Few Democrats willing to stand up for statewide races (Texas Chicken Cut & Run backlash?)

Few Democrats willing to stand up for statewide races
By Jason Embry
By W. Gardner Selby
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, December 04, 2005

On the eve of an election year when the governorship, a U.S. Senate seat and other statewide posts are on the ballot, the Texas Democratic Party last week was urging visitors to its Web site to get behind four hopefuls — including the mother of NFL quarterback Drew Brees — running for the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals.

Activists insist that their focus on races such as the 24-county judicial contest is not a sign that the party is giving up in the larger elections.

But early in the monthlong candidate filing period that started Saturday, they do not know how the top of their 2006 ticket will shape up, except that it will not match the "dream team" that ended up losing every statewide race in 2002. The shortage of proven candidates willing to run statewide suggests that the party remains unable to compete with Republicans up and down the ballot, even though Republicans in Texas and Washington suffered numerous political setbacks this year.

"It's important for us to see how the filing period goes," said Ruben Hernandez, executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. "We're optimistic that credible candidates will present themselves."

By this time four years ago, Democrats already had drawn seasoned politicians to run in several key races. Now, the party appears to be focused on down-ballot races and peeling off a handful of legislative seats.

"Democrats might win an isolated election due to peculiar circumstances related to that one election," said Thomas Myers, a political science professor at Baylor University. "But as far as making any kind of systematic comeback across the state, I don't see that happening."

Ron Kirk, a former Dallas mayor who was the 2002 Democratic nominee for the Senate seat won by Republican John Cornyn, sees no wisdom in slotting candidates for the sake of having candidates.

"I've never believed we do any good by just running a token who gets trounced into the ground," Kirk said. "The political reality is what it is. If we don't have the talent base or the people with the energy, ambition and experience to run right now, I'd rather they go get that and run next time around."

The most visible Democrat running statewide so far is gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell of Houston, a former one-term congressman. Bob Gammage, who won statewide office as a Texas Supreme Court justice but has been out of office and the public eye for years, also is weighing a bid.

Others who are expected to run for statewide office have little political experience. They include Felix Alvarado, a Fort Worth middle school administrator running for governor; Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer running for U.S. Senate; and David Van Os, a San Antonio labor lawyer and former Supreme Court candidate running for attorney general.

It's a stark contrast to the Republican side, where Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn is running for governor, state Sen. Todd Staples is running for agriculture commissioner, and Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs is running for comptroller. Meanwhile, the GOP governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, land commissioner and five members of the Texas Supreme Court are hoping to retain their seats.

In many ways, the lack of candidates is no surprise. Democrats have not won a statewide election since 1994, and there is little reason for up-and-coming mayors or legislators to give up good jobs for expensive, draining campaigns when recent history is not on their side.

During that time, Republicans have seized on Texans' conservative views on economic and social issues.

"Republicans have done a good job of selling Texans on the idea that they're for limited government, that they're going to cut taxes, that they're going to protect Texans against homosexuals," Myers said.

They also have repeatedly won the turnout battle, said Allan Saxe, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington.

"In the suburban areas, they really get out and vote, and in the rural areas, as well," he said. "They are very self-motivated."

Not that there aren't sensitive issues for Democrats to exploit next year. Republicans have repeatedly been unable to create a new system of paying for public schools; the state Supreme Court has declared the current system unconstitutional. And many Democrats are still seething about the unprecedented and successful effort that Republicans made in 2003 to redraw congressional districts and reduce the number of Democratic members of Congress.

Nationally, President Bush's popularity has fallen since 2002, and U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, is under indictment, accused of helping Republicans use illegal corporate dollars in state legislative races three years ago. Additionally, some states that usually vote for GOP presidential candidates, such as Montana, Kansas and Oklahoma, have Democratic governors, proving that party allegiances can be reversed.

Myers said that voters primarily cast their ballots based on party affiliation and that party affiliation is chiefly formed during childhood.

He said the best hope for a Democratic resurgence lies with the state's growing Hispanic population, a constituency that Republicans also covet. That is one reason that the Democratic ticket featured a Hispanic candidate, gubernatorial hopeful Tony Sanchez, a Laredo businessman, at the top of the 2002 ticket and why the party touted a "dream team" of Hispanic, African American and white candidates.

Pollster Mike Baselice, whose Republican clients include Gov. Rick Perry, says Republicans in statewide races have drawn no worse than 52 percent of the vote in recent elections, with some Democrats plunging below 40 percent.

Baselice said Republicans hold an approximately 10 percentage point advantage among voters, an advantage that could dwindle over time should Hispanic population growth continue and Republican candidates fail to draw more than 30 percent of the Hispanic vote.

Bell, best known for bringing formal ethics complaints against DeLay in the U.S. House, said he wants to appeal to a broad audience by talking about ideas, such as allowing more stem-cell research than Perry would and giving more money to education, that he thinks can attract moderate Republicans. He also wants to make inroads with lower-profile issues that touch voters' everyday lives, such as clamping down on credit-card companies' pursuit of college students.

