Posted on 03/17/2002 8:15:22 PM PST by KQQL
AUSTIN -- Tony Sanchez's successful campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination inspired a record Hispanic vote for a primary, but Anglo Democrats stayed home in numbers more than equal to the increased Hispanic turnout.
The Hispanic turnout, combined with a significant turnout of black voters in North Texas, made Houston's Ken Bentsen the odd man out as the U.S. Senate runoff went to a contest between 1996 Democratic nominee Victor Morales and former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who is black.
The black and Hispanic primary turnout is a positive sign for the Democratic strategy of boosting minority turnout to carry the entire ticket to victory in November. The hope is an increased minority turnout will offset a steady two-decade decline in Anglo support for Democratic candidates.
But the drop-off in Anglo primary voters this year raises questions about whether the Democratic Party has further distanced itself from the state's ethnic majority.
"It's not a good trade-off if you're running statewide, you need statewide interests," said Mike Baselice, a Republican pollster working for Gov. Rick Perry's election campaign.
Baselice said there were no major contested Republican primary elections to draw Anglo voters out of the Democratic primary.
"They were the show, and people didn't go to the show," Baselice said.
Sanchez pollster Paul Maslin said it is too early to read anything into the Anglo turnout in the Democratic primary in connection to what might happen in the general election.
"A bunch of Anglos decided, `You know what? The real election is going to be in November, and I don't have to vote in this primary,'" Maslin said.
Maslin said former Gov. Ann Richards, a Democrat, won in 1990 with just 40 percent of the state's Anglo vote.
"Tony Sanchez is not going to need the exact same percentage of Anglo vote that Ann Richards got in 1990," Maslin said. "Any way you do the numbers, our target will be somewhat lower than that (40 percent)."
Traditionally, Hispanics contribute only about 15 percent and blacks about 10 percent of the general election vote in Texas, although the black turnout jumped up to 16 percent in the 2000 presidential election.
But both groups usually vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates -- 75 percent of Hispanic voters and 90 percent of black voters.
The ethnic portrait of the Democratic primary is dramatically evident when this year's voting is compared with 1994, the last nonpresidential election year with a healthy Democratic turnout. The 1998 primary turnout was too low in all segments to be used as a point of comparison.
About 1,036,000 people voted in the 1994 Democratic gubernatorial primary when incumbent Richards faced only token opposition.
In this year's race between Sanchez, former Attorney General Dan Morales and two little-known opponents, about 1,028,000 people voted.
Sanchez with his $20 million campaign this year created enthusiasm among Hispanics that is immediately evident.
Voting in South Texas was up by 77,000 ballots over 1994. In Bexar County alone, balloting increased by 24,000 votes over 1994.
In West Texas, El Paso County's Democratic balloting this year reached almost 65,000 votes. That is 31,000 more votes than 1994 and 19,000 more than were cast in that county in the 1990 Democratic primary, which was the highest statewide turnout in 24 years.
But the Democratic turnout this year in predominantly Anglo regions was down by 125,000 votes from 1994.
Just in East Texas -- home of the die-hard Yellow Dog Democrats -- turnout was down 31,000 votes from 1994 and 73,000 from 1990.
The only predominantly Anglo area of the state that saw an increase in votes was North Central Texas, where there was a substantial increase in black voters turning out for Kirk in Dallas and Fort Worth.
Lieutenant governor nominee John Sharp and his political advisers developed this year's political strategy after his 1998 defeat in a race for the same office.
Sharp believed he and comptroller candidate Paul Hobby lost to their Republican opponents because there were no minorities on the Democratic ticket to give blacks and Hispanics an incentive to vote. Sharp recruited Sanchez into the race.
Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson said the kind of ticket that Sharp put together someday can be a winning combination, if not in this election, because of the growth of the state's Hispanic population.
"The future of the Democratic Party is as a multiracial, multicultural dream team," Jillson said.
Jillson said Bentsen had an opportunity to inspire Anglo voters to turn out, but he never energized them.
Jillson said the Republican Party faces the long-term problem of being perceived as a "very light-complected" party.
"Over the long haul that will be a problem for them," Jillson said. "You've got the Tony Sanchez enthusiasm versus the Xavier Rodriguez defeat."
Rodriguez was Perry's appointee to the Texas Supreme Court. He was defeated by Steven Wayne Smith, a lawyer who helped end affirmative action in Texas higher education. Rodriguez's loss leaves the Republicans with no Hispanics on this year's statewide ballot.
Chuck McDonald, a public relations consultant who worked for Richards, said Democrats can win this fall with as little as 37 percent of the Anglo vote so long as they boost minority turnout.
McDonald said the ticket will have to offer a broad ethnic appeal, though.
"Are you viewed as the inclusive party of all people of Texas or as the party of Hispanics and African-Americans?" he said.
"That's the balancing act the Sanchez campaign is facing. That's why John Sharp is critical to this campaign -- he's the moderate Anglo appeal," he said.
He said Sanchez, like Richards, needs to find a message that attracts Anglo women -- such as job stability and improving education.
Richards won in 1990 by gathering 61 percent of the women's vote, including 21 percent of the Republican women, according to exit polls. But in her 1994 re-election defeat, Republican women voted for Republican George W. Bush.
Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, said 33.6 percent of the Democratic primary vote this year was Hispanic voters.
"That's absolutely a record high for a Texas primary," Gonzalez said. "That's clearly a response to a competitive race with Latinos at the top of the ticket."
Gonzalez said he recognizes that part of the high percentage is a result of the low turnout among Anglos. Gonzalez said there are two theories on why the Anglo vote declined.
"One is they're disappearing. Men are going Republican," Gonzalez said. "The other theory is Anglos didn't have a candidate. They weren't buying Morales' appeal, and Bentsen didn't energize them."
Sanchez pollster Maslin said the important thing about this primary is that Sanchez proved he could win in every section of the state. He said the campaign's message of improving education and health care resonated with Democratic Anglos.
Maslin said Morales was leading Sanchez 40 percent to 14 percent among Anglo voters in January, but Sanchez ended up winning the Anglo vote in the primary by about 12 percentage points over Morales.
"That's a 40 point turnaround in two months. That does not show me that Anglos were not responding," Maslin said.
"What we have seen in our polling all along is Sanchez's message is working everywhere."
The vote is also an issue in the Texas Senate race, where Republican candidate John Cornyn is using it to highlight his support of the nomination of Texan Priscilla Owen. One possible Democratic opponent, Ron Kirk, has pledged to block "conservative jurists who oppose Democratic rights and principles, including a woman's right to choose."
It's bad enough when the politicians lie to you in your own language, but when they lie to you in a foreign language in your own country, that is really getting bad.
IMO, I forsee a big win for Perry, the Republican candidate in the fall.
Just my opinion only: I'll tell you what the most nieve thing is I hear from some. It's about the "armed" Mexicans soldiers crossing into America and firing at our Border Patrols and they want us to believe it was all some sort of mix-up. And there are those that swallow this BS. Yeah, armed soldiers coming into the United States of America and we are not to take this seriously, ok, I'll sleep better knowing our border patrols are in danger of being shot on American soil by soldiers from another country, go figure. ___________________________________________________________
"We have an obligation to come and fight to cross the borders" author unknown but hispanic.
"Mexico is recovering the territories yielded to the United States by means of migratory tactics". (Prize Winning author, WorldNet Daily, Aug. 15, 2001)
"We are going to "dominate" this country". (Edward James Olmos, American actor- Aug. 5th. 2001)
"the terrorist attacks have brought out a side of Mexican nationalism and anti-Americanism that pundits had pronounced dead". (Miami Herald, Oct. 2, 2001)
It just boggles my mind that some here think Texas is about to have a civil war, or join some radical hispanic nation.
The reality is that Texas is a shining example of Republican success and the Democrat Party here is about as dead as it can be.
We proved it could be done with the Orlando Sanchez campaign in Houston.
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