The lowdown on the recent elections in the Lone Star State
“And he sticks by his guns – and you know how I feel about guns,” wrote Sarah Palin in her letter endorsing Texas Governor Rick Perry for re-election in early 2009. Liberal Texans groaned at the thought of their most despised national politician standing arm in arm with George W. Bush’s incompetent successor as governor.
Governor Perry is the longest serving governor in the history of Texas, having served since Bush’s 2000 resignation from the office. Perry’s push for an unprecedented third four-year term has sane Texans convulsing at the thought that his brand of insipid cowboy leadership will hold the state back for a few more years. For instance, changes are much needed regarding rapacious insurance companies, improving school financing for our majority-minority schoolchildren, action against industrial plants making Texas the most polluted state in America, and insurance for the 25 per cent of Texans which have no access to health care – the highest in America.
This year, however, things were meant to change. Mainstream country club conservative, U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, was to ride out her massive popularity to defeat Perry in a Republican primary, bringing crossover moderate and Democratic voters to the election to throw out the hated Perry. Then at last the state would be under still conservative but more solution-oriented management. She even had the support of Dick Cheney and the Bush family.
Except her victory never took place. Perry landslided her by over twenty points on 2nd March 2010, in what was supposed to be the fabled Republican civil war between the “establishment” and the “tea bag wing”. Why? To answer this we have to look at the quirks, oddities, and hilarities that make up the politics of the US’ second largest state.
In a state where Democrats have not won a state election since 1994, the only prominent Democrat of any stature was Bill White, the mayor of Houston – America’s fourth largest city. A competent local politician, he astutely handled the disastrous effects two hurricanes and settled the exodus of tens of thousands of New Orleans’s evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, also raising the city’s stature and taking on the chemical plants in America’s most polluted city. White, who served in the Clinton Cabinet, wanted to return to Washington by running to replace Senator Hutchison when she resigned to stand for election as governor.
Rick Perry decided to make things difficult. Around the time of the Palin endorsement, he decided to stick to the Republican base rather than play to the middle. He “rejected” parts of the stimulus package, denounced the bank bailout Hutchison voted for, and propagated the myth that Texas could secede from the Union unilaterally (and we just might, dang it!). This endeared him to the citizens which populate the majority of Texas Republican primary voters and the embryonic ‘Tea Party’ movement. Perry became nationally famous as a conservative leader with the Tea Party from the start.
When the former cheerleader saw her poll numbers drop against Perry – another former cheerleader – she decided not to resign, and Mayor White joined the governor’s race. The Democratic gubernatorial race included Kinky Friedman (a singing Jewish cowboy who then switched to run for Agriculture Commissioner) and Farouk Shami, a billionaire shampoo salesman, who grew up in the West Bank. Shami threatened to spend millions of his own fortune on the race and promised he would give the state $10 million if he failed to create 100,000 new jobs.
If you thought the excitement was just on the left, former nurse Debra Medina brought the purest kettle of teabags to the Republicans. A Ron Paul follower and a local party chairwoman, she brought an endearingly genuine passion to the gubernatorial debates that the other two scripted candidates lacked. Her poll numbers shot up after the debates and could have toppled Hutchison for a spot in a runoff election. Then on a conservative radio show, she questioned the official truth about 9/11 and slumped down to third place. Medina voters shifted back to Perry allowing him to win the 51 per cent of the vote he needed to avoid a runoff.
Despite Perry’s win, it was a very poor election day for the insurgent Tea Party. Their challenges to the commonsense of Republican legislators failed across the board, including their challenges to Democrats who switched parties. Don McLeroy, a man who denied evolution as chair of the State Board of Education and brought the state to international shame, was defeated by a mainstream Republican. This brings into question the goals, methods and popularity of the Tea Party movement.
The vapidity of the movement should not be underestimated. Perry’s disgust with the federal government did not prevent him from taking stimulus money that exactly bridged the state budget shortfall. Sarah Palin did not really oppose the Alaskan bridge to nowhere, and Scott Brown supported universal health scare as a local senator in Massachusetts even if he will not do so in D.C. There was no movement against government tyranny when Bush was eliminating habeas corpus, starting military tribunals, torturing people, or invading nations illegally. That all their ire is focused on Obama’s health care proposal and not the bipartisan thievery that is the banking bailout shows their lack of depth. Tea Party rhetoric can only goes so far against the realities of government.
Speaking as resident under a Tea Party governor, I can say that it is all show, no substance. One cannot expect government misrule to end under self-appointed leaders, especially when they define the movement’s aims for themselves. All the more reason to rise against leaders like Perry and his faux-movement in November.
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