Texas Monthly article on Governor's Race

Why make Mike Levy any richer when you can read this free through midnight?

http://www.texasmonthly.com/csc/9563feature.php

I can't say I liked that article that much however. I think he gives Kinky too much ink. The only thing that's encouraging in there is that the republicans are eating their own on immigration. I hope they stuff themselves on it.

Oh and let me add that Mike Levy is a putz.

Sonia

pain, here's the main points (1) Perry's a complete tool but he'll probably win despite the fact that he's fucked Texas schoolchildren good and hard while also bankrupting our state government, (2) "Nobody in the business of politics gives Kinky Friedman a chance to win" and Kinky can't pull off an upset like Jesse Ventura because "the rules in Minnesota are far different from those here," for example "Minnesota has instant voter registration, so young male wrestling fans could walk into the polls on Election Day and vote for their guy" and "public financing of state elections" so "the conventional wisdom is that he will end up in the single digits," (3) c4n3p is a harpy and yet it remains unclear whether she or Bell will emerge as Perry's chief rival, and (4) the future of the Republican party looks fractious while the future of the Democratic Party looks brighter.

Here are excerpts most relevant to the election so you don't have to read the godawful article yourself:

The biggest unknown in the race—and the discussion that generates the most disagreement among insiders—is whether Strayhorn or Bell will ultimately emerge as the main challenger to Perry.... The argument is really a clash of two different views about what matters most in politics.... Those who argue for party ID would say that the nominee of a political party starts out with most of its base and, while suffering some defections to other candidates, retains most of that base vote in the end. The biggest problem for independent candidates is that they enter a race with no identifying label, no clues to give voters about their political leanings. (For instance, if Strayhorn were running as a Democrat, voters would assume that she is pro-choice. As an independent, no assumptions are warranted.) It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that most independents start with zero votes and have to win every one they get. This is why Perry strategists believe Bell will ultimately outpoll Strayhorn. In his profile of Bell in the June 2006 issue of this magazine <“He’s Sisyphus, and He Approves This Message”>, Sam Gwynne reported that Mike Baselice, Perry’s pollster, believes Bell will hold on to 75 percent of the Democrats’ base vote, which translates to 26 percent of the total vote. Throw in some independents and he’s in the thirties, within striking distance of Perry’s 40 percent. If Baselice is even close to being right, Strayhorn has no chance....

Strayhorn is not at all a typical independent candidate. She has been a statewide Republican officeholder, and she had enough of a following in 2002 that she led the entire GOP ticket, finishing some 246,000 votes ahead of the next-best vote getter, a fellow named Rick Perry. Her dustups with the governor are bound to have caused some erosion in her support among Republicans, but she remains much better positioned than a Democrat to win the votes of fiscal conservatives who are irate about the new business tax (notwithstanding the fact that the property tax cuts are projected to exceed the revenue from the new taxes by $1.7 billion in the first year and $2.5 billion the next year, which makes the effect on the state budget an overall tax decrease). ...The Strayhorn campaign’s expectation is that she and Bell will remain fairly close together until she starts running TV ads. Then Bell will drop off the radar screen and Democrats will care so much about beating Perry that they will forsake their party and … yes, it does sound a little too facile. What’s missing from this analysis is Strayhorn’s own vision for Texas. Her message cannot be exclusively negative. It has been obvious for at least two years that she was going to run against Perry, and she has attacked him relentlessly during that time. But her weapon has been a shotgun; she fires scattershot blasts at the governor’s toll road program, his “pork-barrel spending” for economic development, his new business tax, and the $40 billion growth of the state budget during his watch. At the same time, she assails him for failing to spend enough on teacher pay raises and children’s health insurance. Sometimes she’s an anti-taxer, sometimes she’s an anti-spender, sometimes she’s a spender. She needs to focus her message, to position herself as unalterably opposed to the new “income tax” (as anti-tax conservatives are describing the business tax—which it effectively is, for many professionals) but at the same time concerned about the fate of public schools. ...

The GOP is divided between hard-liners (English only, secure the border, employer sanctions, no path to citizenship for illegals) and middle grounders (work permits, path to citizenship). The danger for the Republicans is that if the hard-liners win, their attitude may be viewed by Latinos as racist. And much of the effort in recent years to woo Latino voters, which both Bush and Perry have done with considerable success, could go down the drain. The one thing the Republicans cannot afford to do in this state is awaken the so-called sleeping giant, the Hispanic nonvoter.... Anyone who follows politics knows about the effort by school-choice advocate James Leininger to defeat five GOP lawmakers, vouchers opponents all, in the March primary election. The final tally: almost $2.5 million spent, two down, three still standing. The split between the traditional conservatives and the activists is likely to get worse following the primary victory in a Houston state Senate race by radio talk show host Dan Patrick, an outspoken fiscal conservative who could play the role of enforcer on the Senate floor. Republicans need look no further than the state Democratic party to see the risk of these purges. By making their party inhospitable to moderates, Democrats conceded the mainstream to Republicans. Don’t think that the same fate can’t eventually befall Republicans.