"We have to put issues on the table that resonate with what I'm calling the new mainstream: moderate Republicans, independents and Democrats," Bell said.

But candidates need money to project their message, and some of the trial lawyers who Democrats have relied on for campaign contributions recently have, at least for now, teamed up with Strayhorn, who is challenging Perry in the GOP primary.

"This is a Republican state. We're going to have a Republican governor," lawyer John Eddie Williams, who gave Strayhorn $100,000 in June, told the Austin American-Statesman in July.

Veteran Democratic consultant Kelly Fero said the party began a six-year strategy last year that he hopes will land Democrats in key offices by the time lawmakers draw new legislative and congressional districts in 2011.

The party increased its state House ranks by one member last year, stalling decades of Republican momentum in legislative contests. Fero said legislative candidates can tap the sentiment among voters that Republicans tended to such issues as redrawing congressional districts without improving public education.

"The message is very simple: 'They didn't get the job done. Send me there, and I'll get the job done,' " he said.

This year, he said, party operatives hope to pick up five to 10 seats in the GOP-controlled Legislature, including Republican Rep. Terry Keel's and one vacated by former GOP Rep. Todd Baxter, both of which are in western Travis County.

"We consciously decided to concentrate on the House, where there are more races, more within our reach and where the worst laws are being drafted," he said.

By picking up House seats, Democrats could continue their effort to develop fresh faces.

"We worked in the '60s and '70s to always have a farm team," said Ben Barnes, a former Democratic lieutenant governor and House speaker. "LBJ and (former governor John) Connally told me not one time, but a hundred times, it's a big responsibility to bring along young people to govern Texas. I tried to do that. It's fallen to the wayside now."

What's with Texas Democrats?
May 15, 2003
by Cal Thomas

What's with Texas Democrats? Fearful that the Republican majority would push through a redistricting plan that might create between five and seven new Republican-controlled seats in the state's congressional delegation, all but one of the Democratic members of the Texas legislature fled under cover of darkness to Oklahoma. At least 50 of them hid out in a Holiday Inn just over the border. The absence of a quorum in Austin means that no business on the state budget, or any other matter, can be conducted.

Is this the low point for a once great party when the state Democratic delegation cuts and runs, instead of standing and fighting, and then flees at night to the state of its arch football rival? Not New Mexico. Not even Arkansas. But Oklahoma? The Democrats left the state to avoid arrest by Texas Rangers, a constitutionally permitted act when legislators fail to show up for work.

For as long as anyone could remember, Democrats ran government in Texas. Republicans knew their place and pretty much accepted their fate as permanent members of a minority political class. That began to change as Republicans in the '60s and '70s tapped into the patriotic and social concerns of conservative Democrats and won enough of them over to elect Republicans to Congress. That was soon followed by victories in the state legislature and governor's office.

Rather than accepting defeat, as Republicans were used to doing, and instead of plotting a strategy for retaking control of state government, Texas Democrats followed the lead of their Washington, D.C., colleagues and began to complain. Apparently under the misguided belief they have some intrinsic right to perpetually hold on to political power, Texas Democrats began to grumble about Republican "power grabs." But isn't that what Democrats -- in fact all politicians -- do? Isn't the purpose of politics to gain power so that one might exercise it? Democrats exercised power when they had it and now they complain when Republicans have it and wish to use it. That power includes redistricting to keep themselves in office. Republican legislators were elected by the people in open elections. If they don't like the outcome, perhaps Democrats should come up with ideas to run the state better than Republicans and voters might elect more of them.

Texas Republicans are considering several strategies. The most radical would be for Gov. Rick Perry to declare the seats of the absconding Democrats vacant and call a special election to fill them. That is not likely to happen because of the cost associated with a special election. A second strategy would be for the House Speaker to strip committee chairmanships from the Democrats. In Texas, a bipartisan policy allows members of the minority party to chair committees. Depriving them of their chairmanships would turn Democrats into political geldings.

Here's what probably will happen. Perry will call a special session of the legislature in June, because the budget must be passed. Republican legislators say at that time they will ram through the redistricting proposal. "It's going to happen," one legislator told me. He also said that Democrats may pay a penalty for leaving the state when some of their bills are not brought up for votes.

The problem for Democrats in Austin and in Washington is that they have failed the ideology test. As Joel Klein writes in a Time magazine cover story this week, Democrats seem to have lost firm convictions about anything and simply pander to the special interest groups who promise them votes.

Democrats used to be the party of grand ideas, but now Republicans are the ones with the ideas and Democrats spend most of their time complaining about them and blowing class-warfare smoke.

Texas Republicans are having fun with the Democrats' walkout. They've created playing cards that resemble most-wanted Iraqis. They've also plastered the faces of the missing Democrats on milk cartons. A comedian wearing a chicken outfit stands outside the legislature with a sign that reads "Chicken D Come Home!"

Call the Democrats Texas toast.

Cal Thomas is a contributing columnist for Townhall.com

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