 1,188,731 persons voted in Harris County, and 735,407, or about 62%, exercised the straight ticket option at the top of the Texas ballot.  Two years ago, Democratic straight ticket voters outnumbered Republicans by about 48,000 votes, which was the principal reason nominees of that party won 23 of 27 county-wide judicial positions.  What is likely to happen in 2010 when we have many more local contests for judge?

First, we are going to see a majority of voters again exercise the straight-ticket option.  With an even longer ballot and almost no advertising by any candidate except County Judge Ed Emmitt (who is actually not a judicial but rather a county executive office holder) it is hard to imagine a significant drop-off in straight ticket voting this year. 

Second, the big Democratic advantage in straight-ticket voting in 2008 is not going to materialize in 2010 if early voting is an indication.  Two years ago African Americans voted early in unprecedented numbers.  This year, Tea Party folks who are mostly Anglo, conservative, and Republican were the first in line to cast ballots by mail or at early vote stations.  On Monday, October 18^th, the first day of early, in-person voting, 1,332 persons showed up at the Kingwood Library, a strongly Republican white area.  The same day just 588 people cast ballots at the Acres Homes Multi-Service Center in a heavily black and Democratic part of town.  That meant there were 2.26 Kingwood voters for every Acres Homes participant.  That pattern was evident all over the county for the first week of early voting, meaning Republican candidates were almost certainly building up a big lead in the mail and early vote ballots. 

Democratic candidates, including County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia, were understandably alarmed when these hard numbers were reported.  In a national election climate that is very difficult for Democratic candidates across the country, Harris County began to look like it flip back to a Republican sweep with the GOP winning every county-wide position as was the case from 1996 to 2006.  That is possible, but not likely in my view for several reasons. 

First, Bill White, while trailing statewide in every public survey, gives the Democrats a fairly strong to-of-the-ballot candidate here in his home county.  I think he will carry Harris County, which will provide some benefit to 80+ other Democrats listed on the ballot, but he is not going to generate anything like the party tide the Obama candidacy produced locally in 2008.    

Second, from speaking to numerous citizen groups across the county, I find a lot of interest from voters who do not want to vote a straight ticket this year in the judicial races.  I don’t discourage that interest because, in my opinion, there are superior candidates on both party lists, so ticket-splitting makes sense in 2010.  The bar association poll results and the Houston Chronicle endorsements are two of several indicators of the mixed partisan pattern of qualified candidates this year.

Third, there has been a bit less straight-ticket voting in recent midterm elections in Harris County compared to presidential election years.  In 2004 and 2008, an average of 62.9% of all voters voted a straight Democratic or Republican ticket.  In 2002 and 2006, the major party straight-ticket vote averaged 51.0%.  My guess is that the smaller electorate in non-presidential years is more knowledgeable about local offices and candidacies and thus less inclined to simply click on the straight-ticket option.  If that is in fact the case this year, it gives encouragement to the stronger candidates down-ballot irrespective of their party.

Finally, back to the early vote numbers.  As in-person voting has picked up across the county, the big Republican edge in the mail + early vote we saw in the first week has steadily eroded.  Yesterday there were 1,750 early voters at the Kingwood Library, but there were 1,549 voters at the Acres Homes Service Center.  Consultant Kyle Johnson’s breakdown of the early + mail ballots show that with nearly 380,000 votes in (which should be more than half the total vote cast this year), voters with a Democratic primary history now equal Republican primary history voters. 

To sum up, I still think Republican candidates have the wind at their back in Harris County, but the likelihood of a complete sweep at the courthouse has diminished in recent days.  With close contests likely, candidates should be scratching for every possible vote over the next 96 hours.

Dr. Richard Murray

Early voting trends in Harris County

Texas and Colorado led the nation in making it easy for people to cast in-person votes early (Oregon is the pioneer in early voting by mail).  In every election cycle we see more and more Texans taking advantage of the convenience of having a 12-day window prior to “election day” to register their choices. 

