Chapter 13

 

Texas: Governing Conservative Democrats Replaced by A Liberal Minority

 

 

 

            Texas is another Rim South state that shares some characteristics of the other Rim South states. The African American proportion of the state population is much lower (only 11%) than in the Deep South, and indeed is the lowest of all eleven southern states. Yet Texas was one of the eleven states of the old Confederacy, and its heritage was a solidly Democratic one for nearly one hundred years after the Civil War. Voting devices were employed, which limited black and even white voter participation. Like fellow Rim South states Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia, after Reconstruction and prior to 1960 Texas voted Republican for president only three times (against Catholic Al Smith in 1928, and for Eisenhower twice). After Reconstruction, not until 1978 were Republicans able to elect their first governor.

            Texas is unique among the southern states in being a western as well as southern state, and having a very significant Hispanic population (32% in 2000 census). It is also relatively unique in that very definite and substantively meaningful liberal and conservative splits occurred within the dominant Democratic Party as early as the first half of the 20th century. By the time of World War 2, conservatives came to dominate some political offices, electing a string of Democratic governors. Liberals had limited success in being elected to offices voted on statewide, and when they were elected they later tended to be unseated by challengers in their own party primary or by Republicans. As liberals have gained more influence over the state Democratic Party, the fortunes of Republican candidates have soared. Unlike the partisan seesaw of Tennessee or Virginia, Republicans not only became a viable minority party by the 1970s and 1980s, but also by the mid-1990s were emerging as the new ruling party of Texas.

 

Historic Democratic Dominance: Conservatives Gain Power Over Liberals

 

            V.O. Key (1949: 255) believed that Texas was the one southern state where voters divided along liberal and conservative lines on the basis of legitimate economic issues, rather than permit themselves to be diverted by demagogues exploiting racial tensions. Liberals were supportive of the New Deal, and liberal candidates tended to win the support of the lower socioeconomic status, union members, and African Americans (Key 1949: 257, 261). Conservatives tended to oppose the New Deal, have a higher social class, and to be led by the “new-rich class” who believed in “individual self-reliance” (Key 1949: 255). Throughout the 20th century beginning with the New Deal, Democratic presidential candidates, who tended to be more liberal than Republicans, won their strongest vote totals among African Americans, Mexican Americans, and working-class whites, as did liberal Democratic candidates in gubernatorial and senatorial primary contests (Davidson 1990: 44, 46-47).

            Before World War 2, the battle between liberals and conservatives for power within the Democratic Party was quite intense, and governors reflecting each of these ideological factions were regularly elected to 2-year terms of office. From the election of 1890 until just before the 1940 election, nine of the Democratic governors were regarded as relatively liberal, while only four were regarded as conservative Democrats. In the 1890s liberal governor James Hogg fought for the regulation of trusts and railroads, and his successor Charles Culberson continued such progressive policies (Key 1949: 262; Weeks 1972: 205). They were succeeded by ex-Confederates Joseph Sayers and S.W.T. Lanham, who established more moderate and conservative administrations (Key 1949: 262). Liberals regained power with Thomas Campbell, who won Hogg’s endorsement, and who as governor strengthened antitrust laws, permitted cities to regulate public utilities, enacted a pure food law, adopted a maximum hours of work law for railroad workers, and increased and reformed taxes (Key 1949: 262). Campbell was followed by the more conservative, business-friendly administration of Oscar Colquitt’s (Key 1949: 262).

            Liberals elected a string of governors from 1914 up through and including the 1938 election, with only one conservative serving during this 26-year period that ended in 1940. James Ferguson, “Farmer Jim,” was elected in 1914 after he “preached for the poor farmer,” but unlike the rural demagogue Talmadge in Georgia he pursued progressive goals, such as increased state support for education in rural areas, a rent ceiling on farm tenancy, and opposition to the Ku Klux Klan (Key 1949: 264). He was followed as governor by William Hobby and Pat Neff, both of whom increased support for public education and highways (see websites: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fho04 and http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fne05). Ferguson’s wife Miriam, known as “Ma Ferguson,” was elected to two non-consecutive terms with her husband reputedly serving as the “real” governor, and she pursued pro-New Deal and anti-Klan policies (Key 1949: 264; Weeks 1972: 208). Sandwiched between her two, 2-year terms were liberal governor Dan Moody, who fought the Klan, instituted honest governmental practices, and reorganized the highway department, and conservative businessman Ross Sterling who during the Great Depression cut education and other programs (see websites: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmo19 and http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fst42). After Ma Ferguson’s last term as governor, liberal James Allred succeeded her to two terms ending in the 1938 election, and he backed the New Deal and appointed a liberal to the University of Texas Board of Regents (Davidson 1990: 47; Richards 2002: 10).

            Conservative Democrats ruled the Texas governorship from the 1938 election until the 1978 contest with an unbroken string of eight governors elected to eighteen 2-year terms and one 4-year term of office. This forty-year dominance began with W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, who was elected with rural support attracted by his radio program, which employed a hillbilly band that helped him sell flour from his company. As governor, though, O’Daniel was most known for appointing anti-New Deal Regents who fired a university president for refusing to fire some New Dealer professors (Key 1949: 263, 265, 267; Davidson 1990: 47). Successor Coke Stevenson was supported by men of “property and affairs,” while Beauford Jester was regarded as a moderate conservative-to-conservative governor (Key 1949: 258 quote; Davidson 1990: 25, 161). Four-term businessman governor Allan Shivers, who became governor in 1949 upon his predecessor’s death, pursued a tight fiscal policy, purged the state party executive committee of liberals, supported communist witch hunter Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, advocated the death penalty for communists, and twice defeated liberal Democrat Ralph Yarborough in the party primary (Bass and DeVries 1977: 317; Davidson 1990: 161, 162; Weeks 1972: 216). Price Daniel, a 3-term governor first elected in 1956, got enacted a conservative state party platform, supported the segregationist Southern Manifesto, appointed ultraconservative William Blakley to a vacated U.S. senate seat, and also bested liberal Yarborough in the party primary (Weeks 1972: 219, 221; Cox 2001: 129). John Connally, Preston Smith, and Dolph Briscoe continued this forty-year period of conservative Democratic dominance of the governorship into the 1960s and 1970s. 

