Short Cuts: Episode V 
Can Rick Perry Stand On His Own?
With George W. Bush no longer at the top of the ballot for the first time in five elections, Texas can look forward to the most intriguing political year in a generation: four big races, two strong tickets, and a healthy debate over whether this is still a two-party state. Can the Republicans stomp out the challenge, or will the Democrats send the governor and his allies to Boot Hill?
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That was the theory, but even before Dan Morales entered the race, the best-laid plans were going astray. Sanchez has been the party’s presumed standard-bearer for more than a year, and yet he has been a reluctant candidate. His opponent has had an unimpressive first year in office, to which Sanchez’s response has been … silence. When a furor arose over Perry’s vetoes or when the backroom negotiations over Phil Gramm’s departure became public, Sanchez could have highlighted the differences between himself and Perry but … more silence. Meanwhile, Sanchez’s own image took a beating. “Democratic candidate for governor Tony Sanchez—whose pitch to voters leans heavily on his business record—paid the government $1 million to settle complaints of risky and bad management at his failed Laredo savings and loan,” read the opening of an unflattering story in the Dallas Morning News about Sanchez’s business dealings in the eighties. Sanchez has responded that he ran his S&L basically the same way every other S&L operator in Texas did and a letter circulated by state supervisory officials at the time backs him up. Still, everyone knows that the S&L mess was a disaster, and the defense that everybody did it may not be sufficient.
Sanchez’s supporters have downplayed their candidate’s hibernation because, they say, the game isn’t won in the first quarter; it’s won in the fourth quarter, when voters are paying attention. Surprise! When Dan Morales filed against Sanchez, the fourth quarter arrived early. The Morales challenge, if Sanchez can survive it, may be the best thing that could have happened to him. Morales is to Sanchez what John McCain was to George W. Bush—the kick in the pants that transformed a candidate from someone who expected to win into someone who couldn’t stand to lose.
A Harvard-educated lawyer, Morales is a formidable opponent. He can run to Sanchez’s left by saying that he is the real Democrat in the race, alluding to Sanchez’s lavish financial support of Bush as a candidate for governor and president. At his initial press conference, Morales served up a more memorable soundbite than anything Sanchez has uttered all year: Referring to the $17 billion settlement that he won for the state in the lawsuit he brought against tobacco companies while he was attorney general, he said, “If the Legislature sends me an appropriations bill which does not adequately protect our tobacco money for our kids, I will take this pen and I will veto that bill quicker than you can light up a Marlboro.”
But this statement comes with a giant asterisk. Morales has been under investigation by his successor, Cornyn, and by federal officials for allegedly attempting to cut a friend in on the legal fees from the lawsuit, to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars. (The lawyer, Marc Murr, has since renounced his claim to any legal fees.) If Morales wins the nomination, the most important person in the governor’s race may be Johnny Sutton, a Bush appointee as the new U.S. attorney in San Antonio, who must decide whether to proceed with the three-year-old investigation or shut it down.
The primary shapes up as a classic battle of money versus name but with totally new rules of engagement. Could it make a difference, for example, that Sanchez is a native Spanish speaker while Morales had to work on improving his Spanish while in office. Sanchez must think so; he’s challenged Morales to debate en español. At least he’s taking off the gloves.
Morales will start out in the lead because he is better known—but name identification can be bought if you can afford it, which Sanchez can (he is said to be worth at least $600 million), and if you’re willing to spend the money, which Sanchez had better be. Morales will have to raise some money—not a lot, but enough to keep his name and record before the public. If he can’t, Sanchez should overtake him. If Morales can get on television, look out. Sanchez’s media spots had better be good, really good, because Morales is a great TV candidate. But in the end, what puts Sanchez over the top may turn out to be old-fashioned organization rather than media. The Democrats’ entire strategy for winning in November depends on being able to fund a top-to-bottom campaign. That’s why the party establishment has to stick with Sanchez.
Perry has consistently led Sanchez by thirty points in polls, and he will have all the money he needs. That is a hard combination to beat, and yet accidents happen all the time: Ask Mark Green, who blew a huge lead in the recent New York City mayor’s race to a wealthy businessman who had never run for office before. If you could put together Morales’ political skills with Sanchez’s money, Perry would be at risk. He has some problems that could prove damaging in a close race. He must contend with the enemies he made with his vetoes, particularly health-care providers who are still irate over his rejection of a “prompt-pay” bill aimed at forcing insurers to pony up more quickly. Democrats have some hope of creating fire from the smoke over Perry’s contributions from Enron employees and executives and the flap involving his appointment of Enron official Max Yzaguirre as chairman of the Public Utility Commission. But Republican strategists don’t believe that the race will be close. Perry’s shortcomings will not matter if the Democratic raise-the-turnout plan doesn’t work, and Republican number crunchers think that it doesn’t have a prayer. Texas is more Republican than it was in 1998, which means that the number of new voters the Democrats need to overtake the Republicans is beyond the probable. But not the possible.