This year clearly continues that trend as the totals from the first four days of early voting become available from around the state.  In the mid-term election of 2006, about 1.5 million voters took advantage of early voting, and another 120,000 voted by mail, so about 36 percent of the total vote of 4.5 million that year was cast before the official election day of November 7.  We are on track to greatly exceed that number this year.  Based on numbers from the Secretary of State for the state’s 15 most populous counties, a total of 458,063 in-person ballots had been cast by the close of business yesterday, compared to 246,500 in 2006.  Another 92,876 mail ballots had been returned in these same counties, compared to 40,672 four years earlier.  If this trend holds we will have more than three million votes in the can before the polls open at 7am on November 2.  Obviously, we no longer have an election day in Texas, but rather a 15-day balloting period where the majority of voters will have done their civic duty well in advance of the traditional American day for voting.

This shift is even more evident in Harris County this year than elsewhere in Texas.  When the 37 early vote stations closed yesterday, we had 104,420 votes recorded, compared to just 35,070 in 2006.  So our early voting is up 200 percent over the 2006 level, compared to the rest of the state where the increase is less than 100 percent.  Projecting this trend out, we will likely have over 400,000 early voters this year in Harris County versus 171,000 in 2006.  Why are we running so far ahead of the state?  My guess is because of the well-publicized fire that destroyed most of our voting equipment.  County Clerk Beverly Kaufman and other public officials have been urging people to vote early this year because we might have longer lines than usual on November 2, due to having fewer eslate voting machines.  The message seems to have gotten through and has driven up not only the early vote, but also the requests for mail ballots which are about double the level of 2006. 

We are also seeing more early voting this year compared to 2006 because we have a more interesting election for governor with Houston’s former mayor, Bill White, challenging 10-year incumbent Rick Perry.  And the Tea Party movement reflects a higher than usual interest and intensity in this midterm election on the conservative and Republican side than was the case four years ago.  Early voting is up everywhere, but the greatest gains in number of voters are in the outer suburban areas like Tomball that are heavily Anglo and conservative.  

What does the shift from election day to early voting mean?  Specifically, does it increase overall turnout?  Does it benefit one party or the other?  Bob Stein at Rice University has done a good deal of research on the first question as more and more states are making it easier to early vote.  Generally, Professor Stein finds there is little net change in voter turnout in early vote states.  It seems that early voting just means those citizens who regularly cast ballots simply move up their voting day, which results in a drop in turnout on the second Tuesday in November when the regular polls open across the nation, largely cancelling out the gain at the beginning of the process.  There is no conclusive evidence on the second question of party advantage, but my guess is that early voting slightly benefits Democrats.  The Democratic Party has more problems turning out their voters compared to the Republican Party, so having a longer window to get-out-the-vote (GOTV) gives them an extra opportunity to get their base to the polls.  

What early voting does show is that the most intense voters cast their ballots early.  In the 2008 election that was the African American voters who cast early ballots in support of the first American nominated for president by a major party.  This year the passion is on the conservative and Republican side, and the early vote, which was strongly Democratic in Harris County in 2008, is going to swing back to the more usual pattern of giving Republicans a head start locally.  Does that doom the Democrats in Harris County?  We’ll speculate on that question in my next post. 

Dr. Richard Murray

Trends in early voting

Texas and Colorado led the nation in making it easy for people to cast in-person votes early (Oregon is the pioneer in early voting by mail).  In every election cycle we see more and more Texans taking advantage of the convenience of having a 12 day window prior to “election day” to register their choices. 

 

This year clearly continues that trend as the totals from the first four days of early voting become available from around the state.  In the mid-term election of 2006, about 1.5 million voters took advantage of early voting, and another 120,000 voted by mail, so about 36 percent of the total vote of 4.5 million that year was cast before the official election day of November 7^th.  We are on track to greatly exceed that number this year.  Based on numbers from the Secretary of State for the state’s 15 most populous counties, a total of 458,063 in-person ballots had been cast by the close of business yesterday, compared to 246,500 in 2006.  Another 92,876 mail ballots had been returned in these same counties, compared to 40,672 four years earlier.  If this trend holds we will have more than three million votes in the can before the polls open at 7AM on November 2^nd.  Obviously, we no longer have an election day in Texas, but rather a 15 day balloting period where the majority of voters will have done their civic duty well in advance of the traditional American day for voting.