            Conservative Democrats were usually victorious over liberals during this era of Democratic Party hegemony because “election laws and threats of violence… discouraged or prevented great numbers of the most liberal Texans from voting” (Davidson 1990: 59). Conservative candidates also typically outspent liberals, and the mass media was overwhelmingly conservative in its perspective (Davidson 1990: 27). Black voter turnout plunged by 95% between the 1890s and 1906, during which time the legislature had established a poll tax and a white primary (Brischetto, Richards, Davidson, and Grofman 1994: 235). Yet even before the poll tax and white primaries were enacted, voter turnout had dipped because of populist supporters being dispirited by their election defeats in 1896 by conservative Democrats and black-belt whites (Key 1949: 534-535).

The poll tax in Texas was $1.50 and was non-cumulative, but cities could levy an additional $1. It had to be paid six months before the gubernatorial primary, and even some white laborers opposed the tax as being directed against them as well as against blacks (Key 1949: 581, 587, 588). Areas that were less likely to pay the poll tax and therefore less likely to vote were urban areas, and areas with large numbers of blacks, Mexicans, and lower income people (Key 1949: 612-614). Until the U.S. Supreme Court completely outlawed the Texas white primary in the 1944 case of Smith v. Allwright, the state legislature had sought to evade earlier court rulings by permitting first the Democratic state executive committee and then the Democratic state convention to make their own party rules that excluded blacks from the party’s primaries (Key 1949: 622-624). Black voter registration finally rose after 1940, and up through 1964 African American voter registration in Texas was similar to other Rim South states in being higher than in the Deep South states. Indeed, by 1964 fully 58% of Texas blacks were registered to vote, a higher figure that in every southern state except Florida and Tennessee (Garrow 1978: 7, 11, 19).

            The liberal Democratic faction enjoyed more success in some presidential and U.S. senate contests than in gubernatorial contests. In 1944 they succeeded in having the second state convention of the year name a slate of electors committed to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reelection, prompting anti-FDR economic conservatives to offer a competing slate on the November ballot known as the Texas Regulars, but Roosevelt’s slate carried Texas in a landslide (Key 1949: 256; Weeks 1972: 212). Liberals were also successful at the 1948 state Democratic convention in backing Harry Truman’s presidential effort, and ousted Dixiecrats from the state executive committee and from the party’s slate of presidential electors (Key 1949: 256). The 1948 state convention also upheld New Deal Congressman Lyndon Johnson’s razor-thin U.S. senate primary victory over conservative former governor Coke Stevenson, with backers of Roosevelt and Truman supporting Johnson and conservatives backing Stevenson (Key 1949: 255, 256, 258). Liberals were soon disappointed, though, as Senator Johnson veered towards the right in state party politics and became the leader of the moderate-to-conservative wing of the party, as he worked to exclude liberals from the 1960 state delegation to the national Democratic convention and to preserve a conservative delegation to the 1964 national convention (Davidson 1990: 166-167; Weeks 1972: 230). Liberals had also suffered disappointments in presidential politics in the 1950s, as conservative governor Shivers assumed the leadership of the moderate and conservative wing of the party, worked to drive liberals out of the party, and helped to deliver Texas to Republican presidential candidate Eisenhower in both 1952 and 1956 (Weeks 1972: 213, 218).   

            Liberals won their greatest victory with the election of New Deal liberal Ralph Yarborough to the U.S. senate in a special election in 1957. Yarborough had worked as a staff member for Attorney General James Allred (before Allred became governor), where Yarborough attracted the support of many small independent oil producers by winning judgments against the large oil companies that allegedly were abusing their powers (Cox 2001: 17, 19, 29, 37). Appointed to a state district judgeship by Governor Allred and then elected to a full term, Yarborough proceeded to win judgments against big business monopolies after equating “violations of the antitrust laws with burglary and theft in his public presentations to the grand jury” (Cox 2001: 65). After an unsuccessful campaign for attorney general, Yarborough decided to try to “end dictation and boss rule in Austin,” the state capital, by seeking the governorship. He lost in three successive bids in 1952, 1954, and 1956, the first two to pro-business conservative governor Allan Shivers (Cox 2001: 94 quote, 98). The 1954 and 1956 campaigns were especially bitter, as the Shivers campaign in 1954 blasted the liberal “Yarborough as the candidate of ‘left wing labor bosses’ and the ‘paid bosses of the NAACP,’” a tactic also used by the gubernatorial winner two years later, U.S. Senator Price Daniel (Cox 2001: 118 quote, 134).

            Yarborough’s victory in the 1957 special election to fill the vacated seat of U.S. Senate Price is attributed to his higher name visibility over the other twenty-two candidates due to his fourth statewide campaign for office, plus his focus on such ideologically “safe” issues as “his longtime support for farm programs, soil conservation, and drought relief” (Cox 2001: 143). He then stunned the conservative Democratic establishment by becoming “the only southern senator to support every significant modern civil rights” bill “from 1957 to 1970,” a reputation that began with his rejection of the 1956 Southern Manifesto that pledged resistance to school integration (Cox 2001: 211 quote, 148). Running for reelection in 1958 to a full term, Yarborough was blasted by conservative opponent William A. Blakley as a tool of such “ultra-liberal” forces as the NAACP and the AFL-CIO (Cox 2001: 155). He nevertheless won the election with his image of being the “People’s Senator,” reflected in his campaign pledge to “Put the jam on the lower shelf so the little man can reach it” (Cox 2001: 143 1st quote, 156 2nd quote). He also benefited from “his own tireless efforts and a better-organized campaign,” and from voter disgust with various scandals that had hurt the conservative wing of the party that controlled the governorship and that backed Blakley (Cox 2001: 161).  Yarborough won the Democratic renomination in 1964 over a conservative businessman and radio announcer, thanks to his veteran Washington staff who knew “how to keep the political bridges maintained” with constituents and public officials and because of the financial support of Lyndon Johnson supporters who appreciated the liberal Senator’s support for the President’s Great Society programs (Cox 2001: 204 quote, 207, 209).

