Karl Rove, Senior Advisor to the President
"The Democrats did have a clear strategy in 2002 in Texas. But I thought from the outset it was flawed. And it basically said process will trump policy." | Read more »
Ann Richards, Former Governor of Texas (1991-1995)
"Well, it's an interesting thing this question of party identification and the shift that a state takes from having been all Democratic to all Republican. The reality is that the Republicans were always here in Texas. They were in the Democratic Party. " | Read more »
Paul Begala, Co-host of Crossfire
"And one moment, it was the moment when Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, switched his party in Texas from being a party of racism to being the party of civil rights. And it was the right thing to do historically, but it has killed his party politically." | Read more »
Molly Ivins, Writer and Columnist
"What would happen if everybody in Texas voted? What would it look like? And according to the demographers at A&M, this state becomes, I hate this phrase, majority-minority in 2008. If you add together all the blacks and browns, there'll be more of them than there’ll be Anglos in Texas." | Read more »
Wayne Slater, Political Journalist
"The real intrigue about this race is that either side can win. This is a Republican state, but this is an enormously attractive ticket. This is a ticket that could appeal to a diverse group of loyal Democratic voters, so the Democrats could win." | Read more »
Introduction
"The Democrats did have a clear strategy in 2002 in Texas. But I thought from the outset it was flawed. And it basically said process will trump policy." | Read more »
"Well, it's an interesting thing this question of party identification and the shift that a state takes from having been all Democratic to all Republican. The reality is that the Republicans were always here in Texas. They were in the Democratic Party. " | Read more »
"And one moment, it was the moment when Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, switched his party in Texas from being a party of racism to being the party of civil rights. And it was the right thing to do historically, but it has killed his party politically." | Read more »
"What would happen if everybody in Texas voted? What would it look like? And according to the demographers at A&M, this state becomes, I hate this phrase, majority-minority in 2008. If you add together all the blacks and browns, there'll be more of them than there'll be Anglos in Texas." | Read more »
"The real intrigue about this race is that either side can win. This is a Republican state, but this is an enormously attractive ticket. This is a ticket that could appeal to a diverse group of loyal Democratic voters, so the Democrats could win." | Read more »
Karl Rove
Paul Stekler: Describe the rise of the Republican Party in Texas.
Karl Rove: Well, when I first arrived in Texas in January of 1977 in Austin, I went to work in the Texas legislature. Out of the hundred eighty-one members of the legislature, I think there were maybe 15 or so Republicans. There were, I think, 12 Republicans in the House and 3 Republicans in the state Senate. And it really was a one-party state. I mean, virtually every county courthouse except for a few suburban Republican strongholds and a couple of the old German Republican counties and a few of the West Texas conservative counties, all the county courthouses, all the local elected officials, were Democrats. In 1977, of the 30 statewide elected officials, there was one Republican. U.S. Senator John Tower. Every other statewide office was occupied by a Democrat. And the Democrats had an overwhelming majority of the states' congressional delegation, which was, you know, in the high 20s, I think, at that point. So it was a Democrat state. And politics was settled with Democratic primaries.
Well, back then I never saw that the change would happen as rapidly as it did. I thought I'd, you know, spend the rest of my adult life in a state where I'd be, hopefully, a growing minority, but a minority nonetheless. But political change came rather rapidly to the state. The state is today a very strong Republican state.
