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October 2, 2002, 9:45 a.m. Tough Texas Tea Leaves Race and money in the lone-star state. By David Guenthner

ven as someone who covers Texas politics for a living, this year's elections have been extremely difficult to get a good read on. Much of the reason is because we're dealing with circumstances that we've never encountered before in Texas.

First is the race factor. Hispanics, and to a lesser degree blacks, have historically had lower turnout rates than whites. Democrats presumed that was because those groups have never had a party nominee for a top-ballot office. So, voila! — Laredo banker/oilman Tony Sanchez is recruited for governor to bring out the Hispanics, while former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk is tapped for U.S. Senate to do likewise with blacks.

Democrats are gambling that the prospect of having one of their own in a major statewide race will excite Hispanics and blacks to turn out in such numbers as to overcome not only the 400,000-vote deficit in the Democratic base vote but also some of the backlash among whites in East and West Texas who typically vote Democratic. (Rightly or wrongly, Texas has some pockets where the Civil War still ain't over, if you know what I mean.)

Second is the money factor. Democrats are spending unprecedented amounts of money this cycle. Most of it is coming from Sanchez — whose net worth is estimated anywhere from $360 million to $1 billion. As of June 30, he had spent more than $31 million on his campaign, with 90 percent of it from his own pocket. (The previous record had been about $23 million.) He has been full blast on television since early May — recently increasing his weekly buy from $900,000 to an estimated $1.3 million — and his expenditure reports list several hundred people as campaign staff and contract laborers.

While the situation here remains fluid, I believe Republicans find themselves in a pretty good position going into the last six weeks of the election. There isn't as much enthusiasm for the GOP ticket as one might like, and the campaigns aren't scoring a lot of style points, but as long as the Republicans run their traps and don't become complacent, they should come through all right.

Originally, I thought the U.S. Senate race would be a blowout and the governor's race would be a nail biter. But about May, I flipped my assessment. Republican Atty. Gen. John Cornyn has a stately demeanor, an impressive record in office, and I'm sure most Texans think he would do the job well. But as a former judge, he is not charismatic and can come across as aloof. He has had difficulty at times coming across as his own man.

By contrast, one of Ron Kirk's biggest assets is his charisma. As mayor, he also curried a good relationship with the business community and crossover support in Dallas — one of the areas Republicans count on to run up the score. He has used his business and Republican backers to project the impression that even though he is a Democrat, Bush has nothing to worry about with him in the Senate. And for most of the campaign, he has gotten away with it.

But Kirk is beginning to falter badly. The defeat of the Priscilla Owen nomination began to drive the wedge between Kirk and Bush, and Cornyn has continued to pound it in over military and the war on terrorism. Kirk has had to backpedal from several recent statements on the death penalty and the impending war against Iraq — one of the former cost him a major statewide police-union endorsement.

His campaign appearances outside of Texas (and lack thereof in Texas) are becoming harder to ignore. In the four months following the April Democratic runoff, Cornyn made public appearances in 112 Texas cities, compared to 15 for Kirk (along with seven trips to Washington D.C.). Last week, Kirk was in San Francisco for a fundraiser co-hosted by Rep. Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the war on terrorism.

The race had been neck-and-neck for most of the year, but Cornyn has pulled noticeably ahead — 12 points in the Zogby/MSNBC poll released September 22. The state GOP started airing television commercials in August attacking Kirk, and those presumably moved the numbers some for Cornyn. As of June 30, Cornyn had a substantial cash-on-hand advantage over Kirk. But ultimately, the White House will expend whatever political capital is necessary to get Cornyn over the line. Right now, I see Cornyn winning by five to ten points.

The Senate race seems to have gotten more attention in Washington than here because the governor's race has knocked everything else off the pages in state. Perry/Sanchez has been more negative and more intense earlier than any previous general election.

Perry entered the race with a lot of vulnerabilities. The right was upset with him for signing hate crimes legislation last year and approving a two-year state budget 16 percent larger than the last. The doctors and auto dealers — two major donor groups that tilt Republican — have gone over to Sanchez because Perry vetoed their priority bills last session. And because Perry wasn't elected governor in his own right, Perry has lacked the time or the occasion to elevate his own profile.

But Perry's lucky break has been running against Sanchez, who brought more baggage to this race than the cargo hold of a 747. Every time Sanchez attacked Perry's coziness to corporate interests, Perry countered with attacks on Sanchez's business dealings with some of those same interests. When Sanchez started to make inroads in July on health care and insurance issues, Perry switched the subject to drug money laundering in a Sanchez savings-and-loan that taxpayers had to bail out. Sanchez's commercials have raised some doubts about Perry's leadership and moved some Perry supporters onto the fence, but Sanchez's support hasn't budged and his negatives are higher than Perry's.

Given the amount that Sanchez has shelled out on Democratic operatives and consultants, the advice and work product he has gotten has been miserable. Throughout the campaign, Sanchez's advisors have handed him stones to throw at Perry without realizing that they were standing in a glass house. Going after Perry's Enron contributions when Sanchez had a contract to supply natural gas to Enron, lobbied the UT system as a UT regent to do business with Enron, and is listed as a creditor in Enron's bankruptcy was sheer lunacy.

Sanchez hasn't stuck with any message long enough for it to burn in with the voters. During the Democratic primary, he ran 20 different commercials in eight weeks. In the last four and a half months, he has run at least 30 to 40 more — many of which have stunk. Every time Sanchez had something he wanted to say, he produced two spots. Then a few days later, they were replaced with new ones. One consultant not involved in the race said it was like Sanchez was doing focus groups on statewide television.

Once you balance the skewed sampling assumptions on both sides, Perry is probably leading by about 10-15 points right now. (Zogby showed Perry up 12.) That may not sound like a big lead but keep in mind that Sanchez has spent the equivalent of two full campaigns already; Perry has run television at key junctures but squirreled most of his resources toward the end.

There is no real passion for Perry but voters also don't appear to see any compelling reason to get rid of him. Unless Perry self-destructs at the end, Sanchez will have spent probably $70-75 million of his own money to get blown out on Nov. 5 and leave with his reputation in tatters.

Down ballot, the big prize is the 150-member Texas House of Representatives, the last bastion of Democratic power in state government. Redistricting guaranteed that the GOP will win a majority for the first time this November, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee that a Republican will be speaker. If Republicans wind up in the mid-80s, they'll be able to pick a speaker of their choice. But if the Democrats have a huge minority turnout, that number could fall toward 80, improving the odds that the current Democratic speaker can siphon off enough rural Republicans to keep the gavel for a record sixth term.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Texas is that it is a Republican state. It has trended in that direction over the last three decades, but Texas is really more of a Bush state. Republicans swept the Democrats out of statewide office in 1998 on George W. Bush's coattails, but that momentum did not carry down-ballot. Democrats maintained a majority of county-level offices and a slim majority in the Texas House. With Bush out of the state and his machinery in D.C., 2002 will be the test as to whether Texas has made the final step from one-party Democratic to one-party Republican.

— David Guenthner is managing editor of The Lone Star Report.