Benefited by the 63% popular vote landslide for favorite son President Johnson over conservative ideologue Barry Goldwater, Yarborough defeated Republican George Herbert Walker Bush in the 1964 general election. The Democrat stressed his success in “providing millions of federal dollars spent in the state,” blasted Bush as a New England “carpetbagger” who was “an outsider and right-wing extremist,” and benefited from high turnout from minority Democrats such as African Americans and Mexican Americans (Cox 2001: 216 1st quote, 218 2nd and 3rd quotes, 219). Illustrating how the rising Republican Party was seeking to attract elements of the conservative Democratic faction, Bush blasted the Democratic incumbent as an “extremist” and “left wing demagogue,” who was fiscally irresponsible “because of his ‘excessive concern with the welfare of pressure groups’” and who was too committed to “national partisan politics” (Cox 2001: 216 1st 2 quotes, 215 other quotes). Yarborough as senator continued to vote “for every civil rights measure,” to advocate “a liberal economic philosophy,” and to back “measures designed to benefit organized labor, the small businessman, and the small farmer” (Bass and DeVries 1977: 311).  

 

Republicans Become Competitive as Democrats Shift to the Left

 

            With the state Democratic Party being so dominant that it encompassed both liberal and conservative elements, the state GOP was historically very weak. Typically, Republicans controlled only one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, elected by ethnic Germans who had opposed the state’s secession from the Union (Key 1949: 276). Republicans carried Texas for Herbert Hoover in 1928 only because of a faction of Hoovercrats in the Democratic Party, and the sizable vote for the losing GOP gubernatorial candidate who opposed Ma Ferguson’s first gubernatorial bid in 1924 was attributed to the Anti-Ferguson faction of the Democrats (Weeks 1972: 209). Conservative senatorial candidate Coke Stevenson, who narrowly lost the Democratic primary to Lyndon Johnson in 1948, ended up backing Republican Jack Porter in the general election, though even then the minority GOP party candidate won only 33% of the vote (Key 1949: 258; Weeks 1972: 212). Republicans, supported by a conservative Democratic governor, were able to carry Texas twice for President Eisenhower, as they rolled up big margins in large urban areas. However, the fact that Nixon’s total vote count in 1960 was larger than Eisenhower’s four years earlier, even though Kennedy carried Texas, encouraged the state GOP (Weeks 1972: 213, 214, 222).

            Republicans scored their first major breakthrough with the election of John Tower to the U.S. senate in a special election in 1961 to fill the vacancy caused by Johnson’s assumption of the Vice Presidency. Tower, an attractive 35-year-old professor who had studied at the prestigious London School of Economics and who was the son of a   Methodist minister, had won a respectable 41% of the vote the year before when running against Senator Johnson. Johnson in 1960 had been burdened by running on the liberal Kennedy presidential ticket, as well as by relying on a special legislative act that permitted him to run simultaneously for Vice President and for reelection to the senate (Bass and DeVries 1977: 321; Lamis 1990: 195). With name recognition from his previous race, Tower in the 1961 special election led a field of more than 70 candidates and narrowly upset, with 51% in the runoff election, interim Democratic Senator William A. Blakely. Blakely, variously described as a “dull, plodding, oil-rich conservative,” a “reactionary,” and “a Dallas oil man generally considered even more conservative than Tower,” was anathema to Texas liberals (Lamis 1990: 195, 1st quote; Weeks 1972: 223, 2nd quote; Barone, Ujifusa, and Matthews 1972: 777, 3rd quote; Thielemann and Elliott 2005: 231). Angered at repeatedly losing Democratic primary contests to conservatives, enough liberal Democrats supported Tower in the runoff election to give him his narrow runoff victory (Lamis 1990: 195; Bass and DeVries 1977: 321).

The Republican Tower more easily won reelection in 1966 with 56% of the vote, defeating another conservative Democrat, state attorney general Waggoner Carr, an associate of Governor Connally’s, who managed to alienate the state’s Mexican-American population as well as its liberals (Lamis 1990: 196; Barone, Ujifusa, and Matthews 1972: 777, 781; Bass and DeVries 1977: 315). Liberals Democrats had also been alienated in 1961 by Blakley’s opposition during senate hearings to the first black nominated to a cabinet position, and in 1966 by Carr’s service as Texas house speaker “when all the segregation bills of 1957 were slammed through the legislature” (Richards 2002: 223-224). Therefore, many liberal Democrats had stayed home or voted for Republican Tower in both elections, hoping that conservative “Democrats would leave the party and become Republicans, thus making Texas a true two-party state” (Cox 2001: 174). One consolation to the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party was the election in 1966 of the first African Americans to the state legislature in the century, two state representatives and one state senator, Barbara Jordan (Richards 2002: 54). Jordan’s election to the U.S. House in 1972 from a Houston district made her the first black woman elected to the Congress from Dixie (Barone, Ujifusa, and Matthews 1977: 841).   

            Tower’s stunning upset wins thanks to divisions within the dominant Democratic Party was one of the few GOP victories in the 1960s. Thanks to white backlash over the Kennedy administration’s advocacy of civil rights, Republicans did begin to make respectable, though still losing, vote showings in gubernatorial elections, with Republican Jack Cox winning 46% of the vote in the 1962 race that saw John Connally elected as governor, and with Tower’s GOP associate Paul Eggers winning 43% of the vote in 1968 when conservative Democrat Preston Smith was elected governor (Lamis 1990: 196-197). Even liberal Democratic U.S. Senator Yarborough was reelected in 1964 only after holding a Republican, George Bush Sr., to a respectable 44% of the vote (Lamis 1990: 196). Two years later, running “as a moderate against a conservative Democrat,” Bush was elected to the U.S. House (Bass and DeVries 1977: 323). Nevertheless, Republicans lost all three presidential elections in the 1960s to the Democrats with Texas being the only southern state to stick with President Johnson’s Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1968. As the decade ended, Democrats also held over 90% of seats in the Texas state legislature.            