The potential was that Texas was a moderately conservative state and that we were going through a series of demographic changes -- immigration, increasing urbanization, an increasing level of education -- all of which created the potential for a more diverse political culture, in a more vibrant two-party state. But there are other states that have gone through the same process and not seen political change like Texas has done. Texas was blessed by sort of the appearance of a succession of political leaders who by the conduct of their campaigns and their conduct in office, were able to successively build on each others' successes and create the modern Republican Party of Texas. The first, obviously, was, John Tower, who was elected in a fluke in a special election for the United States Senate in 1961 and reelected in 66, reelected in 72, and reelected in 78. And he made it possible for people to identify with a Texas Republican and be credible. And he was followed in 1978 by Bill Clements, who was the first Republican governor elected in 114 years. His last Republican predecessor was Edmund J. Davis, who, when he lost the election of 1874 barricaded himself in the state Capitol and wired Grant for Union Troops to keep him in office. And on inauguration day, no federal troops had arrived and a disorganized and probably drunk mob came up Congress Avenue, heavily armed and forced him out of the governor's office at the point of a gun. And there ensued 114 years of Democratic rule in Texas. But Clements got elected by a very thin margin, literally just over 10,000, I think it was some, 11,000 or 17,000 votes in 1978. And by doing so, he began to take the historically Republican areas of the Hill Country, and a Midland and an Odessa and Tyler, and the big urban counties that had shown a propensity to vote Republican, Dallas and Houston, and matched them with two other really important forces that were to change Texas politics during the 70s and 80s and 90s.
First were the suburban counties. The area, the growing suburbs north of Dallas and Fort Worth and north and west of Houston, in particular. And he really energized these suburbanites to come out and vote for him. He also began to take a swatch of rural Texas. No Republican could win simply on the cities and suburbs alone. They had to grab something of rural Texas. And he did particularly well in East Texas, and even better in far West Texas, the panhandle and the south plains. And this was enough to give him a narrow victory. And he built on it, and had a very successful first administration. 1984, Phil Gramm came along, who was able to win statewide, and he not only had the suburban base and the urban base that Clements had had, and the far West Texas and East Texas strength, but he also added a whole series of counties in Central Texas, which had never voted Republican before. Then in 1990, Rick Perry, the agriculture commissioner candidate, and Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Kay began to strengthen, add strength among suburban moderates, particularly women. Rick added strength in sort of the big country, near Abilene. Out of the sort of, west-central Texas and West Texas. And then in 1994, Governor Bush was elected with those strengths, plus even more in Central Texas, and beginning to creep south into South Texas. So each one of them has benefited from a growing suburbanization of the state, plus they've added successive levels of strength in various areas of the state where before you could think of voting for a Republican, but having once voted for one and felt good about it, you could feel comfortable voting for another.
Well, I think it looks like a strategy in retrospect, but in reality it was the incident of these very strong leaders. It also helped that Ronald Reagan came along in 1980. You know, we think of Texas as a predictably Republican presidential state, and it has been since 1980. But if you look before that point, it had voted for Carter in 76, it had gone for Nixon in 72, but had gone for Humphrey in 68. Gone for Johnson, obviously, in 64. It went for Kennedy in 60. It went for Eisenhower in 56 and in 52, but only because Democrats led by governor Shivers came across and endorsed him as a popular war hero. And before that, the history of the state is virtually Democrat except for the overwhelming Republican sweeps like in 1928 and so forth. So it's a state that has been helped, though, by this, you know, this coincidence, if you will. But that, a joyful coincidence of Tower, Clements, Reagan, Bush Senior, Phil Gramm, Bush forty, forty-three, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and then a talented group of candidates who came as sort of the farm team to run for lesser offices. The Democratic Party looks weak, but it looks weak by comparison to this very strong ticket of Republican candidates who emerged for lesser offices. Now, in part, this is because of something unique about the structure of Texas government.
Texas government prizes non-political candidates. We have a legislature that meets a hundred forty days every two years, they're expected to have a real life besides being a legislator. They get paid seventy-two hundred dollars a year, 600 dollars a month. So that, you know, they're supposed to have a real livelihood besides being a legislator. So if you look at Rick Perry: started as a Democrat legislator, was elected as a Republican as agriculture commissioner, was elected as Republican lieutenant governor, succeeded when Bush became president, ran for and won reelection as a Republican on his own. But he began as a citizen legislator. Susan Combs, our agriculture commissioner. Jerry Patterson, our land commissioner. Many of our candidates over the years have begun in sort of, at this very non-political you know, or non-full-time political, ah, background in the legislature. Or begun in the judiciary. We've also been benefited from having our current attorney general and his predecessor, the first two Republican attorneys general since Reconstruction. Both served on the Supreme Court of Texas as Republicans. Before that, both of them were district court judges. Ironically enough, one of them, Abbot, was appointed to the Supreme Court by Governor Bush, and appointed to the district court branch in Houston previously by a Republican governor, and John Cornyn had run for the district court bench in Bexar County but as part of a Republican reform movement of the, of the courthouse there.
