Looks like we won’t have Betty Brown — you remember Betty Brown — to kick around anymore. She lost her primary race to Lance Gooden. Gooden, a former aide to Brown, is under 30. Sources tell me he is not a teabagger and ran as a “moderate.” After a glance at his web site, I’m not sure what makes him a moderate. Brown ran against Obama and lost. I don’t see any reason why Brown could not request a recount, but it would behoove her and her citizens if she just goes away. She lost by 183 votes out of a total 17,985 votes cast.
If you think that’s a small margin of victory, look at the margin in the Democratic primary for HD146. Boris Miles beat Al Edwards by 11 votes. That’s less than the 16 vote margin that made Hubert Vo the first Vietnamese American state representative in Texas. A recount is likely.
The big story, aside from Betty Brown, is the outcome of the gubernatorial primaries. Republicans chose as their gubernatorial candidate the incumbent, secessionist Rick Perry. Yes, when Perry suggested secession, he brought plenty of disdain and scorn upon the state. Commentators around the nation didn’t care for any facts of background. No, they didn’t care that he was elected with only 39% of the vote.
In the Republican primary, Perry just barely avoided a runoff. Hutchison blew what one poll showed as a 25 point lead.
When John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, everyone knew Hutchison wanted to run for governor of Texas. I was shocked she was not McCain’s running mate. She’s qualified, unlike Palin. And a run for VP would raise her profile nationally. If she won, fantastic for her. If she lost, she could use her newfound national base to fundraise and to run against Perry. I wondered how many people McCain asked before he got to Palin. Had Hutchison turned McCain down? And what happened? Perry, backed by Palin, beat Hutchison, backed by Daddy Bush and Dick Cheney.
Republicans want Hutchison to maintain her Senate seat, but I just don’t see Hutchison holding on to her seat in the Senate through the remainder of her term. She conceded extremely early in the evening and immediately endorsed Perry. Her retirement is imminent. And her legacy is tarnished.
Hutchison’s loss may be Bill White’s gain. Hutchison’s backers, be it with votes or money, may be tired of Perry’s decade as governor. Perry has presided over the decline of Texas, which now is near the bottom of most metrics of a state’s well-being including teen pregnancy, number of uninsured, doctors per capita, home ownership, persons below the poverty line, just to name a few.
White won over 75% of the vote, making the Democratic gubernatorial primary look like one of his campaigns for reelection to mayor of Houston. What’s more, one of his primary opponents, who spent at least $8.5 million on the campaign. In his victory speech, White took the campaign straight to Perry.
The Democratic Governors Association is all over this race and you should be too:
From: Nathan Daschle, Executive Director, Democratic Governors Association
To: Political reporters, interested parties
RE: Why Democrats Can Win Texas
Texas conjures up all sorts of bad associations for national Democrats. Land of George W. Bush. Tom DeLay’s gerrymandered Congressional map. No statewide wins for more than a decade. So what makes us think that our party has an unparalleled opportunity to strike deep in GOP territory?
Bill White is an ideal candidate.
In a toxic climate for incumbents, former Houston Mayor Bill White will run as an outsider who can bring people together. In a tough economy, his business background and proven record creating jobs appeal to Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans alike. He’s a conservative fiscal manager who cut tax rates five times while in office and balanced the budget. Politically, he scores high on the most important factors: He is polling within single digits of the incumbent governor, despite relatively low name ID. He has the resources to change that, with $5.4 million in the bank and fundraising that outpaced both Perry and Hutchison. He’s very popular and won his re-elections with an average of 88 percent of the vote.
Rick Perry is strikingly vulnerable.
During his long, brutal primary, Perry has sprinted to the far right – going so far as to suggest that Texas secede from the United States. No incumbent governor in the country has experienced a primary as long or expensive as Perry. Polling in the days before the race showed that if Perry emerges without a runoff, it will be only by the skin of his teeth. If there is a runoff, Perry will have to spend millions more and be further damaged. In fact, while Perry has solidified his support among the far right, his support among general election voters has significantly eroded in the last year. In a PPP poll from a year ago, Perry’s fave/unfaves were 41/48. This month, PPP showed he’s down to 33/50.[1]
Last time Perry won, more than three out of five Texans wanted someone else as governor. There is good reason that Texas voters are rejecting Perry, a career politician, who for the past 25 years who has failed to notch any major accomplishments. To the contrary, he has failed to make life better for the millions of hardworking families trying to get ahead, whether it’s because tuition rates at state colleges are going up by 82 percent, because Texas has one of the highest high school dropout rates in the country or because the unemployment rate is higher than it’s been in decades.
The DGA will play in Texas.
The Democratic Governors Association is expanding the playing field deep into Republican territory in this election cycle. For the first time in our history, the DGA is committed to Texas – a commitment we have already demonstrated with a $500,000 contribution to the White campaign. In fact, Texas joins the four other biggest states in the country – California, Florida, Illinois and New York – as a place where Democrats have good odds of delivering a victory in November.
