2010 Texas Governor - Perry vs. White

10/11/10 -- The recent polling has begun to show a clear break toward Rick Perry.  The last two polls show him up 11 and 14 points, and over 50 percent.  The governor is in strong shape for re-election at this point.

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The rise of the Republican Party in Texas is a fascinating tale of how one party consistently bit off its nose to spite its face. Texas always had a small Republican party in the panhandle, in the German counties north of San Antonio, and later, in the growing suburbs of Dallas and Houston. But the two-party system mostly played out in the Democratic Party. It was divided between conservative Tory Democrats, who plotted to depose Franklin Roosevelt as the Democratic nominee in 1944 and who supported President Eisenhower in the 1950s, and the liberal Democrats.

When LBJ was elected vice president, a conservative Democrat was appointed to replace him. In the ensuing special election, liberal Democrats either stayed home or cast a protest vote for Republican John Tower, whom they figured they could easily defeat down the road. The same dynamic played out in 1966, and by 1972 Tory Democrats were defecting to the Republican Party, while the Republican’s native base in the suburbs continued to grow.

Today the Republicans have controlled the governorship for 16 straight years. The Republican Party has grown to majority status and has its own split between its conservative/populist wing and its establishment wing. In 2006, that split manifested in a four-way race for governor, where two Republicans faced off against two Democrats in the general election. Governor Rick Perry, the successor to the second President Bush, won with 39 percent of the vote.

Perry is now the longest-serving governor in Texas history. If he wins and serves an unprecedented third four-year term, he will have been governor for 14 years. This time there are no major third party bids to take him down. Instead, he’s drawn a strong Democratic opponent in former Houston Mayor Bill White. White has kept it close in the polls, leading to some concern among Republicans that Perry could lose despite the bad Democratic year. On the other hand, it seems like every cycle there’s some story about the Republican candidate in Texas losing to an outstanding Democratic candidate, but it never seems to materialize. It will happen eventually, and there is certainly some risk that “Perry fatigue” will drag the Governor down.