Concerned Citizens

We’ve all heard the phrase about Texas weather, “if you don’t like it now, just wait a little bit and it’ll change.” This primary season the same can be said about Texas politics. What usually is a pretty bland part of the Texas election cycle has been anything but this year. Starting with the governor’s race on the Republican side and continuing into the same race on the Democratic side we’ve had nothing but fun during the period leading up to early voting starting this Tuesday, Feb. 16th. So with all the fun how is this primary really shaping out?

Starting on the Republican side Gov. Rick Perry appears to be headed to a third victory in the primary. With the latest poll conducted by several major Texas newspapers out, Perry leads the pack at 45 percent, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison at 29 percent and former Wharton County Republican chair Debra Medina at 17 percent. 8 percent of those polled are undecided and the poll has a margin of error of 4.5 percent. It’s pretty evident Perry will win the primary but a bigger question is if he’ll win it outright and avoid a run-off. With that small of an undecided pool and with that margin of error there’s a pretty good chance he’ll pull it off.

According to Jason Embry of the Austin American-Statesman, the poll was conducted Feb. 2-10 before Medina made her controversial statements in a radio interview with conservative talk show host Glenn Beck. During the interview Beck asked if Medina if she was a “9/11 truther” and believed the federal government might have had a role in the tragic attack. The answer Medina gave was anything but open ended and set herself up for attacks from both Perry and Hutchison as well as putting doubts in voter’s minds about her validity as a candidate.

“I think some very good questions have been raised in that regard. There are some very good arguments, and I think the American people have not seen all of the evidence there. So I haven’t taken a position on that,” said Medina during the interview. The answer was about as ambiguous as Sen. Hutchison’s was about her position on Roe v. Wade during the first gubernatorial debate in Dallas. Personally I don’t put any stock in Medina’s answer and chalk it up to campaign inexperience. The problem is it gave the other two campaigns an opportunity to take shots at her during a very critical period  of the campaign.

It’s really a shame for her campaign since Medina had actually been gaining some momentum after each televised debate. Once considered a long shot, Medina had been able to assert herself as a viable candidate by presenting herself as “the adult in the room” during both of the debates while Perry and Hutchison took shots at each other. While Medina really had no chance in winning or entering a run-off, her rise took votes away from Perry that could force the incumbent governor into a run-off with Hutchison.

Now the chances of that run-off are starting to dwindle as some conservative voters are possibly moving away from Medina and back to Perry in a race where each candidate has been working hard to present themselves as the most conservative of the bunch. Should Perry be able to avoid a run-off it starts to set up the campaign for the general election where Perry would most likely face former Houston Mayor Bill White.

White has been in his own interesting race with hair care magnate Farouk Shami of Houston. When White first entered the race in late November after Tom Schieffer pulled out of the race right before Thanksgiving and encouraged White to enter. With White’s entry into the race, both Kinky Friedman and Hank Gilbert exited and moved to the Ag Commissioner race. However, Shami stayed with a promise to personally spend up to $10 million on the race.

Shami’s candidacy has proven to be an interesting one, starting with a bit of controversy over what religion he practiced. During the only debate between the two candidates Shami continued to create controversy with promises he made, including a vow to pay Texas $10 million if he didn’t create 100,000 jobs during his term as governor. Recently Shami had his own 9/11 controversy by also leaving doubt about whether the federal government was involved or not.

In a recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll White was leading Shami by 39 points with White polling at the magic 50 percent to Shami at 11 percent. That poll was conducted before Shami made his controversial 9/11 statements so it’s unclear what effect those statements might have made on Shami’s results. With White polling at 50 percent it’s probably safe to say that White will forego a run-off after the March 2nd primary.

So it’s almost safe to say at this point that we’ll see Perry and White locked in a battle from March 2nd to the general election in November. I would go into more detail about how that race could shape out but it would probably be good to save that for another blog entry. I can say at this point that for Perry to win in November he will have to change his campaign tactics and start a move to the middle, something that may cause issue in the Republican Party. White is safely in the middle at this point and independents are most likely going to decide the race this year in November.

But more about that another time.