Big Red
Is John Cornyn too conservative to get reelected to the U.S. Senate—or just conservative enough?
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By the summer of 2004, Cornyn’s strident rhetoric had been muted and replaced by the more reasoned style he employs today. The New Republic, the venerable left-of-center political journal, ran a profile of Cornyn that portrayed him as “the hard right’s soft new face.” It was published shortly after Cornyn had been a floor leader in the GOP’s losing fight for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and the author, Michael Crowley, was able to collect quotes from activists in both parties about Cornyn’s rise to prominence that read like blurbs on a book jacket. (Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform: “He’s become a serious player.” Ralph Neas, People for the American Way: “More and more, he seems to be the designated hitter for the right wing of the Republican Party on the most controversial issues.”) The main theme of Crowley’s piece was that Cornyn’s “sunny, calm tone” was what conservatives needed to make their message more palatable. “Whereas congressional right-wingers—and especially Texans like Tom DeLay—often limit their appeal by acting like villains from a Michael Moore nightmare, Cornyn is genial,” Crowley wrote. “If Tom DeLay is the stylistic equivalent of heavy metal, John Cornyn is muzak.”
Cornyn had found his role. He was that hypothetical creature of the law: the reasonable man. If the Republicans—or the White House—needed a message, or a messenger, he was their go-to guy. He even had an explanation for why a Democratic push to require the Bush administration to release more information about torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib should not come to a vote. The proposal was providing “a road map to our enemies,” he said, sounding an awful lot like an executive branch henchman. “The unintended consequences of this is to help our enemies by reducing American resolve to get actionable intelligence and to finish the job that we’ve started in Iraq.”
Playing the role required more than ability. It took willingness, a much scarcer commodity but one that he had in abundance, and it made him a valuable asset to the leadership. All senators like to make speeches, but most want to do it only on issues that make them look good. Cornyn would get involved in issues that nobody wants to touch, like Abu Ghraib and gay marriage. “A number of older members don’t like to handle social issues,” Sam Brownback, of Kansas, told a reporter. “That really gave him stature with the broader caucus.” When the going is tough and players are hurting and the opposition is moving the ball and the coach says, “Somebody get in there and stop ’em,” Cornyn is the guy who will say, “Put me in!”
“The only way he can lose is if Texas votes Democratic,” a staffer in Cornyn’s Senate office told me. If that’s the benchmark, then he’s a shoo-in for reelection, notwithstanding the widespread belief among Democrats that he’s beatable, because this is still a Republican state. I was present when Republican pollster Mike Baselice made a presentation to a business group in October, and his unambiguous message was that the numbers favor the R’s. They have a nine-point lead over the D’s in the base vote—a generic Republican candidate starts a statewide race with 43 percent of regular voters, while a Democrat starts with 34 percent—and that translates to a huge number of people. Texans cast 7.4 million votes in the 2004 presidential race. Nine points is 666,000 votes. That is the deficit the Democrats must make up. (Democrats, of course, argue that the numbers are changing.)
Swings of this dimension rarely occur in politics. Texas did not become Republican overnight, and it will not become Democratic overnight. Twenty years passed from Bill Clements’s breakthrough win in the 1978 governor’s race to the Republican sweep of all statewide offices in 1998. Several more years would pass before the congressional delegation and the state House of Representatives had Republican majorities. Karl Rove always said of the Republicans’ rise to power, “This is a process, not an event.” The same will be true for the Democratic resurgence.
How can the D’s close the gap? One indicator in their favor, Baselice said, is that Democrats have a greater interest in voting, around a five-point edge, than Republicans do. This portends a depressed Republican turnout, one of the elements necessary for a Democratic victory. What about independents, who make up about a fourth of the Texas electorate, or around 1.8 million votes? If they were to break two-to-one for Democrats—which is a lot to ask for—that’s a pickup of some 600,000 votes, almost enough to wipe out the deficit.
Polling numbers suggest that he might be vulnerable. His name ID is not where it ought to be, but that problem can be rectified with money. The real weakness appears in his favorable-unfavorable ratings and in his job performance: He falls short of 50 percent in both measurements. DailyKos, a liberal political Web site, commissioned a poll from Maryland-based Research 2000, which bills itself “the nation’s most unbiased and reliable research firm,” that found that Cornyn was viewed favorably by 46 percent of respondents and unfavorably by 44 percent. In job approval, 45 percent approved of Cornyn’s performance, 44 percent disapproved. (Twenty-four percent “strongly disapproved,” while 22 percent “strongly approved.”) The poll also tested Cornyn’s general electability by asking, “If the 2008 election for U.S. Senate were held today, would you vote to reelect John Cornyn, would you consider voting for another candidate, or would you vote to replace Cornyn?” “Reelect” was 40 percent, “consider” was 15 percent, and “replace” was 35 percent; ten percent were not sure. One way to interpret these numbers is that they suggest a 55-45 race, a margin that resembles the nine-point lead Republicans have in the base vote. Another is that a quarter of the electorate—the “considers” and the “not sures”—is undecided.
