Martin Frost, former Democratic Congressman from Texas, has an opinion piece in Politico in which he outlines a scenario in which a Democrat, Houston Mayor Bill White, could end up winning the special election held to pick a replacement for retiring Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. It goes like this. The Republican field attracts many candidates. They split the GOP vote badly. An unelectable candidate (think a Ron Paul) manages to outpoll all other Republicans with only a small percentage of the vote, say 18%. The only Democratic candidate in the race, White, gets all the Democratic votes to make it into the run-off with the unelectable Republican. In the ensuing run-off, White attracts enough Democrats and moderate independents to win.
How likely is this scenario? Not very, in my opinion. But you can't rule it out. Frost points to just such a scenario that resulted in John Tower winning the special election to replace Lyndon Johnson, becoming the first Republican to win Texas since Reconstruction. Of course, first there has to be a special election. Kay Bailey Hutchison continues to play coy about that. Bill White may need a lot of dominoes to fall just his way, but if they do, he's putting himself in position to benefit.
4 comments:
Things like this do happen. Given the changing voting patterns in Texas after the war and the influx of northern immigrants, electing a Republican statewide was bound to happen eventually, and the unusual circumstances of the 1961 special election took advantage of that.
You could say that Bill Clinton was elected the first time as President by a similar set of circumstances. Because of President George Bush's 89% (or whatever, it was sky-high) approval rating during the First Gulf War, very few prominent Democrats wanted to run against him for President in 1992. But Bill Clinton, being relatively unknown, didn't have much to lose...and when Bush's approval rating dropped dramatically, Clinton was still around to take advantage of it.
One presumes that the Texas Republican Party is worried about this same scenario...they may not like Matin Frost, but they know he's no idiot...
Bill
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, I agree that Martin Frost's scenario is possible, if unlikely. The only thing that's really impossible is expecting to win an election from the sidelines. You've got to be in to win it.
Ed, I find it mildly disappointing that only me and thee are interested in such strategic or long-term political stories...are there no other true politicos out there? ;-)
Bill
Oh, I suspect that because this is such a long way off, that it's still not even a certainty there'll even be a special election, that Bill White has little name recognition in Dallas, and that the candidates and political parties aren't rallying their bases yet, all that results in people not yet having this (potential) race even on their radar screens yet.
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