            Democrats maintained their political dominance by nominating generally conservative candidates. John Connally, elected in 1962 to the first of three terms as governor, opposed a minimum wage law for low-income farm workers, helped to break their strike, opposed Great Society programs that denied state officials control of the funds and administering bureaucrats, fought to keep the poll tax, and defeated the liberal Don Yarborough (no relationship to Ralph) in the 1962 and 1964 primaries (Bass and DeVries 1977: 312, 329; Richards 2002: 48; Cox 2001: 223, 225; Davidson 1990: 138). Democrat Preston Smith, the lieutenant governor and a former state representative and state senator, won the 1968 primary runoff election for governor after blasting his liberal opponent Don Yarborough “as a radical supported by eastern labor bosses” and accusing “liberal give-away programs” of rewarding people who threatened to “burn down another neighborhood” (Cox 2001: 228 quotes; http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/governors/modern/smith-p01.html). As governor, Smith proceeded to order federal VISTA workers out of two counties because they had dared to “encourage poor Mexican Americans to register and vote,” and was reelected governor in 1970 over Republican Paul Eggers (Richards 2002: 149). In his second consecutive gubernatorial bid, Eggers made an effort to attract some liberal support by offering progressive views on race and education issues, and raised his vote total to 46% of the vote from the 43% he had won two years earlier (Weeks 1972: 228; Davidson 1990: 138, 235; Feigert and McWilliams 1995: 75). 

            Indeed, in the face of the growing Republican threat, conservative Democrats asserted even more influence within their party by unseating liberal Senator Yarborough in the 1970 Democratic primary. Conservative Houston millionaire Lloyd Bentsen, backed by former Governor Connally, blasted Yarborough for opposing the Vietnam War, as he ran ads showing the anti-war riots outside of the national Democratic convention in Chicago that insinuated that the incumbent senator was in some way responsible for the rioting. He also blasted Yarborough for voting against President Nixon’s nomination of conservative southerner Harold Carswell to the U.S. Supreme Court, and accused the incumbent of opposing prayer in the public schools and of favoring forced busing to ensure school integration. Securing the Democratic nomination with 53% of the vote, Bentsen skillfully shifted back towards the political center, blasting the Nixon administration’s economic policies for causing high inflation and unemployment, and regaining the support of labor, African Americans, and Mexican Americans as he rolled to a 53% popular vote victory over Republican George Herbert Walker Bush, now a two-time loser in Texas senate campaigns (Bass and DeVries 1977: 313; Lamis 1990: 198, 199; Cox 2001: 260, 262; Barone, Ujifusa, and Matthews 1972: 778, 781). Having seen the election of a conservative Republican, John Tower, to the state’s other U.S. senate seat and saddled with an electorally vulnerable liberal incumbent, Texas Democrats adroitly dumped him in favor of a reputed “conservative,” thereby neutralizing the issue of ideology that a conservative such as Bush could have otherwise exploited (Davidson 1990: 30-31).  

            Democrats followed these victories by electing moderate conservative Dolph Briscoe to a 2-year term as governor, and then reelecting him to the state’s first 4-year gubernatorial term. Briscoe, a millionaire rancher and banker who was the largest landowner in Texas, ran in 1972 as a “reformer” after prominent public figures were accused of granting political favors to businessmen in return for financial rewards. Showing the growing strength of liberal influence in the state party, Briscoe only narrowly defeated with 55% of the Democratic primary runoff vote liberal state senator Frances “Sissy” Farenthold, “an urbane, Catholic feminist who advocated easing of abortion laws” and the “abolition of the Texas Rangers” (Bass and DeVries 1977: 317 quote; Richards 2002: 149). Facing an “ultraconservative” GOP state senator Henry Grover in the general election, Democrat Dolph Briscoe, a George Wallace supporter, now ran well in rural, black, and lower income white precincts and narrowly won with 48% of the vote to the Republican’s 45% (Bass and DeVries 1977: 318 quote; Lamis 1990: 200). 

Regarded as “the most liberal of the conservative governors,” Briscoe raised some eyebrows by naming a labor union leader as state labor commissioner (Bass and DeVries 1977: 319 quote, 336). In the Watergate scandal year of 1974 that hurt Republican candidates nationally, Governor Briscoe, running well in rural areas and with organized labor behind him, was easily reelected to a four-year term with 61% of the vote to 31% for GOP former mayor of Lubbock, Jim Granberry (Lamis 1990: 201). Briscoe’s two-term governorship was marked by his appointment of the highest percentage (6%) of Hispanics to state office to date, though it was also criticized for trying to purge from the voter registration rolls anyone who failed to comply with a new state law that required completion and mailing back of a new form, and for being the “most recalcitrant” in the South “in implementing health service planning legislation passed by Congress three years earlier” (Davidson 1990: 73 quote, 237; Richards 2002: 197-198).

            Both parties’ U.S. senators were reelected in 1972 and 1976 with fairly comfortable margins, though with very different kinds of voting records. Republican Tower’s record was conservative, as he consistently received ratings over 80 from the conservative ACA and scores below 20 from the liberal ADA, while Bentsen maintained a strict moderate position with relatively equal scores from both groups (except in his reelection year of 1976 when the Democrat’s scores became moderate conservative) (Barone, Ujifusa, and Matthews 1975: 814-815; Barone, Ujifusa, and Matthews 1977: 811-812). Tower was victorious in 1972 with 53% over Democrat Barefoot Sanders’ 44%. Sanders, a former assistant attorney general in President Johnson’s administration, had narrowly won the Democratic nomination with 53% of the vote after poking fun at his own first name by having his mother bake “thousands of cookies shaped like a bare foot,” and blasting primary opponent former Senator Yarborough as a liberal supporter of forced busing (Cox 2001: 271 quote; Barone, Ujifusa, and Matthews 1973: 961; Lamis 1990: 200). Both Tower and Sanders traded charges in the general election with Tower accused of voting against Medicare and Sanders accused of endorsing liberal George McGovern (Lamis 1990: 200). Senator Tower also benefited from a massive $2.4 million campaign warchest, his adroit use of free media by sending videotaped interviews of prominent D.C. officials to Texas television stations, and President Nixon’s landslide 67% popular vote triumph (Bass and DeVries 1977: 327; Barone, Ujifusa, and Matthews 1973: 961, 963).

