On the air Perry looks more comfortable so far. First question, the corridor. Was it a mistake? Perry says, wasn't a mistake to have a vision. Blames governors who didn't do anything before him. We had to come up with a way to move people. He had a big smile,
Perry’s ads are usually first rate, but anyone with a memory going back four years will recognize that the message, the scenery, and even the clothing is recycled from 2006. Still, having a border sheriff give a testimonial for Perry is very effective, even if Perry did direct a
I received this information about polls that were taken in two House districts, HD 3 (Homer) and HD 47 (Bolton). The first poll is from HD 3. The pollster was Chris Wilson. Fair warning: Both polls were sent to me by a source close to the Perry campaign: Perry 47
This was the headline for a story I wrote about the battle over changes that were taking place at Texas A&M, in the heyday of the Gates presidency (“Corps Values,” May 2004). Current A&M students have no historical memory of this period. So that readers may understand the
Have you noticed that no criticism of Rick Perry seems to stick? It is very clear now that nothing Hutchison has done has moved numbers, except maybe to reduce her own. He nails her on the bailout and it sticks like flypaper. (Does flypaper still exist?) She tries to nail
This is the lead of the story from The Battalion, the student newspaper at A&M: After seven and a half years as commandant of the Corps of Cadets, Lt. Gen. John Van Alstyne resigned Friday [January 22]. "There are good young men and women in the Corps," Van Alstyne said.
PERRY The Perry campaign issued a release attacking the veracity of Hutchison's ad on securing the border. The Perry release follows: Latest False Hutchison Ad Perfect “Match” For Dishonest Senator Media Already Labeling Ad A “Distortion” That “Clouds Some Of Her Record” And “Deviates From Facts” Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
Hutchison The daily blast from the Hutchison campaign includes this discussion: Texas had the 4th highest teen pregnancy rate in the country in 2005, according to a new study. That’s up one notch from 5th highest in 2000, according to new data from the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights
The Sunday papers had two not-so-good stories for Perry. The more damaging story was an exclusive by Gromer Jeffries about a program by the Perry campaign, known as "Perry Home Headquarters," in which workers were paid for signing up voters who pledged to vote for Perry in the
I was told about this poll by a lobbyist who was familiar with the poll. It covered just District 127 (Crabb’s seat), which is primarily Kingwood and other parts of east and northeast Harris County. It’s my understanding that the governor’s race question was added to the poll. This is
The ink was hardly dry on the Supreme Court opinion before the Texas Ethics Commission gave its blessing to independent expenditure advertising: [I]t is our position that corporations are allowed to make all types of direct campaign expenditures (referred to in Citizens United as independent expenditures). A normal person would
HUTCHISON George H.W. Bush will endorse Hutchison, following Cheney and Baker. The Cheney endorsement was worse than useless; it was self-defeating, because it didn’t help her with conservatives who hate all things Washington, and it hurt her with moderate R’s who saw him as a sinister figure who undermined the
Sarah Palin’s appearance at a Perry campaign rally is set for February 7–Super Bowl Sunday.