Stekler: What would be a good Democratic strategy in Texas, and what went wrong in 2002
Rove: First you got to get good candidates who can articulate a message that makes sense to the people of Texas. I mean, that's what the Republican advantage was. They had candidates, Tower and Clements, Reagan, Bush, Phil Gramm, Kay Hutchinson, Rick Perry, George W. Bush, all of whom got elected. Sometimes, in the early days, almost by accident. Their election depended on electoral confusion as in 61, or a bitter Democratic primary as in 78. Or the selection of the most liberal candidate as in 84 in the Senate primary or the failed policies of the Carter administration as Reagan-Bush in 80. But once in office they performed in such a way that people of Texas said, "I identify with that. I applaud it. And it makes me feel more comfortable voting for Republicans in the future." If the Democrats have a hope in Texas, it is to do that in reverse. To be able to identify opportunities where a good candidate with a strong and powerful message gets elected, albeit perhaps by accident, perhaps as an upset, perhaps being very opportunistic and looking for openings that might not otherwise be seen. And hope that once in office they perform in such a way that it makes their party more attractive to the people of Texas. Politics is ultimately about ideas. It's about results. It's about enacting policies that will have an effect for good or for ill on the people of the state and country. And it's those results. It's the performance in office that ultimately determines whether or not the party has the durability to maintain its primacy in a state over time.
The Democrats did have a clear strategy in 2002 in Texas. But I thought from the outset it was flawed. And it basically said process will trump policy. They said, we will have a rich Latino for governor, we'll have a popular African-American for the Senate, who has got bipartisan support when he was running for mayor. And then we will have a sharp, technocratic, moderate to liberal Democrat for lieutenant governor and somehow or another because we've touched all of these bases, profiles, got all these different profiles, we'll win. But when you had a gubernatorial candidate who was not an appealing personality and could not convincingly talk about his vision, and when you had a bipartisan mayor who suddenly became a hyper-partisan and again could not talk about his vision, and then you had a lieutenant governor candidate whose rationale didn't seem to be anything other than, "I'm the guy that you ought to vote for when you vote for the other two." You know, it became a very unappealing mish-mash. It reminded me of that Churchill phrase. He was presented a dessert, a pudding. And he said, "Take it away, it has no theme." Well, to say "We have the Dream Team" which carried with it the belief that if we simply have the Latino and the African American and the white male that somehow or another that's an adequate platform on which to base an appeal to the people of Texas, Texas is a far more sophisticated place than that. And they wanted to know, what are you going to do as my governor? How are you going to vote as my senator? And what makes you the person who ought to preside over the state Senate as our lieutenant governor. And the answer to those questions were never forthcoming from the Democratic ticket. Not in a satisfactory way.
Stekler: What's the deal with the Hispanic vote
Rove: Well, I think that's yet to be determined. And that's the point, is that the Hispanic vote in Texas is a vote that is up for grabs. Because it is, first of all, Democratic in leanings. But by values and outlook, conservative and Republican. And the tension between those two -- our historical antecedents -- have been that the Hispanics have voted Democrat in Texas, but we are small business, entrepreneurs and rising middle class and emphasis on faith and family and community and conservative values. That tension means they're up for grabs. And it's why, for example, Rick Perry, running against the first Latino ever nominated by a major political party for governor, nonetheless gets 35 percent of the Latino vote. Which is pretty extraordinary. It's why George W. Bush running for reelection in 1998 got 49 percent of the Latino vote in Texas. It is a vote that is up for grabs. And to the degree that more middle class and more people go to college and become better educated, it becomes increasingly an even more conservative vote, and the tension between its historical leanings and its current orientation becomes more palpable and more beneficial to the Republican Party.
Karl Rove is currently the Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush. Rove also played a major role in Bush Sr.'s road to Presidency.
Ann Richards
Paul Stekler: Describe the myth versus the reality of Texas politics.