Moderate Lloyd Bentsen had an easier time being reelected in 1976, avoiding a primary challenge from the left, and going on to a 57% popular vote victory over moderate conservative but environmentally concerned GOP congressman Alan Steelman’s 42% (Lamis 1990: 203; Barone, Ujifusa, and Matthews 1975: 824). Interestingly enough, while some southern Democratic senators were veering off to the left, Bentsen retained his moderate voting record throughout the 1970s and 1980s, maintaining roughly equal liberal ADA and conservative ACA/ACU scores, and breezing to two more landslide reelections (Ehrenhalt 1983: 1443; Duncan 1991: 1414). Bentsen was also aided by a public image of being more conservative than his moderate record indicated, as political observers would often refer to his “perceived conservatism” or to his “moderate to moderately-conservative” nature (Feigert and Todd 1997: 201 1st quote; Thielemann and Elliott 2005: 233 2nd quote). Bentsen also benefited from rave reviews of his senate work attesting to his being a “problem solver” with “a first-rate mind and the willingness, discipline, and capacity for hard work” (Bass and DeVries 1977: 313).

Yet while moderate-to-conservative Democrats were still winning the governorship and one U.S. senate seat, the Texas Democratic Party began to veer towards the ideological left. In 1972, liberals narrowly carried the state Democratic delegation for George McGovern over George Wallace, increased their numbers on the state party executive committee from 0 to 25 out of 62 members, and won all three new seats on the Democratic National Committee (DNC)(Davidson 1990: 173-174). In 1976, the state delegation to the national convention was regarded as the most liberal ever, and liberals and moderates captured a majority of the state Democratic executive committee and five of the state’s seven seats on the DNC (Davidson 1990: 176, 190, 195). At the 1978 state party convention, liberals and moderates won roughly two-thirds of the seats on the state executive committee, and the Democratic gubernatorial nominee backed a moderate liberal as state party chairman, Billy Goldberg (Davidson 1990: 176, 196).  

            Liberals scored a temporary breakthrough in the governor’s contest of 1978, when “the leader of Texas’s conservative Democrats,” Governor Briscoe, was narrowly unseated in the gubernatorial primary by “moderate-to-progressive” state attorney general John Hill, a consumer and environmental issues advocate “whose wealth came as a plaintiffs’ lawyer who sued corporations” (Lamis 1990: 203 1st quote; Thielemann and Elliott 2005: 232 2nd quote; Bass and DeVries 1977: 320 3rd quote, 319). Republicans nominated former deputy secretary of defense during President Nixon’s administration, William “Bill” Clements, a millionaire oil-drilling contractor. Clements proceeded to use over $4 million of his own money in his $7 million campaign to play on the public’s anti-politician mood by selling himself as a successful businessman, a contrast to the “liberal” professional politician Hill (Lamis 1990: 203). With Briscoe’s supporters still angry at their candidate’s primary defeat, and Hill’s supporters failing to reach out to them after the primary to seek their support, Briscoe ended up throwing his support to Republican Clements. In fact, Briscoe’s own views were closer to Clements’ conservatism than they were to the Democratic nominee’s policy views (Lamis 1990: 203; Thielemann and Elliott 2005: 232). Winning 50% of the vote to Hill’s 49%, Clements became the first GOP governor in Texas since 1874, an historic first for the party rivaling Senator Tower’s, who had become the first GOP U.S. senator from Texas since 1877.         

            Despite this GOP gubernatorial victory, Republican senator John Tower, relative to his Democratic senate counterpart Lloyd Bentsen, had more difficulty gaining reelection. Unlike the middle-of-the-road Bentsen, Tower was very conservative, pretty consistently earning high ACA scores and low ADA ratings. In 1978 he won only 50% of the vote to his challenger, Democrat Robert Krueger’s 49%. Krueger, who as congressman had earned a moderate conservative voting record and who had defended the state’s oil industry’s needs, “was associated with the more conservative elements of the Democratic party,” but being less conservative than the dogmatic Tower he was able to also draw some liberal and moderate support (Lamis 1990: 204 quote; Barone, Ujifusa, and Matthews 1977: 848). Facing the “vigorous and articulate” Krueger, Tower desperately tried to brand him as a captive of big labor and liberal northerners, but was probably helped more to his narrow reelection victory by the surprising upset win of GOP gubernatorial candidate Clements (Lamis 1990: 204).    

            In this era of more competitive two-party politics, Democrats roared back in 1982 to regain the governor’s mansion with Attorney General Mark White, who unseated Governor Clements in a 54-46% vote. White, who has been referred to as both a “moderate” and a “conservative,” blasted the Republican governor for rising unemployment associated with the economic recession occurring during President Reagan’s administration and for rising utility rates, blaming the latter on Clements’ appointments to the public utilities commission (Davidson 1990: 253 1st quote; Lamis 1990: 207 2nd quote, 208). White was also helped by such GOP blunders as the governor’s appointed secretary of state’s misidentifying innocent people as felons who were then removed from the voting rolls, and Republican operatives placing signs in black precincts threatening those who tried to vote without being registered with jail time (Richards 2002: 201-203). After four years wandering in the gubernatorial political wilderness for the first time since Reconstruction, state Democrats were united behind White’s campaign, with Senator Bentsen, former senator Yarborough, former governor Briscoe, and former attorney general Hill also publicly backing the Democrat (Lamis 1990: 207; Davidson 1990: 253). White won with strong turnout in minority areas and with large vote margins among blacks, Mexican Americans, and lower income whites (Davidson 1990: 177).

As governor, Mark White charted a relatively “moderate course,” appointing the first Mexican American to ever be elected to statewide office (a state supreme court justice), and raising the sales tax to increase teacher salaries and institute some school reforms, such as “mandating smaller class sizes in the lower grades and emphasizing early education” and requiring that teachers take reading and writing tests (Davidson 1990: 177 1st quote, 238; Ivins and Dubose 2000: 214, 2nd quote; Vedlitz, Dyer, and Hill 1988: 42; Lamis 1990: 292). Along with White’s election, the 1982 state elections are most known for the victories of four “certifiable liberal Democrats” from the “Yarborough wing” of the party- Jim Mattox as attorney general, Ann Richards as treasurer, Jim Hightower as agriculture commissioner, and Gary Mauro as land commissioner (Richards 2002: 225 quote; Davidson 1990: 253). Hightower proceeded to announce “tough new regulations on pesticide use,” prompting a fruitless outcry by “the Farm Bureau, the Texas chemical lobby, and conservative lawmakers” (Davidson 1990: 118). Mattox ended the state’s practice of fighting federal court anti-discrimination lawsuits, refusing to appeal a federal court order requiring that Texas A&M University “begin admitting women to the band” (Richards 2002: 230).     