The call had to do with my post yesterday ("Was the Hutchison poll phony?") in which I expressed my concern about whether their poll, which the campaign has said showed them two points down, was on the level. Obviously, the campaign was none too happy about what I wrote, and
The poll surveyed 798 likely Republican primary voters. These results tracked a poll I wrote about last night: the leaders lost ground, Medina gained ground. The main difference is that the “undecideds” did not gain as much ground as they did in the unnamed poll that I reported on. The
This report comes from a polling firm that did a post-debate survey of Republican primary voters. I am authorized to publish these numbers. I have no further information to provide other than what I am publishing here. –Perry and Hutchison lost support as a result of the debate. Perry fell
…or else he would not have pulled the plug on the Governor’s Mansion addition. Perry has gotten himself out on a limb with all the bragging about Texas, and it may come back to haunt. Add up the boasts about how he balanced the budget (no mention of those stimulus
Transportation is going to be a major battleground in the governor’s race. The two camps exchanged fire after the debate. Perry spokesman Mark Miner put out a statement that accused Hutchison of making misleading statements on her TV ad about transportation policy. What the Perry camp says (from spokesman Mark
Maybe the question is: Was there a winner? Well, the format was a winner. The questions from viewers, from members of the audience, and from one panelist to another, made for a lively if not necessarily enlightening debate. Perry did a good job of repeating his major themes. He must
First question, none of you like Washington, can you name a federal program that you like, one that you don't like. Hutchison and Perry argued over highway funding--are we getting back 76 cents per each dollar, Perry says 70 cents. Medina likes military but says the federal gov't is not
I must have missed the debut of Perry’s second ad, which aired on the day of the national championship game. The title is “Working for Us.” The message is entirely positive, unlike Hutchison’s ads. I like this ad better than Perry’s first one. (I gave the “Washington is Broken” ad
Since I will be watching the debate on television Thursday night, I thought I might participate in spirit by suggesting some questions that my (not) fellow panelists might ask in my absence. Having participated in several pre-debate discussions at KERA, I don’t really think it matters who is on these
The Quorum Report’s Daily Buzz says that the Perry campaign sent out a Mike Baselice poll to supporters via e-mail, with no supporting information, that showed: Perry 49% Hutchison 36% Medina 5% That sounds reasonable to me. The November Texas Tribune/UT poll had Perry 42%, Hutchison 30%, Media 7%. This
The title is “Texas Tough.” The spot opens with Hutchison in an ag setting, shaking hands with farm and ranch types. Then she appears standing at a microphone. Behind her four people are arrayed, with a fifth barely visible in the shadows. This is the unhappiest-looking collection of people I
There never was any doubt that Bill White was running for governor, and for that matter there wasn’t much doubt that he wanted to run for governor even when he was running for the Senate. Perry is now fighting a two-front war. A general election race against a Democrat will
The Corpus Christi Caller-Times is reporting that Republican party chairman Cathie Adams has made an endorsement in the contest for the Texas Supreme Court seat recently vacated by Scott Brister, in violation of her own pledge to remain neutral in GOP primary races. Adams is backing Eva Guzman,
Rick Perry’s record nine years in the Governor’s Mansion have made the office more powerful than ever before. That’s why we need term limits.
As mayor of Houston, White enjoyed considerable support — political and financial — from Republicans. But he occupied a nonpartisan office. Can he repeat that success in a partisan race against an incumbent Republican governor, and can he do it outside of Houston as well as inside? The answer depends
This was today’s daily blast from Joe Pounder of the Hutchison campaign: “When we should be focused on creating jobs and keeping our state’s economy strong, Rick Perry is openly promising higher gas taxes. That’s less money in Texans’ pockets and more money for TxDOT to waste on Perry pet
The word is that a race for governor is “in play,” which I take to mean that White is keeping his options open, which is not really news. The bad blood between Rick and Kay is only going to get worse. Had Hutchison resigned in the fall, which was her
Hutchison is shown sitting in a living room, or perhaps a hotel suite. She is wearing a white blouse with a dark vest, brown or perhaps purple. A lamp is lit on a desk behind her left shoulder. In the foreground is a built-in segment of a bookcase. A red
It opens with an angled shot looking upward at the U.S. Capitol dome, through trees. Over it is superimposed a red line, as if to suggest a graph of an economic indicator, and general direction is down. The effect is very busy without being distracting; there’s a lot going on