Ann Richards: If you ask me if you can put a stamp on Texas politics, I can tell you that there are screen images in advertising that appeal to Texans more than other images. Just like you would probably do, maybe surfboards and sand in Southern California, we still like to see men on horses with big hats. We still respond to John Wayne music from his films. So, there is that stripe in an advertising sense. But in reality, Texas is a very urban state. It has shifted from the oil fields and the agricultural land to the cities and the suburbs.
Texas certainly is a perfect example of the South and the Southwest. Because, you know, the way the elections go in the United States is that you fight over that big middle of Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas. Because, by and large, they -- with the exception of California being far to the left, New York being just to the left -- the South and the Southwest are voting more and more Republican because it is becoming more and more urban. It has an influx of less established people who don't really have an identity. They can't tell you that they're a Texan or that they're a Yankee, or anything else. They're a very mobile society. And for some reason, those mobile voters always tend to have less faith or less interest in government, which is a Republican attitude. I don't really know why that is true. But I think an identity with place is important in one's life. It has something to do with the preservation of community. Not just your own family but of your neighbors. Now, the mobility of people is such that a lot of times they don't even know their neighbors, [laughs] much less care about what happens to them or the community in which they all live.
Stekler: How did Texas evolve from being a Democratic state to a Republican one
Richards: Well, it's an interesting thing this question of party identification, and the shift that a state takes from having been all Democratic to all Republican. The reality is that the Republicans were always here in Texas. They were in the Democratic Party. We didn't have a Republican Party that was active. And, the truth is that the Democrats, the left of center Democrats, the loyalist Democrats, thought that the Republicans ought to get into their own party, hold their own primary and stop dominating the Democratic politics. And we set out to drive them out of the Democratic Party and into their own party and we were very successful [laughs].
So, what has really happened in Texas is two things. One is that the Republican Party itself came into existence -- and with the election of John Tower into the United States Senate -- it was suddenly OK to be a Republican. Because you had a guy in office that you had to appeal to if you were going to get anything done in your town and get the federal government to do it, you know, you had to go talk to him. You had to go talk to Lloyd Bentsen. So, you had to be Democrat and you had to be Republican if you were a civic leader. The second thing that happened was that we had this enormous influx of people from other places. They came here from the Midwest, they came here from the East, and they were Republicans. Or they were from states that were dominated by Republicans or at least where it was O.K. to be a Republican. And, as a consequence, they added to the stability and the good name of the Republican Party.
Now, what's the stripe of Texas? Texas still, despite its change in its demographics and despite its change in its culture from rural to urban, Texas is still a frontier state. It's still a Wild West mentality. Even people who move here are not here -- I get so tickled. These guys come in. They're not here a week before they're wearing boots. They want to be a part of that romantic time when guys fought wars, rode horses, drove cattle. And they think of this state as having such an entrepreneurial spirit, a risk taking spirit. And, very much I think that is still true of us. Not as many of us are on horseback, but we are way out there on the edge of chips and technology and space. And whatever is next, we want to be part of that.
Stekler: What is the role of the 2002 Democratic ticket in the transformation of Texas politics
Richards: Well, interestingly enough, I get really emotional about it. It's hard for me to talk about it without tearing up. This represents a period of time in Texas politics that I fought all my life to see. When we were trying to outlaw the poll tax. You know, I come from a time when I sat at card tables at grocery stores selling the right to vote to black people. When we were a part of the marches of the farm workers in the first real rise of the Hispanic movement in this state, I was part of that. I've been a feminist, of course, all my life. But the fact that everything that we thought should transpire as a result of the civil rights movement is now coming to blossom. [clears throat] Whether or not we're successful this time or not really doesn't, to me, minimize what's happening. Because it is a recognition that the Hispanics have earned a place on the ticket, that the blacks have earned a place on the ticket, that the women are a political force, although people are not really sure how [laughs] to get to them or how to appeal to them. I think if not this year, it's going to happen. I just hope it happens with Democrats. We've not always been the best or the most receptive to the people who have supported the Democratic party. And we've allowed the Republicans to co-opt our position for political purposes. And shame on us for that.