            Republicans roared back by retaining Senator Tower’s open senate seat in 1984 and by winning back the governorship two years later. Democrat-turned-Republican Congressman Phil Gramm, a conservative, won a landslide 59% of the popular vote for the senate over “liberal” state senator Lloyd Doggett (quote found in two sources: Vedlitz, Dyer, and Hill 1988: 48; Ippolito 1991: 231). This straight liberal vs. conservative battle was set up after Doggett beat moderate conservative Congressman Kent Hance in the Democratic primary, prompting the losing Democrat to withhold his help in the general election (Ehrenhalt 1983: 1459, 1500; Lamis 1990: 261). Republican Gramm was also helped in rural areas by his “redneck,” “drawling, unkept demeanor,” and by President Reagan’s landslide 64% victory in Texas (Lamis 1990: 261-262).

            Republican former governor Bill Clements regained the governorship in 1986, beating the man who had defeated him four years earlier, incumbent governor Mark White. White limped into the general election campaign after winning a mere 54% of the party primary vote over a group of relatively unknown challengers. The 69-year old Clements proceeded to blast the wounded incumbent for a lack of leadership, for insufficient budgetary experience, for letting spending go out of control, and for raising taxes and having a tax-and-spend Walter Mondale mentality (Lamis 1990: 291-292). Pledging to oppose any new taxes, Clements won the votes of 71% of conservatives of all parties and even 44% of conservative Democrats as he unseated the Democratic governor by winning 53% of the vote (Vedlitz, Dyer, and Hill 1988: 51; Davidson 1990: 264). Over his two terms as governor, Clements charted a conservative course, vetoing a bill that would have protected migrant farm workers from a “permanently disabling” type of work requiring that workers “stoop or work on hands and knees” with knives, though in his first term he also appointed a respectable (5%) percentage of Mexican Americans to state government (Davidson 1990: 117 quote, 237). His effort to oppose any tax increase was defeated, largely because of the efforts of Democratic lieutenant governor Bill Hobby, and taxes did increase during his administration in both 1987 and 1990 (Davidson 1990: 264; Feigert and Todd 1994: 170).            

            The partisan seesaw continued with Democrats regaining the governorship in 1990 with Treasurer Ann Richards. A “rising star in national feminist circles” who had overcome alcoholism, “a painful divorce, and breaking into the ‘good ol’ boys club’ of Texas politics,” Richards was also known for her speech at the 1988 Democratic convention mocking GOP presidential candidate George Herbert Walker Bush’s gaffes and wealth by joking that “Poor George, he can’t help it, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth” (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 310 quotes; Richards 2002: 244-245). Millionaire Republican gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams attempted to project an image of a “folksy,” “straight-talking, homespun ‘cowboy,’” blasting the Democratic legislature as being controlled by “liberals and socialists” (Lamis 1990: 320, first two quotes; Davidson 1990: 265, last quote). Republican Williams proved to be the real foot-in-mouth candidate as he joked to reporters shut in at his ranch by bad weather that such weather was like rape, “if it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it,” and later admitted to boyhood visits to prostitution houses on the Mexican border (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 310 quote, 312). Such visits were “part of the fun of growing up in West Texas,” “the only place you got serviced then,” and a part of his world where “you talk about the bull servicing the cow” (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 312). With Democrat Richards receiving 61% of the votes of women, she became the first woman governor in Texas history elected in her own right without benefiting from her husband’s gubernatorial service, winning 50% of the total vote to the Republican’s 47% (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 313-314).

As governor, Ann Richards took such liberal actions as opposing a bill requiring parental consent for teenagers to receive abortions, vetoing a concealed weapons bill strongly backed by the NRA, and appointing more blacks and women to state commissions and boards than any previous governor. She also backed NAFTA, worked to bring and keep industry in the state, and dealt with a budget shortfall by enacting a state lottery and signing a corporate income tax bill (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 323; Ivins and Dubose 2000: 92). Richards also showed her partisan nature even in presidential politics by mocking President Bush during the 1992 campaign, a somewhat questionable strategy since Texas has voted Republican in each presidential election beginning in 1972 (except for Carter’s narrow win in 1976)(Feigert and Todd 1994: 173). Richards and the legislature also dealt with the problem of unequal funding across school districts by enacting a controversial “Robin Hood” law that “took from the rich districts to give to the poor districts” (Ivins and Dubose 2000: 22).

            As elections were becoming more closely contested between the two major parties in the 1980s, the incumbent senators of both parties were easily reelected. Democratic Senator Lloyd Bentsen won 59% of the vote in his 1982 reelection bid, beating conservative GOP congressman James Collins who futilely flailed at the moderate Democrat as a man who “votes like George McGovern” (Lamis 1990: 208 quote; Barone and Ujifusa 1981: 1060). Running for both Senator and Vice President in 1988, Bentsen won an impressive 60% senate reelection victory over conservative GOP congressman Beau Boulter, as the Republican’s effort was sabotaged by presidential candidate Bush’s operatives who played on the state voters’ pride in Texas by insinuating that they could vote twice for their state- to reelect Bentsen to the Senate and to elect Bush as President (Ippolito 1991: 226; Ehrenhalt 1987: 1478). Even Republican Phil Gramm won an easy reelection, despite compiling a record as senator that was so conservative that his conservative ACU ratings were consistently above 90 and his liberal ADA scores were always below 6 (Duncan 1991: 1418).  In his first reelection bid in 1990, Gramm outspent little known state senator Hugh Parmer by $9.8 million to $1.7 million and won 60% of the vote to the Democrat’s 37% (Duncan 1991: 1417-1418).