Lieutenant Govenor
No primary races here: It’s Dewhurst against Sharp. Republicans expected Dewhurst to be their weakest link. A lot of people in his own party find him to be distant and hard to work with. Taking advice is not his strong point. Sharp, on the other hand, built a record as a fiscal conservative as state comptroller. He will have substantial business support. So Republicans and Democrats alike were stunned when an early poll showed Dewhurst with a seventeen-point lead. What’s going on? One explanation is that Dewhurst had already begun his strategy of burying Sharp with money by running an early series of TV spots. Another is Dewhurst’s association with the war effort (he lobbied hard for Perry to appoint him head of the Governor’s Task Force on Homeland Security). Another is that the poll is just plain wrong, which some private polls tend to suggest.
However, four years have passed since Sharp was in office. Few remember that in his eight years as comptroller, he proposed ways to cut spending without affecting services, developed the Lone Star card to inhibit welfare fraud, and established a prepaid tuition plan for Texas colleges. He can try to remind them, of course, but Dewhurst is sure to point out the holes in Sharp’s record as part of the bury-him-with-money game plan. That’s why Sharp is putting his faith in the turnout strategy that he devised.
Sharp’s biggest advantage is that he has always had substantial Republican support, or more accurately, substantial support from business leaders who typically vote Republican. Between the hoped-for increased turnout and his crossover constituency, Sharp has a better chance to win his race than any other Democrat.
But the new lieutenant governor may find that the prize isn’t worth as much as it used to be. Although traditionally the job has been regarded as the most powerful in the Capitol, the lieutenant governor’s powers to control debate and appoint committee chairs and members are not embedded in the state constitution; they can be taken away at any time by the Senate. That’s not likely to happen, but the current crop of senators is not going to let a lieutenant governor decide unilaterally who the committee chairs are going to be or what bills pass and what bills die. In short, power in the Senate is becoming decentralized, and neither Sharp nor Dewhurst is going to be able to reverse that trend. What hasn’t changed is that the position still provides its occupant with a bully pulpit, which Sharp could mount during policy disputes to bedevil Perry.
Attorney General
Remember the conundrum of whether a tree falling in an empty forest creates noise? That’s the problem facing Republican Greg Abbott, until recently a member of the Texas Supreme Court, and Democrat Kirk Watson, the former mayor of Austin, the rivals in the attorney general’s race. They have plenty to make noise about; the question is, Will anybody else hear it? It’s hard to get people to pay attention to the AG’s race in ordinary years, which is why so many candidates resort to TV spots showing them slamming prison-cell doors—an effective but disingenuous ploy, since the overwhelming amount of the workload has nothing to do with reducing crime. In an election year featuring ultra-high-profile races for Senate, governor, and lieutenant governor, Abbott and Watson won’t get much attention or airtime at all (though Watson made headlines January 10 when he announced that he’d raised $2.3 million since kicking off his campaign last August). That’s too bad, since these are two high-quality politicians and lawyers with personal stories that touch on tragedy: Abbott was partially paralyzed when a tree fell on him while he was jogging, and Watson is a cancer survivor.
The lack of attention works to Abbott’s advantage, since he belongs to the state’s dominant party. Past races for the Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals have demonstrated that when voters are dealing with the legal system and don’t know much about the candidates, they tend to choose the one with an R by his name. The Abbott camp will seek to preserve this edge with a simple description of their opponent that amounts to just four words: liberal Austin trial lawyer. The Watson forces will counter by trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear by asking, Who do you want fighting for you? The idea is to spin the choice as between a seasoned courtroom lawyer, one who will go after badly run nursing homes and child-support cheats, and a judge who sat on the sidelines. If Abbott or Watson finds that his initial message isn’t getting across, he can always resort to slamming cell doors.
On the day perry kicked off his campaign for governor, he was surrounded by signs bearing the slogan LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE VISION. Sigh. Is it too much to ask that the signs come after the leadership and vision instead of before? And maybe it would be a good idea to have a slogan that delivered a message, something that allowed an onlooker to infer leadership and vision without being force-fed—like, say, “Leave no child behind.” Perhaps it is unfair to keep comparing Rick Perry to a governor on his way to becoming president. Yet he seems to invite the comparison that dooms him.
Among the issues that will be settled by this election, therefore, is one that is personal to Perry: Can he live up to his own signs? He can play safe, wrap himself in platitudes, rely on his handsome face—and make himself irrelevant, win or lose. Or he can set an agenda, address the big issues facing the state, and prepare the way for his party to govern. Only if he does the latter will Rick Perry finally be able to stand on his own.
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