Stekler: What do you think of Ron Kirk's chances of winning this election
Richards: Ron Kirk is one of the most natural politicians I've ever met. Short of Bill Clinton, he's as good as there is. He enters a room and he owns it. The people in the room, regardless of who they are -- Democrat or Republican -- just naturally gravitate to him. They just want to be next to him. They want to hear what he says. They want to be recognized by him. They want to be his friend. He did a remarkable job when he was mayor of Dallas in bringing a lot of disparate groups who had spent years quarreling with each other together. He can speak to businessmen about their concerns and he can speak to women with empathy about their children and their right to choose and women's independence. He's a remarkable guy. If Texas is lucky enough to have him in the United States Senate, he will be a national star in a very short time.
The reason Ron Kirk has a chance in winning is just his sheer personality, for one thing. Secondly, because the black population has been loyal in its Democratic support for a long time and it's their time to have a star candidate. He can win because he can cross those racial barriers, because he can talk to whites as well as blacks. And because he has the credentials that he worked hard, that he's proven himself. No one can claim that Ron Kirk has not been a good elected official because he has. Interestingly enough, I think there's another reason and that is that the Republicans don't know how to attack him. It's a tough problem for them. They don't want to appear racist. There's nothing for them to really get a handle on to suggest that he wouldn't be a good senator. So we'll see how it plays out.
Stekler: Why have people drifted away from running grassroots campaigns
Richards: There are so few people that are running in a grassroots way because it seems so impossible. It's such a vast state to start with, but even in smaller states, I don't think they run in a grassroots way the way they did before. And, going by the general store, dropping off some leaflets, urging people in the town's square to come out to vote. Those institutions have gone the way of the interstate. They simply are not there anymore. I only know of one politician in Texas who's trying to run that way this time and we'll see how successful he is. Where he's going and leaving his brochures and talking to people in grocery stores and at bait stands, and boat docks, and asking them to take his material and put it in a sack of groceries [laughs]. I don't know whether he can be successful or not. But, by and large, to meet the vast number of people, you've got to meet them on the television set and you've got to meet them in their cars on the radio.
Ann Richards is a former governor of the state of Texas, serving one term from 1991-1995. She currently works as a consultant, as well as serving on several corporate boards.
Paul Begala
Paul Stekler: Describe the history of Texas politics and the fall of the Democratic party.
Paul Begala: Yeah, when I was a kid, Texas was -- well, it was just like it is today. It was a very conservative state, distrustful of governmental power. But it was completely Democratic. It was a Democratic state. I mean, the county I grew up in, Fort Bend County, was the county that was taken to the Supreme Court in 1953 for holding a whites-only Democratic Primary. They didn't call it that. They had the Fort Bend County Jaybird Democrat Association. So it was a private organization. Only whites could participate in that organization. And they would then select a nominee. And -- that was always the Democrats. So, black people were cut out of it entirely. Hispanics were cut out of it entirely. And yet it was all Democrats. So while the Democrats were still the party of racial segregation, they did very, very well in Texas. All that switched in 1964. You know, Lyndon Johnson famously told, I think it was Bill Moyers, when he signed the Civil Rights Act, that he'd handed the South to the Republicans for a generation. And it turns out he underestimated. It's been about two generations now. Since the day he signed that law, since the day Lyndon Johnson put his name on the Civil Rights Act, there have been 10 presidential elections. Texas has gone Republican in 7 of them. The 10 presidential elections before that day, Texas went Democrat in 7 of them. So it seems to me, if you had to pick one thing, it would be race. And one moment, it was the moment when Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, switched his party in Texas from being a party of racism to being the party of civil rights. And it was the right thing to do historically, but it has ah, it has killed his party politically.