            As Republicans became increasingly competitive with Democrats during the 1980s, the state Democratic Party appeared to shift even more towards the left. Half of the state’s delegation to the 1980 national Democratic convention had voted for Ted Kennedy’s national health insurance platform plank, suggesting an even split in the delegation between liberals and non-liberals (Davidson 1990: 176). The state party platform adopted in 1982 was regarded by one knowledgeable observer as “the most liberal in Texas history” (Davidson 1990: 177). Even the state legislature was undergoing some ideological change. Though moderate Democrats held a plurality in both chambers, liberals outnumbered conservatives among Democrats in both houses (Davidson 1990: 219). Republicans also made electoral gains among Texas voters in the 1980s because the Democrats nationally were viewed as “too liberal, too pro-labor union, too accepting of gays and lesbians and feminists, and too supportive of big government and high taxes,” who nominated as presidential candidates such “out-of-the-mainstream liberals” as Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 307).   

 

Republicans Surge to Power in the 1990s

 

            The decade of the 1990s would witness the start of Republicans on their way to becoming the natural majority party in Texas, as they picked up the state’s second U.S. senate seat and regained control of the governorship and held it into the 21st century (Table 13-1). These electoral gains were ushered in at the start of the decade by the GOP closing of the partisan identification gap with the Democrats among average Texans (Table 13-2). Republicans even began to win statewide offices below the governorship, as in 1990 Kay Bailey Hutchison won the treasurer’s position vacated by Ann Richards, and state representative Rick Perry upset populist agriculture commissioner Jim Hightower (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 314). Hutchison had a particularly compelling life story as a Republican woman, as fresh out of law school she had personally suffered discrimination by large law firms not wanting to hire a woman who might leave the firm to start a family. As a Texas state legislator, she had championed causes not usually associated with hard-core conservatives, such as greater privacy for rape victims in the trial process (Mikulski et al. 2000: 21, 52). In 1992 the steady rise in the numbers of GOP state legislators even reached a post-Reconstruction high to constitute roughly 40% of each chamber.

            Senator Lloyd Bentsen’s resignation in 1993 to become President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary gave Republicans their first major opening of the decade. In a special election with twenty-three candidates, GOP state Treasurer Kay Bailey Hutchison and Democratic interim U.S. senator Robert Krueger, a railroad commissioner and former congressman, made the runoff. Hutchison converted a virtual tie in the first primary into a smashing 67% landslide in the runoff election. The Republican was benefited by the activism of GOP women’s clubs across the state, by low voter turnout, by such unpopular Clinton policies as tax hikes and a proposal to permit gays in the military, and by the Democratic senator’s weakness as a candidate, reflected in his self-deprecating television ads (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 321-322). Hutchison at first appeared vulnerable in the regular 1994 election for a six year term, when a grand jury indicted her for alleged abuses while serving as state treasurer, but the local district attorney, Democrat Ronnie Earle, abruptly dropped all charges, creating sympathy for Hutchison on the part of voters who felt that she was the victim of a partisan witch hunt. Hutchison, outspending Dallas businessman and Democrat Richard Fisher by about a two-to-one margin, went on to win the general election with a landslide 61% of the vote (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 322-324, 327). Democratic election chances had also been hurt by a very divided party primary and by Fisher’s upset of the potentially more electable Democrat, Mike Andrews, “a telegenic House member from Houston” (Koszczuk and Stern 2005: 968). 

            Republicans in 1994 also won the governorship, despite increasing job growth in Texas that boosted Ann Richards’ reelection hopes. The GOP rallied behind the candidacy of George W. Bush, who was popular in Republican circles as the former President’s son and as part owner of the Texas Rangers’ baseball team. Bush skillfully exploited Richards’ liberal record, as he supported the concealed weapons bill and the parental notification of teenagers’ abortions bill that Richards had opposed. Bush also projected a likeable image as a “compassionate conservative” on education matters, as he criticized a school funding equalization plan that had hurt some wealthy suburban districts and argued that all of the proceeds of the lottery enacted by Governor Richards and the legislature should go to enhancing education funding (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 323, 325-327; Thielemann and Elliott 2005: 238 quote). On the issues of crime and welfare, Bush claimed that “juvenile crime is out of control,” and promised to get tough with welfare recipients by cutting off the additional benefits provided for any extra child that a woman gave birth to (Ivins and Dubose 2000: 93 quote, 95).  Bush was also a very personable candidate, speaking a little Spanish before Mexican American audiences and projecting a “non-threatening, affable, well-mannered” impression to voters (Ivins and Dubose 2000: 91 quote, 19). The Democrat Richards was especially doomed by her inability “to hold the urban Anglo women against Bush” (Richards 2002: 246). The Republican’s 54% popular vote victory was the highest winning margin for a Texas governor in twenty years. 

            The GOP juggernaut continued in 1996, as not only did Senator Phil Gramm win reelection but also Republicans gained control of the state senate. Like Tower, Gramm maintained a conservative voting record in the Senate, as throughout his senate history he received conservative ACU ratings above 90 and liberal ADA ratings below 10 (Nutting and Stern 2001: 954). Democrats offered a “somewhat obscure,” one term city councilman and Hispanic high school civics teacher, Victor Morales, who had upset a congressman in the primary by conducting an “outsider” campaign and driving across the state in a white Nissan pickup truck (Glaser 2005: 46, 1st quote; Murray and Attlesey 1999: 332, 2nd quote). Outspending the gutsy challenger by an over 6-1 margin, Gramm unleashed a series of negative ads that branded his opponent as a supporter of tax hikes, gay marriage, and affirmative action. The state’s first Hispanic nominee for a U.S. senate seat nevertheless garnered a respectable 44% of the vote, holding Senator Gramm to a 55% popular vote margin (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 334, 335; Feigert and Todd 1997: 205).  Truly historic was that after two special elections following the regular November 1996 elections, Republicans had a 17-14 seat majority in the state senate, giving the GOP control of a legislative chamber for the first time since Reconstruction. Republicans also swept eight statewide contests for state commission and judicial offices, a feat that ranked with the party two years earlier gaining a majority of members on the Texas supreme court and the state Board of Education, as well as holding all three seats on the state Railroad Commission which regulates the trucking and energy industries (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 328, 337).

