Recession Creates an Opening for Democrat in Texas

Recession Creates an Opening for Democrat in Texas
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
copyright by THe Associated Press
Published: September 16, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/us/politics/17texas.html?hp


HOUSTON — A few months ago, Texas political consultants thought that a Democrat had about as much chance of winning statewide office as a donkey would have of winning the Kentucky Derby. Those odds seemed to grow longer as the anti-tax, anti-government movement known as the Tea Party gathered more followers.

Yet recent polls suggest Texas has a horse race for the governor’s office after all. The Democratic candidate, former Mayor Bill White of Houston, has pulled within striking distance of the incumbent Republican, Rick Perry, trailing by no more than 6 percentage points in four polls.

The tightening contest comes as Texas feels the effects of the national economic crisis, weakening one of Mr. Perry’s chief arguments for re-election: that his fiscally conservative policies have buffered the state from the worst of the recession.

Now, a budget gap has opened in the next two-year spending plan that has been estimated by the state’s Legislative Budget Board at $18 billion. The state already has a bare-bones spending plan, and closing the new gap would mean raising taxes, which Mr. Perry has vowed to oppose, or cutting spending about 10 percent.

Mr. Perry has tried hard to tie Mr. White, a lawyer and businessman who was mayor for two terms, to President Obama’s efforts to provide health insurance to everyone and to stimulate the economy through government spending.

Mr. Perry has been so focused on bashing Washington that he at times appears to be running for governor of the United States. In Dallas this week, he said that Texas voters faced a choice between “the Obama style of government” of debt and high spending, or his own style — low taxes, no-frills services and minimal regulation.

“There is a land of opportunity still left in America,” Mr. Perry said. “It’s called Texas.”

Mr. White has done his best to undermine Mr. Perry’s claim to having steered the state to prosperity with a tight hand on the fiscal reins. Unemployment here is lower than the national average, but at 8.2 percent the rate is still twice what it was in 2008 and higher than at any point since 1986.

The governor also balanced the budget in 2009 with the help of stimulus money from Washington, the same money that Mr. Perry now complains should never have been appropriated, Mr. White has pointed out.

Mr. White has also attacked the governor’s character, calling him a “career politician” who oversees “a political machine.” He has pointed out that Mr. Perry has been living in a $10,000-a-month apartment since the governor’s mansion was destroyed by an arsonist in 2008. Mr. White has needled Mr. Perry for the size and cost of his security detail.

And Mr. White has also resurrected accusations that the governor has made some of his friends wealthy with state largess over his nine years in office, and has questioned Mr. Perry’s use of public funds to entice large corporations to Texas.

Mr. Perry has avoided committing to a debate, saying he will not agree to one until Mr. White releases his tax returns from the 1990s. “Bill White is hiding something on his tax returns,” he said Thursday.

Mr. White called the request absurd, pointing out that he has disclosed tax returns for all his years in elected office and his financial disclosure statements from his years as a deputy energy secretary in the Clinton administration. Mr. Perry, he asserts, is dodging a debate to avoid being held accountable for the state’s budget woes, among other things.

The debate over the debate ended in a stalemate this week, and it looks unlikely that a debate will ever be held, both sides now say.

Whether Mr. White’s punches are landing is hard to gauge, political strategists and pollsters say. Some Republican strategists say the race has tightened only because Mr. White’s campaign, and a Democratic group called Back to Basics, have been advertising since July, often with negative messages, while Mr. Perry put his first television advertisements on the air this week.

Though one advertisement was a positive spot boasting of job growth during Mr. Perry’s tenure, three others are attack ads, claiming Mr. White had profited from decisions he made during Hurricane Rita and criticizing his handling of the Houston budget. “Obama and White. Washington-style spending,” says the announcer in one ad. On Thursday, the governor also painted Mr. White as a “liberal trial lawyer” who is soft on gun rights.

“Once the Rick Perry machine kicks into gear, they are very, very good and at what they do and they are going to tear Bill White apart,” said Mark Sanders, a Republican strategist from East Texas. “He’s an easy target.”

Some political scientists say, however, that Mr. Perry has never enjoyed widespread popularity, and it appears some of the general anti-incumbent sentiment is affecting him. Republicans, after all, control all the statewide offices and the Legislature here.

“The Republican campaign narrative nationally is that the people running government are doing a bad job of it,” said Jim Henson, a political scientist and pollster at the University of Texas. “Perry’s message is ideologically consistent with this, but the Republicans here run all the offices.”

Democratic strategists, meanwhile, are not yet running to the betting windows to put big money down on a victory. But some are saying the governor appears more vulnerable than had been predicted.

“Mr. White is an underdog, but he’s not a far-away underdog,” said Glenn Smith, who managed the campaign of the last Democrat to win in Texas, Ann Richards, in 1990. “This could be a far more competitive World Series than people think.”