Money Isn't Everything...

BY DISH CONTRIBUTOR: Mark Yzaguirre

It's been awhile since I've posted a piece about Governor Rick Perry's presidential campaign here at DISH-Houston and needless to say, things didn't go quite as well as Perry and his supporters hoped.  There is no shortage of commentary and postmortems already out there regarding Perry's ill-fated campaign and rather than provide another big-picture discussion of how things went wrong, I want to focus on one issue:  Perry's vaunted Texas money machine and how it didn't save him. 

This topic is of particular interest to me because I wrote about it as a strength of Perry's.  Perry had unique access to wealthy Texas Republican donors and this was seen as something that Perry could capitalize on.  Maybe that was always a mirage.  As Timothy Noah in The New Republic states:

Perry's unsuccessful campaign is therefore a timely lesson that while money counts for an awful lot in politics, it can't do everything.  This is a lesson we don't see illustrated very often. But when we do, it always seems to emanate--is this my imagination?--from the Lone Star State...Perhaps what we're seeing in these four instances is some political equivalent to what social scientists surveying the global economy call the "paradox of plenty." This is the observed phenomenon wherein countries rich in natural resources (diamonds, gold, and most especially oil) tend to experience less economic growth than countries that are much poorer in such resources. Texas does just fine when it comes to economic growth, but Texas politicians who run for president may perhaps rely too heavily on their state's abundance of rich campaign donors.

Noah may be on to something here.  While it's great to come from a state that has its own independent sources of economic strength and its own wealth networks, that may cut against someone trying to run for national office. 

It might be that Texas politicians have become so used to fundraising in Texas, a state with its own unique culture, that the habits and lessons learned on the campaign trail in Texas may become handicaps when one tries to run for office nationally.  This cultural uniqueness may particularly manifest itself in fundraising here in Texas because our rich folks aren't like rich folks in other parts of the country.  This isn't a criticism of wealthy Texans.  Speaking personally, there are few things more enjoyable than having cocktails at the Petroleum Club of Houston and listening to an independent oilman tell a few tales.  But the lessons one gathers while fundraising in Texas may not travel well and may lead to false assumptions about how this financial base can act as a backbone for national campaigning. 

I realize one can immediately cite the success of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush to counter this thesis, but as the Noah article points out, the Bushes are not a Texas-specific family.  Prescott Bush (father of George H.W. Bush) was a Senator from Connecticut and the Bushes are really a national political family, not a local one that has moved on to national politics.

The Texas fundraising base is a strong one and should not be underestimated.  It should not be overestimated either and being very successful in fundraising in Texas may actually create problems elsewhere.  This is a chastening possibility that Texas politicians must face.  For that matter, Texas political pundits (amateur and professional) must face that possibility as well.

Perry's Money Machine

BY DISH CONTRIBUTOR MARK YZAGUIRRE:

Zac Morgan wrote a great piece at FrumForum in which he stated that Texas Governor Rick Perry is in a unique position to unite different factions of the GOP and Morgan described Perry as the "Teastablishment" candidate.  I think this is a great description of Perry's strengths.  While much of the attention recently has focused on Perry's Tea Party and religious conservative strengths, I'd like to discuss part of the establishment side of his political capital, namely his ability to access a key financial pillar of the GOP donor base - wealthy Texas Republicans.

            Perry is a prodigious fundraiser and has raised over $100 million in his gubernatorial campaigns.  He is not uncomfortable meeting a group of businessmen in a boardroom and this has always been a strong point for him.  While his rhetoric may be populist, he generally doesn't stray into rhetoric that can come off as a type of right-wing class warfare, the way some conservatives (like Sarah Palin, for example) sometimes do.  This is helpful in fundraising and in making affluent voters feel comfortable with a candidate.

            Perhaps more importantly, if Perry runs, he will have first-class access to the Texas Republican donor base.  While this may seem obvious and would be true regarding the local donor base of any Governor from a given state, I'd suggest this is of particular importance given Texas's economic strength and historic role in modern conservative politics.  On the first point, Texas has had a better time of it during this recession and thus there is a fair amount of money on the table.  But more importantly, the Texas conservative donor base has long been a source for donations that runs independently from other conservative donor bases.  At its best, it's acted as a counterbalance to the East Coast or California GOP establishments.  At its worst, it can fund some admittedly cranky stuff.  (For more information on both, I suggest that anyone reading this pick up a copy of Brian Burrough's The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes for some historical context.) 