This undated letter from former state party chairman George Strake Jr. was forwarded to me by a Perry loyalist. Dear Friend, As someone who helped build our Republican Majority in Texas since the days Democrats dominated every statewide office and both houses of the legislature, and as someone who has
Today’s daily message from the Hutchison campaign is that Perry’s record in education is woefully weak: stagnant test scores, rising dropout rates, a shortage of math and science teachers that keeps getting worse, inadequate state funding, several hundred million dollars down the drain for an ideologically and politically motivated plan
Yes, good news: She’s only down by 11 points in today’s Rasmussen poll, compared to 12 points in the recent UT/Texas Tribune poll. Perry, meanwhile, is only four points (the same number Medina is getting) short of 50%. The temptation is to say that the race is over, but I’m
Who is best situated to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2012? Gallup (October 31-November) finds that 71% of Republicans would “seriously consider” supporting Huckabee, with Romney and Palin at 65% each. Other names who show up on GOP presidential polls include Pawlenty, Gingrich, Giuliani, Barbour, Jindal, and Jeb Bush,
The Morning News’ Trailblazer blog reported Wednesday that Rick Perry had said at a news conference in Dallas that he was a stronger conservative than his gubernatorial opponent. This was fodder for Republican primary voters, but I think it had another purpose. It was a baited hook designed
Is this good or bad? This is a guy who left office with a 19% approval rating. The report comes from the NBC affiliate for the Metroplex: The battle for conservative credibility in the GOP race for governor just got interesting. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, an outspoken critic of
This was the Hutchison campaign’s daily blast at Perry for today: Rick Perry continues to avoid critical questions about the Trans-Texas Corridor. While he may think his proposal to seize nearly 600,000 acres of private property is dead and a settled matter, the question for some has turned to how
The Morning News story that Perry’s chairman of the Alcoholic Beverage Commission is soliciting funds from restaurant owners in amounts ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 is the latest in a series of stories about Perry and his appointees. One of the worst things in the story is the
The issue here is cronyism in the 2008 hiring of football coach Mike Sherman, whose brief tenure has so far been, shall we say, less than a spectacular success, culminating in K-State’s pasting of the Aggies last Saturday, a game in which oddsmakers had made A&M the favorite. Brent Zwerneman,
I have already received a couple of calls from friends who wanted to be sure that I noticed the Dew's op-ed piece in today's Statesman about how Texas balanced its budget. His salient characteristic is on full display here: There is no depth of cravenness so low that
The Hutchison campaign today went on red alert against push polling, or if you prefer a more polite term, message testing, by the Perry campaign. I don’t know the extent of the practice, but these were some of the messages being tested, according to sources with the Hutchison campaign. Let
…why the Perry campaign is silent today. Last week spokesman Mark Miner fired off releases on Tuesday (2), Wednesday (2), and Friday (1). Today, nada. OK, I’m probably making a mountain out of a molehill, but it has occurred to me that the last couple of weeks haven’t exactly been
I don't mean quit the Senate. I mean quit talking about when she is going to quit the Senate. She provided more fodder for the Perry campaign yesterday by going on talk radio in Dallas (Mark Davis) and hemming and hawing all over the place. This is from today's Perry
This is a scary story. The Statesman reported yesterday that Governor Perry is removing Linus Wright, a former Dallas school superintendent, as chair of the board that oversees the $88 billion Teacher Retirement System and will replace him with a current board member who is also a member
Of all the sniping that has gone on between the Perry and Hutchison campaigns, the skirmish that I find to be the most dismaying—and the worst for Texas—is the Perry campaign’s attack on Hutchison for her success in getting funding for designated federal projects in the state, popularly (or unpopularly)
The flap over the Corridor reminds me of a law school hypothetical. If A shoots B, inflicting a wound so serious that death is imminent, and C then fires a second shot, which also would be fatal, moments before B expires, is C guilty of murder? The answer is yes.
This morning, Mark Miner of the Perry campaign touts the list of endorsements the governor has received under this headline: Gov. Perry’s Endorsements Represent Diverse, Statewide Support • Texas Association of Realtors • Texas Chemical Council • Texas Home School Coalition PAC • T. Boone Pickens, Energy Entrepreneur • Texas
A commenter to my blog post, “More on the Perry Agenda,” suggests that because of Perry’s support for the Trans-Texas Corridor, Hutchison is likely to get the Farm Bureau endorsement. While comments on blogs are hardly reliable sources, I find this one credible because (1) a Republican consultant told me