TX-Sen, TX-Gov: Texas-Sized Upheaval

Texas Democrats were facing a couple pieces of bad news. First, Kay Bailey Hutchison pushed back her resignation from the Senate until after the Texas gubernatorial primary, so that any special election would coincide with the regular Nov. 2010 election instead of being stand-alone — which would seem to hurt Democratic chances, at least in Texas. (Somehow I suspect that, if she does lose the gubernatorial primary, she won’t be resigning her Senate seat at all. Maybe that’s just me, but it seems like other people are getting the message too, like state Sen. Florence Shapiro. Rumored to be in the hunt for a Senate special election, she’s just announced she’s running for re-election instead.)

And second, leading Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Schieffer will be announcing today that he’s ending his candidacy. Well, maybe that’s not bad news, in that Schieffer wasn’t fundraising well, wasn’t putting up impressive poll numbers, and his previous Bush-backing ways weren’t enthusing Democrats. At any rate, that leaves a big opening in the governor’s race, and at the same time, Democratic candidates who’ve been fundraising like gangbusters for a Senate race now milling around wondering what to do with themselves and their stockpiled cash…

Enter outgoing Houston mayor Bill White:

It’s looking more and more like Houston Mayor Bill White (D) will switch from running for Senate to running for governor.

White’s campaign said as late as last week that it was focused on running for Senate, but now the Houston Chronicle has two “reliable” sources saying he will make the switch. The news comes as a White-for-governor chorus has been building.

It’s possible that the persistent rumors of White getting in (over the last few weeks) were enough to drive Schieffer out. If White does head over to the governor’s race, that would still leave former comptroller John Sharp as the Democratic option in a Senate race that may or may not happen. For now, White’s campaign isn’t confirming or denying yet, but says they’ll have a statement after Schieffer’s official withdrawal.

UPDATE: White, at his press conference, merely said that he’s “considering” the governor’s race, after which he promptly started behaving like a candidate and attacking Rick Perry’s record. He’ll let us know about his decision by Dec. 4.

RaceTracker Wiki: TX-Gov | TX-Sen

52 thoughts on “TX-Sen, TX-Gov: Texas-Sized Upheaval”

  1. Good news since a non-federal race is always easier in a state that favors the other party. Would be huge if Dems could win CA, FL AND TX next year.

  2. Since KBH effectively threw in the towel against Perry and would easily succumb to RNC pressure to ensure her exit from the Senate, if she will even leave, will coincide with getting a replacement in a November election, the road to a Dem takeover was pretty much slammed shut.

    Now that Perry will be their nominee, the Dems must put forth their strongest hand (possibly White) for TX Gov and hope Perry has so isolated the suburban GOP voters that they will vote for White along with the 45% of TX voters who always vote Democratic.  

  3. As though Hutchison’s uneasiness about her chances have left Texas Democrats in an unenviable position of trying to guess what will happen.  Right now they are starting to hedge their bets on the governor’s race being the easier race of the two since Perry will supposedly beat Hutchison in the Rep governor primary.

    BUT, if that doesn’t come to pass, I just wonder if we’ll be left with our pants down, with all of our best candidates stuck in an unwinnable governor’s race and nobody left to contend for an open Senate seat.  Politics is one field where things can change very quickly.  

  4. Is there a way for White to [i]implcitly[/i] depict Perry as treasonous – in a way that’s credible to “swing” voters in TX?

  5. KBH’s path to the nomination has only gotten more muddled in the last few months and I don’t think she’s really going to leave the Senate this year. If Rick Perry is the nominee, I think we’ve probably got a competitive race on our hands. It’s better than having White and Sharp beat each other up for the Senate nomination while leaving us with no credible candidate for governor against an unpopular statewide incumbent who has been in office for a solid decade.

  6. not to overstate the obvious, but that could move TX-Gov to tossup territory. I don’t know the state as well as I could, but with 45% of the state essentially behind him by default, a decently moderate profile, an anti-incumbent year, and broad name rec in the 4th largest city in America, White seems to have all the ingredients for a serious shot at toppling Gov. Goodhair once and for all. Perry won in 2006 with 39% in a four way race. Even if that entire base sticks with him (unlikely), you can’t tell me the Stayhorn and Freidman blocs won’t be more attracted to someone who isn’t a crazy, incompetent secessionist who’s been running the state into the ground for a decade. White still needs to play his cards carefully (and do some aggressive Hispanic outreach), but this is the best opportunity we’ve had to retake this seat since the Shrub took it over to the dark side a decade and a half ago by smearing Ann Richards into political oblivion.

    In addition to the obvious symbolism inherent in the GOP losing TX-Gov, picking up that seat would also offset our gubernatorial losses in the Rust Belt, at least in the simplistic media terms of “look at this huge, stereotypically Republican state that just elected a Democrat!” It also puts within the realm of possibility that Democrats could win the governorships of California, Florida, AND Texas, taking the GOP from running all of the three most populous states to none of them. (Bonus if we also pick up GA-Gov, which I’m not expecting, but it would be awesome if we did.) Winning those three could also really offset for the fact that Dems are likely to lose more governorships in 2010 simply because they currently have more governorships to lose. The difference is that most of the GOP candidates in places like the Rust Belt and Mid-Atlantic states are pretty weak candidates benefiting from an anti-incumbent atmosphere. Brown, Sink, and now White are strong incumbents who can take care of themselves. Who’s more likely to get re-elected if he gets in at all, Bill White or John Kasich?

    Anyway, very nice development.  

  7. I like White’s chances against Perry better than in a Senatorial election, though if it had been a weird special election, who knows.

    On the national level, as others have noted, this is important because:

    1) If White becomes Governor, he could veto GOP redistricting gerrymanders.

    2) If White becomes Governor, that will Demonstrate to the National Party that Texas can increasingly become competitive, and more resources will be devoted to turning it blue, including perhaps contesting it in 2012 or 2016 on the Presidential level.

  8. there is no way Perry can consolidate all the Strayhorn and Friedman votes from 2006, not against a candidate as solid as White.  At least we got Sharp as a fall-back option in the Senate race, but White really ought to have run for governor once it became obvious Hutchison couldn’t win a contested GOP primary anymore.

  9. Will Rick Perry be the Republican Jon Corzine? It seems like the Republicans ought to have at least one “big name” Governor go down too.

  10. I usually think of places like Dallas and Houston as being more moderate. And wasn’t GW Bush more moderate than rightwing while he was governor? But I guess all those rural areas have gotten more red & conservative over the years. Bill White would certainly be the best candidate the Dems could put up. Oh and Kay Bay was stupid for trying to pivot so far to the right in order to beat Perry. Freshmen political science majors would have known that. While she’s not a liberal Republican she was never going to convince anybody she’s down with the teabag crowd. She screams establishment republican.  

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