            While times have changed since the era described in Burrough's book, one can still say there is a Texas conservative establishment that follows its own path and has real power.  A candidate who can dominate that constituency has a major leg up on his or her opponents and Rick Perry is in a position to do that.  Doing so will place him in a strong financial position, and one that can encourage donors in other parts of the country to join his bandwagon.

            Rick Perry hasn't announced whether he's running for the GOP presidential nomination (though it looks like that's around the corner), so one can't make head-to-head comparisons at this time.  Also, other GOP candidates are very much in the hunt regarding Texas donors. For example,  Mitt Romney has raised serious funds in Texas and Jon Huntsman has former Congressman Tom Loeffler (a major Texas GOP fundraiser) in his corner.  But Perry is in a unique position to capture much of this constituency, and this constituency has an outsize influence in Republican politics.  That is a strength that should not be overlooked.

Editor's Note:  This article was previously published at FrumForum on August 10, 2011.

Baldness and the American Presidency

BY DISH CONTRIBUTING WRITER: MARK YZAGUIRRE

Larry David, the creator of hit shows like Seinfeld  and Curb Your Enthusiasm was interviewed recently in the Huffington Post and he made the following observation:

I'm not the president of Hair Club for Men. I'm not president of the bald celebrity league. I don't even know who the bald celebrities are. It used to be Telly Savalas and Gavin MacLeod. Who else is there? Mikhail Gorbachev is bald... Joey Pants... there's not that many of them. I mean, we always welcome new members with open arms. Most actors don't let themselves get bald. They get transplants or weaves or something. When's the last time you saw a bald president? There'll be a woman and a Jewish president and maybe even a Muslim president before a bald president. That's my prediction: There'll be a Muslim president before a bald president.

            As a bald man, I have to say, I feel his pain.  And while strictly speaking, we have had bald presidents in the past, there hasn't been a bald president since the dawn of the television age.  President Eisenhower was elected for the first time while television was still in its infancy.  Plus, he was Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War Two, and that goes a long way.  One could argue that Gerald Ford was a bald president, but I think his hair was on the borderline between receding and bald, and in any case he was never actually elected to the presidency. 

            It doesn't look like this state of affairs will change in 2012.  President Obama has a full head of hair, and it is the sort of thick and close-cropped hairstyle that says "I could grow my hair longer, but I choose not to".  A fine hairstyle for an austere age.  The leading male Republican candidates all have full, impressive heads of hair as well.  (Larry David put female presidential candidates in a different category than bald male ones, and so will I.)  Mitt Romney has chief executive hair that says "leadership".  Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman both have fine heads of hair, though not as fine as Romney's, which is appropriate given their likely second-tier status as candidates.  And Rick Perry?  Well, if the ancient Romans had a pagan god of coiffure, it would have looked like Rick Perry. 

            Now, not all is bad for us bald men.  The mainstreaming of the shaved head look during the 90s and early 2000s means that those of us who sport that look won't be mistaken for fascist skinheads or Satanists anymore.  And baldness is not unheard of in the corridors of power, as Ben Bernanke has shown.  But, given the shallow nature of this media-saturated age, I suspect Larry David is correct and it will be a very long time before a bald man is elected to the presidency.  I guess that's one more thing about the Eisenhower era that Americans can look back fondly upon.

Bigfooting the Competition

BY DISH CONTRIBUTING WRITER: MARK YZAGUIRRE

The campaign finance fundraising numbers for Houston municipal races came out this past week and the big news was how much Mayor Annise Parker raised for her re-election campaign.  (Full disclosure:  I have been an active supporter of Mayor Parker's re-election campaign, so the reader can take anything I say here with as large or small a grain of salt as he or she sees fit.)  The haul was a big one.  As stated in the Houston Chronicle:

Mayor Annise Parker has reinforced her formidable position in her bid for a second term by more than doubling her campaign account to more than $2.3 million, according to a report she filed Friday.  Even in the weeks before the report revealed that she had raised more than $2 million in the last six months, political observers had been declaring that the door was closing on credible threats to her re-election. With the new numbers and only 3½ months until Election Day, those pronouncements became more emphatic.