I think that the collapse of the Democratic Party in Texas does owe its roots to race. There were Democratic victories along the way. In 1982 the whole slate swept with Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Hobby leading the way, conservative Democrats, but very, very popular. Able politicians. In 1990, Ann Richards was able to win with her New Texas format. But, you know, those, I think we look at those historically now as the anomalies. I mean, just as before the Civil Rights Act Texas did go Republican twice under Eisenhower, but he was a war hero. And then once under Hoover, but that's 'cause he was running against a Catholic, Al Smith. So you can find these anomalies. And Ann's campaign was wonderful and historic and fantastic. But she still wouldn't have won if the Republican hadn't self-destructed. Clayton Williams that year was -- he's a very charismatic guy, but he turned out to be a bit of a joke and he self-destructed, allowing Ann then to waltz in. But Ann had a good 4 years. She never had to raise taxes. She had no scandals. And yet she got beat bad by a guy who'd never even been elected dog-catcher before. And so that, I think that tells you the strength of the Republican base now in Texas. It didn't have to happen that way. I do think that the Civil Rights movement set in place the conditions for that to occur. And on top of that, you had a rise of some very, very talented Republican candidates and Republican operatives, who then brought some discipline, were able to tap into that vast amount of Texas money, and set in place this Republican dominance that we have today. It's hegemony. It's absolute.
Stekler: What did Karl Rove have to do with the Republican takeover of Texas
Begala: You know, I'm a professional hyperbolist. Okay. I'm -- like all Texans, though. I think that's why I'm maybe naturally drawn to it. But I try to keep my hyperbole in check when I say to you that the dominance of the Republican Party in Texas today is attributable to one man. And that man is Karl Rove. Karl took a stable of candidates, some of them enormously talented, some of them real losers, and made them all winners. He was able to understand ideas, but also money. Just the raw power politics. He has a good sense of ideology and of coalition-building. And he was able to put that all together, and persuade politicians to do what he says. You know, having done this for a living, a whole lot of it is a bit of a confidence game. Can you get your candidate to actually say these things that you want. And that takes an enormous amount of skill too. And Karl brings that whole package to it. And he does it with a relentless and remorseless intensity that has really built this modern party. Now, without Karl Rove, would Republicans run Texas? Yeah, they'd probably have most of the offices. They'd probably be doing quite well because of the larger trends. But would they have every single seat in every single statewide office? No. No. So I give Karl an enormous amount of credit. He's a very gifted guy.
Stekler: Describe the culture and myths of Texas politics.
Begala: Texas has a unique political culture. There are few places in America that do, but mostly we're homogenized now. Louisiana, because it came from France and it's still under the Code Napoleon, has a unique culture. Hawaii does because it was its own country with its own king. But Texas is unique. There is this vast geography: 850 miles by 850 miles, two time zones, 19 media markets, this enormous population that's got to be close to 20 million now. And yet there is this kind of master myth. There's this governing myth that everybody buys into. And it's the frontier spirit. It's the sense of, I think, intense individuality, that really does give it a, a very strong political culture. And that culture is very conservative, and becoming increasingly conservative, I think, in the last 50 years, as people have become more comfortable with -- there are two different frontier myths. One is the myth of the rugged individualist. Striking out alone, not having big federal government regulations there to, you know, it was one lone cowboy on the prairie, one lone explorer going out to conquer the wilderness. That's the conservative myth. And then there's the myth of the wagon train. People all coming together. Yes, everybody had their own wagon. Some were big and some were small, some had nicer stuff in it, but they were all together and they all came out together. And when they found a spot they all pitched in to clear that spot of land to farm it. They all pitched in to build a little one-room schoolhouse and chipped in some money to hire a schoolmarm. They built each other's barns together. Well, it seems to me that, that's the liberal myth. And the liberal myth lost in Texas in the last 50 years and a conservative myth has won. And it's a very strongly conservative political culture.