 

This shift is even more evident in Harris County this year than elsewhere in Texas.  When the 37 early vote stations closed yesterday, we had 104,420 votes recorded, compared to just 35,070 in 2006.  So our early voting is up 200 percent over the 2006 level, compared to the rest of the state where the increase is less than 100 percent.  Projecting this trend out, we will likely have over 400,000 early voters this year in Harris County, versus 171,000 in 2006.  Why are we running so far ahead of the state?  My guess is because of the well publicized fire that destroyed most of our voting equipment.  County Clerk Beverly Kaufman and other public officials have been urging people to vote early this year because we might have longer lines than usual on November 2^nd, due to having fewer eslate voting machines.  The message seems to have gotten through and has driven up not only the early vote, but also the requests for mail ballots which are about double the level of 2006. 

 

We are also seeing more early voting this year compared to 2006 because we have a more interesting election for governor with Houston’s former mayor, Bill White, challenging 10-year incumbent Rick Perry.  And the Tea Party movement reflects a higher than usual interest and intensity in this midterm election on the conservative and Republican side than was the case four years ago.  Early voting is up everywhere, but the greatest  gains in number of voters are in the outer suburban areas like Tom Ball that are heavily Anglo and conservative.  

 

 

What does the shift from election day to early voting mean?  Specifically, does it increase overall turnout?  Does it benefit one party or the other?  Bob Stein at Rice University has done a good deal of research on the first question as more and more states are making it easier to early vote.  Generally, Professor Stein finds there is little net change in voter turnout in early vote states.  It seems that early voting just means those citizens who regularly cast ballots simply move up their voting day, which results in a drop in turnout on the second Tuesday in November when the regular polls open across the nation, largely cancelling out the gain at the beginning of the process.  There is no conclusive evidence on the second question of party advantage, but my guess is that early voting slightly benefits Democrats.  The Democratic Party has more problems turning out their voters compared to the Republican Party, so having a longer window to get-out-the-vote (GOTV) gives them an extra opportunity to get their base to the polls.  

 

What early voting does show is that the most intense voters cast their ballots early.  In the 2008 election that was the African American voters who cast early ballots in support of the first  American nominated for president by a major party.  This year the passion is on the conservative and Republican side, and the early vote, which was strongly Democratic in Harris County in 2008, is going to swing back to the more usual pattern of giving Republicans a head start locally.  Does that doom the Democrats in Harris County?  We’ll speculate on that question next week. 

Endorsements: Do They Matter?

On Sunday the Houston Chronicle issued a ringing endorsement of Bill White for governor of Texas.  This was expected, although perhaps not this early or with such enthusiasm.  But does it help the former mayor?  Do endorsements matter in modern American politics? 

When asked this question, I usually respond by saying endorsements are among the most over-rated events in political campaigns.  Voters are pretty independent these days, and usually rely on a wide range of factors in deciding how to cast their ballots, starting with their party identity.  That said, the answer is sometimes endorsements matter, and sometimes they do not.  What accounts for their effectiveness or ineffectiveness?  A short list would include the following:

Who is doing the endorsing?  Some sources have a lot of credibility, others very little or none.  Few politicians want to be endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan (David Duke being one exception), but most would like to get the support of Mothers against Drunk Driving.

Who are the voters or donors for whom the endorsement is relevant?  When Oprah Winfrey endorsed Barack Obama before the 2008 South Carolina Democratic Primary, her support helped bring African American women over to the lesser known U.S. Senator who was fighting Hillary Clinton for black female support in that critical election.

Was the endorsement expected?  When a Republican endorses a fellow Republican, that ain’t news.  But when Colin Powell breaks party ranks in October 2008 and males an eloquent case Senator Obama, rather than his friend Senator John McCain, that might actually sway some voters.  Ditto for Senator Joe Lieberman supporting Republican McCain in the same election. 

Does the endorsement bring money or other resources?  The Service Employees International Union’s endorsement was coveted in the 2009 Houston mayoral election because they back up their picks with serious money and can field dozens of campaign workers.

The SEIU went with Annise Parker over Gene Locke last year and their support helped her become the first openly gay mayor of a big city.

And what use does the favored candidate make of support from an endorsing group?  A tree felled in a deserted forest arguably makes no sound.  The mere fact that an endorsement is made does not assure that anyone who might be persuadable in an election will be aware of such. 

Taking these factors into account, how would I rate Sunday’s Houston Chronicle editorial backing Bill White?  Let’s go down the checklist.

Source:  The Houston Chronicle is the dominant daily newspaper in the second biggest media market in the state.  In previous surveys I have found that the paper has about a 2-1 positive impact on the twenty percent or so of voters who would be attentive to the endorsement, with the other 80 percent saying it would have no impact on their vote.

Target audience:  About 22 percent of the state’s voters reside in the Chronicle’s delivery area, so this is clearly a positive with the locals, but many of these folks had already formed a favorable opinion of Bill White during his years as mayor of Houston. 

Endorsement expected:  Absolutely.  This is a dog bites man story.  Conversely, if Governor Perry had won the backing of the former mayor’s hometown paper, that would have been a big story around the state as well as locally.

Side effects:  The Houston daily paper is delivered to hundreds of thousands households at the expense of the Hearst Corporation, so an endorsement automatically assures widespread distribution with follow-up pro-White editorials likely to come when early voting starts as well as election day, November 2, 2010. 

Use by the candidate?  Bill White doesn’t need to tout this expected endorsement much in the Houston media market where he is well known and favorably viewed.  What Mr. White really needs is to be able to fold the local paper’s endorsement into a statewide ad that shows all or most of the big metropolitan papers in his corner.  I expect the San Antonio Express-News will follow the Chronicle’s lead (both are Hearst papers and Bill White grew up in the Alamo City), as well as the Austin American-Statesman given the Governor’s unpopularity in the capital city where he received just 26% of the vote in November 2006. 

Much more important will be the Dallas Morning News, followed by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  The Metroplex is the largest media market in Texas, and Bill White is not well known there.  IF Mr. White gets both papers endorsements, that could be quite helpful in the most important local venue in Texas, and at the same time provide the basis for a powerful statewide ad.  But that is a mighty big IF.  The Dallas Morning News has not endorsed many Democrats since the days of Dolph Briscoe, and the Fort Worth paper usually goes with the GOP nominee as well, so keep a close eye on what they do.  Those endorsements could really matter. 

Dr. Richard Murray

Polls and the Texas Governor's Race

In the last week, four polls on the Texas governor race were released.  They suggest the race between Governor Rick Perry and former Houston Mayor Bill White may be tightening a bit.  Here are the surveys with the governor vote from all four averaged:

    Polling Firm                Perry %      White %    Other/Undecided %
                       
    Zogby……………..              44%        41%        15%

    Hill Research Consultants    42%        41%        17%

    Rasmussen…………..         50%        41%          9%

    Public Policy Polling..         48%        42%        10%

    Average………………          46%        41%        13%

How much stock should one place in these numbers?  Some, but don't bet the farm the November 2nd election will turn out this way.  Aside from the fact that we see some variance across the four published surveys with Perry's lead ranging from nine to just one point, there are inherent problems with pre-election polls if one is trying to project the actual outcome in an election more than 50 days away.  For one thing, voters have not yet been exposed to millions of dollars of ads building up or tearing down the contenders.  Both campaigns have largely held back from spending on the reasonable assumption that undecided or moveable voters would not begin to focus on the November election until after Labor Day.  Ads aside, things can and usually do happen over the last sixty days that will move voters one way or the other.

Such developments could benefit one or the other of the major contenders.  Some factors that should work to Governor Perry's benefit include the now obvious fact that the 2010 midterm election is going to be a tough one for Democrats across the country.  The generic national party vote now favors Republicans by from five to ten percent. That has to put some wind behind Rick Perry's back here in Texas, a state that is considerably more Republican than the nation as a whole.  On the other hand, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Texas Legislature will face a huge budget deficit in 2011 - a deficit that is building up on Governor Perry's watch.  How much something like this will, or will not matter to voters is very difficult to predict at this time.

Another unpredictable factor is the question of debates.  Will Governor Perry agree to debate Bill White?  So far he has turned down requests from various media to appear with the former Houston mayor, but that may change, particularly if the Perry campaign's internal polls show the race is getting close.  And if there is a debate, or debates, will it make any difference?  Governor Perry was widely acknowledged to have had a poor first debate performance earlier this year against primary opponents Kay Bailey Hutchison and Debra Medina, but he still got 51% of the vote a few weeks later.

So, sit back and enjoy the polls.  But keep in mind that voters decide elections, and many of us are still making up our minds about who should sit in the governor's office the next four years.      

Dr. Richard Murray

The Importance of Harris County in Texas Gubernatorial Elections: A Review of the Historical Patterns

When virtually all Harris County’s election gear burned in a mysterious early morning warehouse fire last weekend, that blaze also ignited quite a buzz about how this might affect the 2010 governor election.  The conventional wisdom is that Democrat Bill White will need both a big turnout locally and a sizable margin of victory here to unseat the ten-year Republican incumbent, Rick Perry.  Any disruption in the normal electoral process in Harris County, if such results in reduced turnout, is expected to benefit Governor Perry at Mr. White’s expense.  Before getting into that, I thought it might be useful to look at the role Harris County has placed in Texas governor elections since the Republican Party became a serious statewide threat to the long dominant Democrats in the 1970s.

The table below summarizes the vote for governor in Harris County in the last eight General Elections, starting in 1978.  The table reports the Harris County vote for the Democratic and Republican nominees as well as other candidates.  It also shows what percentage of the two-party vote the Democrat got in Harris County, and how that compared to their statewide percentage. 

Gubernatorial Vote Patterns in Harris County: 1978 – 2006

 

           ______Vote for Governor                     ___Dem % of Two-Party Vote__

Yr        Democrat     Republican     Other         Harris   Statewide   Difference

 

2006     203,102        215,150      161,196         48.6           43.2           +5.4

 

2002    280,077        355,293          5,974         44.1           40.9             +3.2

 

1998    183,045        350,309          3.089         34.3           31.4             +2.9

 

1994    290,118        348,507          3,337         45.4           46.2             - 0.8

 

1990    280,159         259,821       15,545          51.9           51.3             +0.6

 

1986    267,685        238,119          4,238          52.9           46.6             +6.3

 

1982    240,279         231,045        3,726          51.0           53.7             - 2.7

 

1978    167,814        190,728         1,874          46.8           49.6             - 2.8

 

These data show Harris County has been a competitive county in governor elections since 1978, excepting 1998 when Governor George W. Bush blew out an underfunded Democrat, Gary Mauro.

In 1978 and 1982, Republican nominees ran stronger in Harris County than they did statewide, despite the fact that in both years the Democratic nominees, John Hill (1978) and Mark White (1982) were local residents. 

Lately, Harris County has become more Democratic than the state as a whole.  In 2006, Democrat Chris Bell got just 43.2 percent of the two-party statewide vote, but took 48.6 percent in Harris County.  Still, Mr. Bell lost his home county to Rick Perry, so Bill White has to run considerably better than the last Democratic nominee if he is to come out of Harris County with a large enough lead to put the state into play. 

Looking at history, Bill White’s 2010 performance in Harris County can probably best be measured against Democrat Mark White’s (no relation) showing in 1986.  Twenty four years ago, Governor Mark White got about 53 percent of the vote locally, and carried the county by a little less than 30,000 votes.  Mark White did well locally because he got about 40 percent of the Anglo vote, 80 percent of the Hispanic vote, and over 95 percent of the African American vote.  If Bill White can repeat that performance with these local voter populations in 2010, he would carry Harris County by about 56-57 percent of the two-party vote because the Anglo vote share is significantly lower today than was the case in the mid-1980s.  Of course, there are a lot of other differences between 2010 and 1986, and most of those factors generally work to the benefit of Republicans in this election cycle.  That means Bill White has his work cut out for him to match or exceed Mark White’s performance a quarter-century ago.  In 62 days we’ll get some answers, if the county can rebuild its election infrastructure as promised by County Clerk Beverly Kaufman.     