The stakes are high in Texas.
It’s hard to overstate the long-term ramifications of the Texas gubernatorial race. Texas is poised to pick up four Congressional seats in redistricting, and the governor has a major role to play in drawing the lines. We know in painful detail how Texas Republicans will approach redistricting because Tom DeLay’s gerrymandering last decade was just a warmup. In a stunningly frank admission, national Republicans have stated that they believe they can gerrymander 30 House seats by winning governors races,[2] and Texas is the biggest prize of all. The significance of the Texas gubernatorial race is layered. While Texas could be in play in the 2012 presidential race, the changes that will take place this November in Texas and around the country will shape our national political landscape for a generation to come.
TX-22 has problems. It already has the most conservative member of the House representing it. His opponent for November, who will have a D beside her name, is not a Democrat. Follow that link if you want to learn more, but I’d advise against doing so. All you need to know is one word: LaRouche. I plan to avoid covering this candidate and this race, barring some sort of Betty Brown-like incident.
On the Republican side, the Tea Party proved highly ineffective. None of them forced a runoff let alone run outright against any sitting Republican members of Congress.
In other interesting races around the state, Rick Green has made the Republican runoff for the Texas Supreme Court. You may remember Green from the infomercial recorded in his Capitol office or his punching Patrick Rose in the face on election day in 2006. You may remember Patrick Rose as the alter ego of Mark Strama. I have yet to be convinced that they’re different people.
In the Republican primary in Hubert Vo’s district, a Vietnamese candidate collected 1,000 of 4,824 votes cast. His supporters could easily be the deciding factor in the runoff. That’s a lot of votes for someone with such a horrifying web site. To those who actually click that link, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The primary also revealed some possible racism based on candidates’ names. As Jonathan Bernstein rightly notes, primary ballots are long. Very long. Voters are going to know who very few of the candidates are. I think I’ve met less than 10% of the judicial candidates on my ballot. I had no idea who most of them are, and I’m an extremely high-information voter.
On the Republican side, Railroad Commissioner Victor Carrillo’s loss is likely due to anti-Hispanic sentiment. The same may have led to Harris County Tax Assessor Leo Vasquez’s loss. But is the same anti-Hispanic sentiment in effect among Democratic voters as well?
When Harris County went for Obama, we saw an anti-”uncommon name” bias exposed itself in the judicial races. By “uncommon,” the Chronicle means names that don’t sound “American.” Ashish Mahendru had the worst encounter with this bias. He was one of four Democratic judicial candidates not elected in the near-sweep of the judicial races in Harris County. the others were Mekisha Murray, Andres Pereira, and Goodwille Pierre.
Martha has a good explanation for the seeming anti-Hispanic vote in this year’s Harris County Democratic primary:
Some folks with Latino surnames who were on the losing end of the vote in Harris: Linda Chavez Thompson, Hector Uribe, Larry Hinojosa, Anthony Referente, Javier Valenzuela, Sandra Pubchara-Munoz, Robert Cardenas, Raymond Sanchez, Jr. There were some exceptions. Julia Maldonado is in a runoff. Mary Conneally Acosta won her race. I’m probably missing some folks in both categories – it’s a long ballot! Juliet Stipeche lost her race – she’s Latina, but without a Latina last name.
I suspect what happened here is what usually happens in Harris County – Latino voters turned out in extremely low numbers. African American turnout was probably high, and some of the contested races had an African American and a Latino.
I think that’s a reasonable explanation. Also, maybe voters just preferred the other candidate. I didn’t vote for Linda Chavez-Thompson. Neither she nor her opponent Ronnie Earle had anything resembling a campaign, at least that I could see. Chavez-Thompson had the support of many people and organizations I respect including Burnt Orange Report. Capital Area Asian American Democrats backed Earle. When people asked me who to vote for in the race, I said either were good. When I finally decided who to back, I backed Earle. I was more familiar with him from his prosecution of Tom DeLay and Chavez-Thompson apparently never gave a statement to the League of Women Voters for their voter guidebook. I’ll gladly support Chavez-Thompson for the general election, unlike the candidate for TX-22.
Congratulations to Gordon Quan, who easily won his election with over 80% of the vote.
Quan served six years on the Houston City Council. When asked why he appeared to be headed to such a convincing victory, Quan said, “Even though I left council four years ago, people still remember the work I did and have a favorable opinion of me.”
Quan said he will continue to focus on the issues of homelessness, immigration reform and criminal justice as he campaigns for the general election.
Quan has a tough race ahead against Ed Emmett. Please, no hurricanes.
- Justin Gillenwater
2010 Campaign, Democratic Party, Economy, Education, Environment, Healthcare, Immigration, Justin Gillenwater, Republicans, Texas | 3 Comments »