This sort of a campaign war-chest is both a cause and effect of the main story - Mayor Parker does not face a serious opponent for re-election.  Her most noteworthy announced opponent, Deputy Fire Chief Fernando Herrera, only has $3,334 in his account, according to the Chronicle article.  This doesn't bode well for Herrera, whose main claim to fame in the campaign thus far seems to be posting criticism on his Facebook page of Mayor Parker's initiatives for promoting GLBT tourism in Houston.  Stories like that don't make Herrera sound like a serious opponent for Parker.

There are lots of reasons for why Mayor Parker appears to be headed towards re-election without a major opponent.  One is historical, namely the fact (as pointed out by Houston politics uber-blogger Charles Kuffner) that recent Houston mayors haven't generally faced serious opposition in their initial re-election campaigns.  Also, while the situations regarding municipal layoffs and controversies at METRO have been major issues Mayor Parker has had to address, they don't seem to have cost her much political capital.  In the case of municipal layoffs, while no one ever wants to see people lose their jobs, it might have been worse for the City of Houston to go through this recession without shedding any jobs.  That would send a message to taxpayers that municipal government employment is immune to the stresses that private employers and employees face.  That would be a bad message to send.

Election Day is in November and the filing deadline isn't until September, so the campaign isn't over yet.  But it's hard to see how an opponent will get a campaign funded and operational in such a short period of time, and the specter of going against an incumbent mayor with over two million dollars in the bank is a daunting one.  We'll know soon enough how this will play out, but it's looking like Annise Parker will be handily re-elected as Mayor of Houston.

Winning is Everything

BY DISH CONTRIBUTOR: MARK YZAGUIRRE

I wrote a piece a month ago about how Governor Rick Perry is a very lucky politician, one with an uncanny knack for knowing how to understand and operate under (or to his detractors, reinvent himself and follow) changing political circumstances.  He has never lost an election and has been able to politically succeed over the decades.  The most recent legislative session is no exception to this rule, and only adds to this trend.  As Jay Root writes in an article in the Texas Tribune (also published at the Tribune's partner, the New York Times):

The reach of his power, and his willingness to use it, have been most striking in the recently concluded sessions of the Texas Legislature, which gave Perry a fairly long wish-list of conservative reforms. If Perry does end up on the presidential campaign trail, he will be ticking them off like a pre-trip checklist. Curbs on abortion — done. Lawsuit restrictions — check. Staggering cuts to programs once seen as off-limits — yes, yes and yes.  “Basically nobody has dominated the executive branch, that I’m aware of, like Rick Perry has,” said Jim Henson, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s a very different kind of governorship now. He’s been there so long, and he’s effectively used the resources at his disposal.”

Whether or not one supports Rick Perry as a Presidential contender (and to be fair, he has not announced a run for the Presidency at this point) or his policies, it is undeniable that he has been able to achieve his goals with regard to the Texas Legislature and the Executive Branch.  If Perry runs for President, he can give a list of policy accomplishments that  pleases many conservative voters.  If one were to create a Tea Party checklist of issues, Perry has acted on many of them and can place himself as an alternative to more moderate GOP former Governors like Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman.  This may not be ideal for winning in the general election (Tea Partiers aren't the majority of the American electorate and they may not be the majority of the GOP electorate), but it does position him well with Republican primary voters. 

As George Will points out in the article linked above, "French cuffs and cowboy boots are, like sauerkraut ice cream, an eclectic combination", but sometimes eclectic combinations work.  If nothing else, Rick Perry's political skills have worked well for purposes of achieving the ends he has sought, including passing legislation that conservatives have been unable to pass elsewhere.  Those aren't trivial points to bring up to conservative voters who seem to be underwhelmed with the current batch of GOP candidates.