Bill White's Play for Votes in Rural Areas and Small Cities in Texas

When President Barack Obama swung through Texas last week, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee was notably campaigning hundreds of miles away from the presidential venues of Austin and Dallas.  That was not accidental, of course.  Even in his decisive national victory over Senator John McCain in November 2008, the former senator from Illinois lost Texas by more than 11%.   Mr. Obama won all the big urban counties except Tarrant, and did pretty well, for a Democrat, among suburban voters, but he was crushed in the rural areas and small towns of Texas, unless they were majority Latino.  The former Houston mayor knows he must do dramatically better than Senator Obama did with these voters if he has any realistic chance of unseating the ten-year incumbent, Governor Rick Perry, less than 80 days from now.

But is that a realistic possibility?  President Obama is less popular in Texas today than was the case two years ago, and the national Democrats are bracing for a very tough election all across the country, so what chance does Bill White have of swimming against this tide with Texas voters outside big metropolitan areas?   Isn't Mr. White wasting his time in Midland, Abilene, Tyler, and places in between?

Not necessarily.  A review of recent non-presidential election years in Texas shows there is still a lot of non-party voting in many of the smaller counties across Texas.  Voting is much more personal in these counties, compared to the cities and suburbs where one party or the other wins all or most of the contests locally. 

But can Bill White, born and reared in San Antonio, schooled in Boston and Austin, and a resident of Houston and (briefly) Washington, D.C., break into the rural and small city vote across Texas?  He is, after all, running against a man raised in and elected to the state legislature from Haskell County, a farming and ranching area near Abilene.  Isn't the former mayor on a fool's errand in challenging Governor Perry on his home turf?

I don't think so.  This is an uphill slog to be sure, but Bill White has an opportunity to make headway in much of fly-over Texas for several reasons.  First and foremost is that Governor Perry has let a lot of weeds grow in his old political backyard since he decamped for Austin after first winning statewide election as Commissioner of Agriculture 20 years ago.  Through a combination of neglect and pushing policies like the Trans-Texas Corridor that were deeply unpopular with voters outside major metropolitan areas, Perry has lost a lot of ground with the people who propelled him into public office. 

A good illustration of that can be found in Haskell County, Rick Perry's home for more than 30 years, four years ago.  Major Republican statewide candidates like Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Lt. Governor David Dewhurst won Haskell County handily, but look at the local vote for governor in November 2006:

        Chris Bell (Democrat)………….      572    (33.0%)
        Rick Perry (Republican)………..     539    (31.1%)
        Carol Keeton Strayhorn (Ind.)….     465    (26.8%)
        Kinky Friedman (Ind.)………….      150      (8.7%)
       
When a hometown candidate gets less than a third of the vote from people who know him intimately, something is afoot.   Chris Bell from Houston, under-funded and unknown in Haskell County, was still able to run ahead of Rick Perry.   This suggests there is an opening for Bill White on this turf, and it is one he has been working hard for nearly two years.

When Bill White first ran for public office in 2002 and 2003, his successful mayoral race showed me that he is a tireless worker who concedes no sector of the electorate to his opponents, and that he can raise the money to engage in the expensive air-wars that dominate campaigns in major metropolitan markets.  The pattern has repeated itself in the governor election.  So while the Governor has traveled extensively out of state and mostly visits big cities in Texas, Mr. White is trying to tap into that discontent in rural areas, towns, and small cities and turn Mr. Perry's incumbency into a liability rather than an asset this fall.   That alone will not be enough for a Democrat to win in a very red state in a very good year for Republicans, but it's a good place to start.

Next time, we'll visit Bill White's home county, Harris, where in 2006 Governor Perry reversed the favor and defeated Chris Bell in his place of residence.   Bill White would like to win Haskell County, but he absolutely must carry Harris County this time around.  Can he do it?  And by the margin needed statewide?  Two good questions to address next time.  

Dr. Richard Murray

Redistricting in the City of Houston: Part Two

A few weeks ago I did an introductory piece on the history of city council redistricting in Houston.  Let's turn to the present situation as a major new redistricting effort is getting underway.