Stekler: What is the significance of demographics in Texas politics
Begala: It's interesting. If the best Republicans spin they can come up with is that, "We got a third of the vote." They're losing two-thirds of the most important new sector of the electorate. That ain't good news. I think actually they're losing a lot more than two-thirds, but we can all plow through the numbers at some other time. The problem is, they won in 2002. And that was important tactically. But I think it will be deadly strategically. Going down the road, what will happen the next election, or the election after that, as a Hispanic vote grows, and people come to Hispanic voters, Democrats, and they say, do you remember Tony Sanchez? Do you remember that man whose integrity was so high that George W. Bush thought he was good enough to put in one of the most important jobs in state government? Whose money was so clean that George W. Bush took 400,000 dollars of it? Well, when it was Tony Sanchez's time to grab his piece of el sueno americano, what do they do? They trashed him. They attacked him, and they smeared him with racist and false charges that he was somehow tied to the drug trade. Now, if the Republicans will do that to a Democrat who supported them, like Tony Sanchez, what do you think they're going to do to you? If you support them today, and they want to stab you in the back tomorrow, they will use you and cast you aside, just the way they use Tony Sanchez and cast him aside. And I think that's a powerful message. I think it happens to be true.
Paul Begala is the co-host of CNN's Crossfire, a political debate program. Previously, Begala co-hosted a political talk show on MSNBC, and served as a counselor during the Clinton administration.
Molly Ivins
Paul Stekler: What role does race play in the 2002 election
Molly Ivins: What would happen if everybody in Texas voted? What would it look like? And according to the demographers at A&M, this state becomes, I hate this phrase, majority-minority in 2008. If you add together all the blacks and browns, there'll be more of them than there'll be Anglos in Texas. The conventional wisdom is that that's not going to make any difference in the politics of the state for 20 years, in part because the Republicans now control the redistricting process and they'll draw the legislative district so that they stay Republican, and also because it is historically true that it's just harder to get poor people to vote. You know, they're working two jobs, they don't have transportation, they can't pay to watch the kids for an hour, it's just complicated to get poor people to vote. And it's also part of the fact is that they're not aware of how important government is in their lives. I think that's true across the board.
Molly Ivins was a syndicated columnist, writing mostly about Texas and national politics. She was also the author of several books including her most recent, Bushwacked: Life in George W. Bush's America. Ivins died in Austin, Texas on January 31, 2007. She was 62.
Wayne Slater
Paul Stekler: Why is the 2002 election such a significant race for Texas
Wayne Slater: This is a Republican state, and demographically, there's nothing that anybody could do to win this year. But if you look at what's happened, at the growth of the Hispanic vote in Texas, the Latinos, who are increasing in population, and over time, will vote in greater numbers for future elections, it's only a matter of time before this state becomes much more competitive between Republicans and Democrats. What could do that, frankly, more quicker than later, is a candidate like they have this year, an Hispanic, or even if they fail this year, four years from now, they will have put in motion a machine, a voter turnout effort, what they have done is they have put together a very appealing ticket, on the Democratic side, that can really tap these minority constituencies. You can have an enormous number of Hispanic voters that will grow in the next four years and six years and eight years. So it's only a matter of time before Texas really becomes a very competitive two-party state, not the Republican state that it is right now. What you need in about four years, if the Democrats fail this time, is both the demographic changes, a lot of Hispanics show up to vote, and an enormously appealing person at the top of the ticket. You look for somebody like Henry Cisneros. You do that, the Democrats are back in the driver's seat.
Well, what happens now is, these two campaigns go out. We saw the week before in the Republican campaign a projection of a party that, that wants to appeal largely to White, business-minded and moderate and conservative voters in Texas, and that's the majority of voters in Texas. The Democratic candidates are going to try to project a more moderate image. Both sides have a lot of money. Democrats have a guy who has an enormous amount of money, a banker and oilman running for governor, to be the first Hispanic governor, and so he's spent 20-30 million dollars of his own money and probably will spend 60-70 million dollars of his own money, if he thinks there's a chance. On the Republican side, there's always money. A couple of their candidates have their own money to go with, so it's going to be one of the most expensive races in Texas, in the history of the state, one of the most expensive races in the history of any state, in Texas, when you look up and down the valley. We don't know what's going to happen. The real intrigue about this race is that either side can win. This is a Republican state, but this is an enormously attractive ticket. This is a ticket that could appeal to a diverse group of loyal Democratic voters, so the Democrats could win. Republicans could win. The Democrats could win. That's what makes this a great news story.
Wayne Slater is the Austin bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News. He is also the author of Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush.