Posted on 12/13/2009 7:37:19 AM PST by deport
Debra Medina For Governor is the other candidate in the GOP primary. Visit her website for information about her candidacy.
Each campaign, expecting turnout surge among casual Republican voters, hammers away at conservative credentials.
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Recent statements and strategy decisions have made clear that U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison believes it is Republicans — and not independents or Democrats, as some others have suggested — who can lift her to victory over Gov. Rick Perry in the March GOP primary.
Hutchison's campaign expects a surge of voters who support Republicans but do not regularly vote in Republican primaries. And to appeal to those voters, she has in recent weeks stressed her support from former Vice President Dick Cheney and highlighted what she hopes voters will see as Perry's departures from conservative orthodoxy on issues such as government intervention and private property rights.
Perry's campaign also expects a higher-than-usual turnout to come from general election voters who support Republicans but don't regularly vote in primaries. That may explain why Perry has cast Hutchison as a spend-happy creature of Washington, where Republicans have lost full control to Democrats.
In the past two gubernatorial elections, fewer than 700,000 people voted in the Republican primary. But those races did not have the kind of high-dollar, high-profile matchup that Republicans face this year as Hutchison, a senator since 1993, tries to end Perry's gubernatorial tenure at 10 years.
Hutchison campaign manager Terry Sullivan said he expects primary turnout to more than double to 1.5 million voters in March. "There hasn't been a big Republican (gubernatorial) primary for them to vote in," Sullivan said.
The Perry campaign anticipates 1.2 million people will vote in the Republican primary, said Perry consultant Dave Carney.
"I can't imagine any Democrat or left-leaning independent not voting in the Democrats' primary," Carney said.
Democrats will have their own contested primary to keep their voters home, headlined by Houston Mayor Bill White and businessman Farouk Shami dueling for the party's gubernatorial nomination.
Because anybody can vote in a primary, there is a certain conventional wisdom that says candidates increase the primary turnout by appealing to independents and members of the other party.
But there are plenty of Republicans out there for Perry and Hutchison to target.
About 2.1 million Texans have voted in at least one Republican primary in the past four elections, Carney said. And about 4.5 million Texans voted last year for Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee.
Daron Shaw, a government professor at the University of Texas, said 72 percent of Texas Republican primary voters in 2008 identified themselves as conservatives, compared with 20 percent who said they were moderates and 8 percent who said they were liberals.
Hutchison, however, believes she can draw voters to the primary by sounding familiar Republican themes.
"Traditional Republican primary voters are no more conservative than most of your general Republican voters," Sullivan said.
Carney agreed. Rather than ideology, what often separates Republicans who take part in primaries and those who don't is that the regular primary voters feel more connected to their communities, he said.
In what appears to be an effort to win conservative voters, Hutchison has repeatedly pointed to Perry's 2007 order mandating that schoolgirls get an immunization to protect them from the human papillomavirus. She is also trying to stoke the anger of landowners who thought the state was unfairly trying to take their land to build the Trans-Texas Corridor, Perry's vision of toll roads crisscrossing the state, which has been abandoned.
Those issues illustrate a gap between Perry's conservative rhetoric and his record, Sullivan said.
Meanwhile, Hutchison's campaign is trying to remind Republicans of the reasons they like her, such as pushing a tax deduction for states, such as Texas, that lack an income tax, and voting to increase border security.
But Hutchison has hurdles to clear with conservative Republicans.
A November Rasmussen Reports poll gave Perry a lead of 11 percentage points over Hutchison among voters who say they plan to vote in the Republican primary. But Perry's lead among those who described themselves as conservatives was 22 percentage points.
Furthermore, Perry has hammered Hutchison on a number of fronts, most notably for supporting the 2008 financial rescue package that came to be known as the Wall Street bailout.
While saying that Perry passed the state's largest-ever cut in property taxes, the Perry team notes that Hutchison voted numerous times to raise the federal debt ceiling and has regularly voted to approve federal spending bills. Those issues fold into what they hope will be the predominant theme of the campaign: Texas vs. Washington.
Hutchison has taken some moderate positions over the years. She has favored embryonic stem cell research and backed an expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program that Perry opposed. She also angered social conservatives by casting a symbolic vote in support of the Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal, although she supports many abortion restrictions.
But Hutchison has voted with the Republican caucus in the Senate 89 percent of the time this year, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. Even when she voted to raise the debt ceiling, she generally did so along with most of her GOP colleagues. When she appeared with Cheney in Houston last month, she said, "I am the conservative in this race."
In 2006, several Republican challengers beat incumbent Republicans in the Texas House with help from teachers' groups, school voucher opponents and advocates for more spending on schools. At the time, those campaigns seemed to provide a road map for defeating conservative Republicans in the primary.
"They reached out to the education community to indicate that they would be there with them on their issues, and that was a major factor," said Richard Kouri of the Texas State Teachers Association, one of the groups that got involved in the 2006 primaries. He also pointed out that those races came when tensions between school groups and the Legislature peaked. Much of that anger has dissipated.
Hutchison has not actively sought the support of those groups. In fact, she recently rolled out an education plan that did not call for an overall spending increase for schools. She has talked of expanding the Republican Party but has generally not emphasized issues, such as stem cell research, that might bring independents or Democrats into the GOP primary.
Democratic consultant Jason Stanford said the campaigns are smart to focus on Republican voters.
"The easiest untapped source of votes in the primary is Republicans, not Democrats or independents," he said.
end of article..............
Hutchison runs a radio ad in TX that says she fought against the big stimulus of Obama, the same bill she voted for. Typical Washington stuff. Perry ain’t perfect but better than Kay Bailout.
This race also will feature Palin, campaigning for Perry, versus Dick Cheney, campaigning for Kay. Again, Palin is far more conservative than Cheney, particularly with regard to domestic policy.
Could you post a source link for this article? Thanks.
Hundreds of thousands of Mexican peasants are squatting on unimproved "subdivisions" in Texas AT AN ENORMOUS COST TO TAXPAYERS. On the federal level, Kay Bailey Hutchison, alone, has obtained more than $600 million dollars for "improving colonias," going back to 1993.
In Texas in 1989, the Legislature established a program to provide grants and loans for water and sewer services to border counties. Texas voters approved a $100 million bond issue that year and another $150 million in 1991. The Texas Water Development Board has awarded more than $500 million in state and federal money to install water and wastewater services in colonias. In 2005, lawmakers expanded the program's eligibility to the entire state. And in 2007, voters approved another $250 million in general obligation bonds so the Texas Water Development Board could provide water and wastewater infrastructure through the Economically Distressed Areas Program.
Why is this happening? Toleration for illegal immigration by elected officials like Hutchison. Why isn't it being stopped instead of encouraged? You get more of what you reward. Unscrupulous developers sell these illegals small patches of land with no water, no sewer, no drainage, no roads, no electricity, no gas, NO NOTHING. They set up their Third World cardboard shacks, and then a nice big government comes along and taxes other people to pay to provide them with water, sewer, drainage, roads, electricity and gas, conveniently allowing the developers to keep their ill-gotten gains. The developers return the favor by supporting the politicians who support these programs to "improve" colonias.
Both of them are stinking RINO politicians interested only in one thing .. the election of self.
Notice how both are trying to “outconservative” (if you grant me the ability to make that a word) themselves relative to the other. Pretty simple concept to me ... a CONSERVATIVE NEVER needs to TELL me HOW conservative he/she is. Actions are what speak. Take that for what it is worth.
No longer a TEXAS resident, but I know without a shadow of a doubt how I would vote.
Wow, pure campaigning, here.
I wanted to click on the American Statesman link, to check to see whether the medina link was yours or theirs. I think it must have been yours, but will have to look harder to find out, since you didn’t post that link.
No Way Kay should run as a democrat the way her voting record shows.
Yep, she’s been in DC too long and should stay there.
Be honest. Perry is in favor of strategic fencing with “boots on the ground” and empowered State law enforcement augmenting Border Patrol, elsewhere.
Haven’t you followed the lawsuits about people who are having their land divided by the fence, so that they can’t use that land for cattle and farming?
Poor Texas. First a Lesbian Mayor in Houston and now a HORRIBLE choice between two HORRIBLE candidates. I don’t know why people here slobber over Perry. I guess we have reevaluated what conservative is but I know conservatives don’t force folks to take a vaccine that they don’t want.
Where’s the link?
For those of you who think Perry is bad, wait until you have Kay Bailey. She is as bad as Obama.
Right! What ever happen to “Don’t Mess With Texas”? This is the state that is suppose to lead in the protection of gun possession and they elect a gay mayor for their largest city! Wow!
Poor Texas!!! Texas must be in the top 10 conservative states and they can’t find any to run????
Perry is unashamedly pro-life. He is a regular at our Pro-life rallies and meetings. He went far out of his way to push parental rights to protect our daughters and to support our Woman’s Right to Know Act.
Hutchison complains about Perry’s 10 years, conveniently forgetting that she promised to resign after 2 terms - and then claimed it wouldn’t be fair.
Since her first election, she and her staff have been hostile to my (and my mother’s, and other pro-life Texans’) urging her to be the one pro-life woman in the Senate. She can’t be bothered to make a single prolife speech, but she can sign off on letters urging President Bush to spend more federal money for embryo destruction.
Last week, she blew another opportunity to stand for life. While she voted against Boxer’s motion to table, she didn’t stand to speak for the innocent. She deigned to release a statement ( http://hutchison.senate.gov/pr120809c.html ) but obviously didn’t understand what it meant (”Hyde Amendment language” is nonsensical).
If the Governor’s choice was to resign and leave it to Hutchison or run again — -which should he have done?
You couldn’t be more wrong.
Cornyn’s only fault is that he supports Republicans as Chair of the Senate Republicans - probably out of some loyalty to a promise he made when he took the job.
In every other case, whether for life, the family, national defense and sovereignty and fiscal responsibility, he is right. As Texas’ Attorney General, he fought pro-life battles when he could have just let them slide.
Another one of those “between good and evil” choices. That’s why Houston just elected a gay mayor. She says it’s not about being gay then says her election is good for gays everywhere.
Link to article:
OK, thanks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.