For the first time in over 30 years, Houston's City Council is increasing in size next year, with two new single-member districts being added as required by a deal the city struck with the U.S. Department of Justice back in 1979.  When the last redrawing of council districts occurred in 2001, there were about 1.9 million people in Houston, so each of the nine district member represented about 212,000 people on average.  The current census is expected to show more than 2.2 million folks now live in the city, but with eleven districts as opposed to the current nine, that means the realigned districts will actually include slightly fewer people than the existing units.  (Council districts don't have to be exactly equal in population, but can only deviate by plus or minus five percent from the average for the entire city)

So we know we will have 11 districts, and they will average having about 210,000 people as counted by the 2010 Census.  What we do not know, of course, is where existing city council will end up placing the new districts next year while shifting the boundaries of the existing units.  Some of the major decisions the council will have to address include the following issues:

(1)    What to do with District E?  If you look a the current districts, most are reasonably compact with the notable exception of District E which includes the Clear Lake area in far southeast Houston and Kingwood in far northeast Houston.  These areas are more than 30 miles apart, and are largely connected by a narrow corridor in east Harris County that Houston annexed when it constructed the canal bringing water down from Lake Houston.  To a lot of folks District E looks like a classic gerrymander and there are occasional calls to break it up, which will doubtlessly be voiced when council redraws the map next year.  My guess is E survives, because there are good reasons for the present configuration.  While far apart geographically, Clear Lake and Kingwood are quite similar in racial, ethnic and socioeconomic makeup.  If you split them up and attach Kingwood and Clear Lake to the parts of the city closest to get the population needed to justify a seat, you would be putting the very white, conservative and Republican Kingwood in a district with northeast Houston that is very black, liberal, and Democratic.  That would be one hell of a district to represent, a fact known to Council Member Mike Sullivan from Kingwood who will likely not look kindly on such a realignment.  And at the other end, if Clear Lake is severed from Kingwood, it would have to be attached to the heavily Hispanic District I now represented by James Rodriquez.  I doubt my former student would be any more thrilled by that prospect than Mike Sullivan will be by the opportunity to represent Kashmere Gardens and Fifth Ward.  Since both Sullivan and Rodriquez are not term-limited in 2011, look for them to lead the fight to preserve the Kingwood/Clear Lake connection.


(2)    Can Montrose be excised from District D?  When the original council districts were drawn in 1979, Montrose was placed in District C, a mostly white area that included Rice University, Braes Bayou, and Meyerland.  The district tended to elect progressive white members like Lance Lalor and Vince Ryan, and the gay community is Montrose had considerable clout in C at that time.  But Montrose was moved out of  C some years ago, possibly because the then Gay/Lesbian Caucus leader, Annise Parker, ran against incumbent Vince Ryan.  Whatever the reason, Montrose has been attached to D for 20 years, a district dominated by African American voters who have been predictably electing black council members not dependant on white votes from Montrose.  The GLBT Caucus would very much like to dissolve the Montrose/D connection, and get back into C again.  Unlike the splitting of Kingwood and Clear Lake, I expect this will happen because of pressure from the GLBT, plus the fact that no returning council member will likely oppose such action (Ann Clutterbuck from C is term-limited out in 2011), and, last but not least, the presence of longtime Montrose resident Annise Parker in the mayor's seat on City Council.

(3)    Can a third black district be created as many African American leaders expect?  Yes, if the political will to do so exists on council next year.  Because the black population registers and votes in high numbers, and usually supports credible African American candidates, it will be relatively easy to draw a new District J or K that will be dominated by black voters.

(4)    Can a third Hispanic-dominated district be added to H and I with the addition of new seats?  Maybe, but it will require a lot more effort than adding a third black seat.  My preliminary review shows only one viable path to this outcome.  Does the Hispanic community, now more than 40% of the entire city population but less than 15% of the citywide voters have the clout to get this done?  Members Ed Gonzalez and James Rodriquez have some heavy lifting coming up next year.

(5)    Can the growing Asian communities add a second district to existing F they can have a good chance of winning?  Not in my opinion.  These communities are simply not large enough, nor sufficiently compact to become a decisive force in a second council district.
Best strategy here is to protect their influence in F, not to overreach by dividing it into two of the realigned districts.

(6)    Will the Democratic/Republican balance on City Council shift?  City elections are officially non-partisan, but over the last 20 years most office-holders' party affiliations are known.  The present districts are represented by five Republicans from A, C, E, F, and G.  Democrats represent B, D, H, and I.  At a minimum, expect the 11 realigned districts to elect at least 6 Democrats, mainly because the Anglo population in the city, which provides the great majority of votes for Republicans on council, will be smaller in absolute numbers in 2011 than it was in 2001.  Meantime, the 2010 Census will count more than 350,000 additional black or Hispanic residents within the city compared to ten years ago.    

