Bill White eagerly watches Perry-Hutchison battle in Texas
From The Washington Post:
The eyes of Texas are on Tuesday's Republican gubernatorial primary between Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. And that's just how former Houston mayor Bill White likes it.
White is heavily favored to emerge as the Democratic nominee -- he faces free-spending hair-care magnate Farouk Shami -- and is seen by both state and national observers as the party's first real chance of breaking the vise grip that Republicans have had on the state's top office since George W. Bush unseated Democratic Gov. Ann Richards in 1994.
That White spent all his rhetorical fire on Perry, not Hutchison, speaks to the conventional wisdom that the governor will win the GOP nomination -- either on Tuesday or in an April 13 runoff. (Polling shows Hutchison trailing Perry by double digits, with little-known third-party candidate Debra Medina winning between 15 and 20 percent.)
A Perry victory, White and his fellow Democrats believe, make it possible to pull off what would be a major upset with wide-ranging implications for the next decade. Texas is slated to gain as many as four congressional seats after the 2010 Census, and the next governor will have significant sway over where the new districts lie and how they break down demographically.
White's theory of the case against Perry is that while he has run a brilliant primary race against Hutchison -- emphasizing his stalwart support for states' rights and other conservative hot-button issues -- the governor's strong focus on the ideological right will alienate the critical independent voters .
"Rick Perry has run a campaign to try and get 51 percent of those votes, representing a small fraction of the population of the state," White said. "He divides Texans into groups and plays them off against one another."
The eyes of Texas are on Tuesday's Republican gubernatorial primary between Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. And that's just how former Houston mayor Bill White likes it.
White is heavily favored to emerge as the Democratic nominee -- he faces free-spending hair-care magnate Farouk Shami -- and is seen by both state and national observers as the party's first real chance of breaking the vise grip that Republicans have had on the state's top office since George W. Bush unseated Democratic Gov. Ann Richards in 1994.
That White spent all his rhetorical fire on Perry, not Hutchison, speaks to the conventional wisdom that the governor will win the GOP nomination -- either on Tuesday or in an April 13 runoff. (Polling shows Hutchison trailing Perry by double digits, with little-known third-party candidate Debra Medina winning between 15 and 20 percent.)
A Perry victory, White and his fellow Democrats believe, make it possible to pull off what would be a major upset with wide-ranging implications for the next decade. Texas is slated to gain as many as four congressional seats after the 2010 Census, and the next governor will have significant sway over where the new districts lie and how they break down demographically.
White's theory of the case against Perry is that while he has run a brilliant primary race against Hutchison -- emphasizing his stalwart support for states' rights and other conservative hot-button issues -- the governor's strong focus on the ideological right will alienate the critical independent voters .
"Rick Perry has run a campaign to try and get 51 percent of those votes, representing a small fraction of the population of the state," White said. "He divides Texans into groups and plays them off against one another."
posted by Sid Cottingham | 6:37 AM
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