The decision of trial lawyer Mikal Watts not to seek the Democratic nomination in the Senate race leaves Rick Noriega, a state legislator from Houston, as Cornyn’s presumed opponent in the general election, unless there is a late entrant in the Democratic primary. Noriega appeared to be the choice of Democratic inside players and would likely have defeated Watts, but he would have been competing for the public’s attention against a candidate who was capable of outspending him by several million dollars. That problem no longer exists. But if Watts’s money is no longer an issue, Noriega’s lack of funding remains one. He must raise at least $10 million to be competitive and to get his personal story before the public, which includes his military service in Afghanistan, his time as sector commander for National Guard troops assisting the Border Patrol in Laredo, and his work in setting up shelters for Katrina victims in Houston.
The crucial moment for Noriega will occur sometime in the late summer, when national party strategists begin to decide how to allocate their resources for the fall elections. They will do polling in the state to determine Cornyn’s vulnerability and their own candidate’s viability. If they conclude that the race is winnable, they’ll put money and manpower into Texas. If they conclude that it isn’t, they will not hesitate to cut their candidate loose. The potential peril facing Texas D’s is that there are so many other states where Senate seats are in play, and this is such a red state that the race against Cornyn will be seen as too much of a long shot. It’s hard to blame them: Democrats haven’t won a statewide election in Texas since 1994.
If a race should develop, however, Democrats will have plenty of ammunition to use against Cornyn. The obvious issues are those with the most appeal to swing voters: his close ties to (unpopular) Bush and (pilloried) Rove, his support of the war, his opposition to stem cell research. Then there’s his vote on children’s health insurance. Cornyn voted against the Democrats’ bill, because it greatly expanded the number of kids covered by the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, after voting for a less costly version, backed by the Republican leadership, that covered far fewer children. He knows it will be an issue in the campaign. “Sometimes there’s a cost to being in the leadership,” he told me. “You have to support the bills the leadership wants.”
As for immigration, it may be hard for either side to take advantage of the issue. I observed this on a trip to El Paso with Cornyn. The day ended with a fundraiser at the home of a prominent Republican who said to Cornyn in a terse introduction, “One question you’re going to be asked tonight is about this wall.” And he was. Cornyn, who originally opposed a long wall but now supports “fencing” where needed, acknowledged the political dilemma by saying, “The closer you get to the border, the more people are concerned about the common culture and the economic impact. The farther away you get, the more people are concerned about security.” That didn’t seem to appease anyone. I left thinking that immigration is a dicey issue for an incumbent. Almost everyone can find something to dislike, and almost no one can find anything to like.
If he wins reelection in November, Cornyn can expect his second term to be very different from his first. A new president will occupy the White House, and Cornyn will no longer have to carry the Bush administration’s water. He will become the senior senator from Texas; Hutchison has said that she will not seek reelection and has hinted that she’ll resign her seat, possibly as early as 2009, to run for governor in 2010 (see Texas Monthly Talks). He will inherit the job of delivering federal largesse for Texas, a role he does not seem entirely comfortable playing. “I want to help Texas,” he told me, “but I’m very concerned about the growth of the federal government.” He talked about getting a seat on Finance or Appropriations, two of the most influential committees, and of moving up in the leadership. And, of course, he hopes to see his party take back the majority that it lost in 2006, unlikely as that is to occur. “I’d like to try to help Republicans regain our principles,” he said. “I think Republicans govern best when we are the party of reform. Power offers temptations that are hard to resist.”
How will he adapt to his new circumstances? The danger for him is that if he persists in the role he’s carved out for himself, as a lieutenant in the partisan wars, he may find himself excluded from the closed-door bipartisan meetings in which policy is hashed out. On the other hand, he could always go back to being the kind of politician he was in Texas—the kind who would have been welcome in those meetings. Perhaps he is keeping that option open. During our last conversation, in October, he acknowledged that being in the minority had given him a greater appreciation of Senate procedures that are designed to force compromises, such as the one he once labeled a “sellout.” “I’ve come to realize that we never want to resort to a nuclear option,” he told me. “Today’s majority is tomorrow’s minority. You can end up eating your own words.”
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