Dr. Richard Murray

Term Limits in the City of Houston, Part I: How We Got Them

Miya Shay stopped by UH earlier today to talk about the new term limits proposal a committee has forwarded to city council for possible presentation to voters this November.  Since citizens may have to deal with this issue in a few months, I thought some background information on term limits generally and their history in Houston was a good idea.  We’ll cover that ground today, and address the new proposal next week.

 

On background, term limits is as old as political democracy.  When the ancient Greeks in Athens began to experiment with government based on citizen participation about 2500 years ago, one of the principles they utilized was annual terms for powerful political positions.  The Greek democratic effort ultimately failed, but when modern democracies emerged in the late 1700s and 1800s, the concept of term limits was part of the discussion.  For example, the framers of our 1787 Constitution considered term limits, but decided against putting them into our basic governing document.  The 22^nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1951 restricting presidents to two four year terms, but members of Congress and U. S. Supreme Court justices continue to be unlimited in tenure.

 

Nationally, a push to impose term limits gathered steam in the 1980s, often pushed by conservatives and Republicans unhappy with the long-standing Democratic control of the U.S. House of Representatives.  The Constitution, as noted, prevented changing congressional terms short of adding a 28^th Amendment, but promoters had success at the state level, particularly in places like California.  In the Golden State, citizen initiatives enabled term-limiters to go around the legislature in Sacramento and impose term limits by direct vote of the people.  The Texas Constitution, however, does not allow citizen initiatives, so imposing them here, as in Washington D.C., would require a constitutional amendment.  That takes a two-thirds vote of the Texas Legislature to bring before the people, and the legislators are not about to create a process that could force all of them out of office in a few years.  So, we don’t have term limits in Texas, much to the pleasure of ten-year governor Rick Perry, nor are we going to get such in my lifetime. 

 

But we do have them here in Houston, where our mayor, city controller, and council members can serve only three two-year terms, total, in their lifetime.  Why here?  Because our city charter, approved back in the early 1940s, does allow citizen initiatives like the State of California has, and that was the process that produced term limits here 20 years ago.  What set the local term limits movement off was the election, and reelection of Mayor Kathy Whitmire in the 1980s.  After she won a fourth term in 1987 and a fifth term in 1989, opponents of the mayor began looking for a way to get rid of her since they seemed unable to find a candidate who could beat her at the polls.  A leader of the anti-Kathy folks was longtime conservative activist Clymer Wright.  Mr. Wright and friends got the “three twos” on the ballot and passed it, only to have city council effectively neuter the measure by a separate charter amendment that permitted office-holders to get around term limits and qualify for the ballot if they could gather enough signatures from registered voters.  Veteran council members like Ben Reyes and Eleanor Tinsley were able to do this, so Term Limits1 had little practical effect in the early 1990s. 

 

Meantime, city voters decided to limit Mayor Whitmire in November 1991 when she ran third behind Bob Lanier and Sylvester Turner in a 6^th bid for reelection.  But even with Ms. Whitmire gone, Clymer Wright still pushed for another vote on a new and improved term limits rule that would close all loopholes.  Term Limits2 passed, and began forcing city office holders like Ms. Tinsley and Mr. Reyes out in 1995. 

 

The first mayoral victim of term limits was the popular Bob Lanier, who completed his third term in 1997 and had to step down.  There is considerable irony here, because the backers of term limits originally promoted it to get rid of Kathy Whitmire, but instead cut short the elected tenure of Mr. Lanier, whom many conservatives wished to keep in office.  Not only did term limits misfire for conservatives in bagging the wrong mayor, but by forcing Bob Lanier out, the door was opened for Lee Brown to move back to Houston and run for mayor, and win, in 1997.  This was not at all what the conservative promoters of term limits had in mind.  Another case of the law of unintended consequences, or beware of what you wish for, or answered prayers, etc., etc..  

 

So now, 15 years after tough term limits went into effect, there is a push to change them.  An appointed committee has brought forth its recommendations, which council will shortly consider.  We’ll take up the new proposal in an entry next week.