            As governor, the “compassionate conservative” Bush appointed Mexican Americans to high level positions, including Al Gonzales to the state Supreme Court, promoted accountability in education through promoting charter schools and testing students, and sponsored tax cuts in two legislative sessions (Feigert and Todd 2002: 199; Lamare, Polinard, and Wrinkle 2003: 269-270; Ivins and Dubose 2000: 205). Bush also backed such pro-business policies as tort reform, which capped punitive damages levied against companies harming people and required that lawsuits be filed in corporations’ hometowns, and loosening environmental regulations that were believed to be a burden to companies (Ivins and Dubose 2000: 152, 177, 196). Getting tough on crime, Bush signed laws providing for stiffer sentences for possession of a small amount of cocaine and for possessing drugs near a school or school bus, urged a legislative rewrite of the juvenile justice code that tripled the state’s juvenile prison population, and vetoed a bill requiring that each county set up an indigent defender program (Ivins and Dubose 2000: 231, 236, 247).

More importantly, Governor Bush gained a reputation for “working across party lines” in the state legislature, as he “reached out” to the Democratic lieutenant governor and Democratic house speaker and even “shared credit” for policy accomplishments (Thielemann and Elliott 2005: 239 1st two quotes, 235 last quote). Bush was popular among lawmakers because of his “amiable, up-close-and-personal” style, as he invited nearly every lawmaker to have dinner at the governor’s mansion or to meet with him personally and even referred to them by their nicknames (Ivins and Dubose 2000: 157 quote, 90). Endorsed even by such a prominent Democrat as the state’s lieutenant governor, Bush cruised to reelection in 1998 with 68% of the vote to 31% for Democratic land commissioner, Gary Mauro. Spending heavily on a campaign in the Spanish-language media and with a campaign slogan of “Together we can,” Bush managed to even attract 49% of the Hispanic vote and 27% of the African American vote (Ivins and Dubose 2000: 282 quote, 13, 280; Lamare, Polinard, and Wrinkle 2003: 278; Thielemann and Elliott 2005: 239; Duncan and Nutting 1999: 1282). Even more historic and shocking was that Republicans swept all statewide elective offices, electing agriculture commissioner Rick Perry as lieutenant governor and also electing Republicans as attorney general, comptroller, agriculture commissioner, and land commissioner (Lamare, Polinard, and Wrinkle 2003: 274). Leading such an historic GOP breakthrough in such a traditionally Democratic state put Governor Bush in the driver’s seat for his party’s upcoming presidential nomination.

            Meanwhile, another GOP titan, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, had compiled the usual conservative voting record for a southern Republican with conservative ACU ratings pretty consistently exceeding 80 and liberal ADA scores almost always below 10, though her conservative record was tempered by a moderate image. As a U.S. Senator, Hutchison worked in a bipartisan manner as she fought for improved IRA’s for married homemakers, a federal anti-stalking law, protecting the state’s tobacco lawsuit settlements from federal confiscation, improved health care benefits for veterans, and federal grants benefiting constituents of all races (Mikulski et al. 2000: 18, 126-127, 209). She easily won her 2000 reelection contest with 65% of the vote to her Democratic opponent, Gene Kelly’s 32%. Hutchison spent over $3.5 million compared to her virtually unknown and invisible challenger, who spent only $4,602 (Koszczuk and Stern 2005: 967-968, 1182; Feigert and Todd 2002: 201). Indeed, the Republican incumbent was so popular in Texas that the state Democratic party literally “ignored” their nominee and “provided neither funding nor acknowledgment of his candidacy during the election” (Feigert and Todd 2002: 202). In her second senatorial term, Hutchison became the fifth ranking Republican leader as vice chair of the GOP Conference, whereupon she took the lead in “showing that conservatism can have a friendly face” as she “reached out to varied groups with ‘summits’ on issues affecting women and Hispanics” (Koszczuk and Stern 2005: 967). She also authored a book about women pioneers in numerous fields.  In 2006 Hutchison won a 62% popular vote reelection victory as she defeated lawyer and first-time candidate Barbara Ann Radnofsky, who garnered only 36% of the vote. The Democrat was already hampered by being unknown to half of voters, and her anti-Iraq message was neutralized after Hutchison backed away from her firm support for Bush and called for partition in Iraq (Robison 2006).

            Lieutenant governor Rick Perry assumed the governorship when George W. Bush immediately resigned after winning the presidency. Perry went on to win the governorship in his own right in the 2002 elections with 58% of the vote over Democrat Tony Sanchez’s 40%. Sanchez, a Mexican-American millionaire businessman from Laredo, was reportedly hurt by his lack of campaign experience, his inadequate knowledge of state issues, a party primary battle that was so bitter that the runner up ended up campaigning for the GOP governor, by a failed savings and loan scandal in his past, and by claims that he wasn’t a real Democrat because of his past campaign donations to George Bush and his appointment by Bush to the University of Texas Board of Regents (Cooley and Lutz, 2002). Sanchez did, however, win the endorsement of the Houston Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus Political Action Committee by reportedly supporting “domestic-partner benefits,” an “Employment Non-Discrimination Act,” and an “education bill banning discrimination based upon sexual orientation in Texas schools,” and opposing “bills that would outlaw gay and lesbian parenting and foster parenting” (Bagby 2002).

Another GOP victory in 2002 was their capture of a majority of seats in the state house, giving them control of both legislative chambers. The GOP governor and Republican-controlled legislature proceeded to institute an historic mid-decade redistricting of U.S. House seats to better reflect voters’ partisan sentiments. Their bold power play so angered Democratic lawmakers that three legislative special sessions were required, after “over fifty House Democrats fled to Ardmore, Oklahoma” during the regular session to deny the chamber a quorum and “eleven of the twelve senate Democrats took off for Albuquerque” during the second special session (Lamare, Polinard, Wenzel, and Wrinkle 2007: 293-294). Republican fortunes immediately improved after the redistricting, as the GOP went from controlling 47% of the state’s U.S. house seats before the 2004 elections to controlling 66% of them after the elections, reaching a more equitable 59% mark after the 2006 national GOP debacle. Meanwhile, as governor, Perry appointed Hispanics to high-level positions in state government (Thielemann and Elliott 2005: 240). He also dealt with a state budget shortfall without raising taxes, enacted stricter requirements that cut the number of children served by the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and backed a ban on same-sex marriages and a stricter anti-abortion measure (Fikac 2006).

            Yet another triumph for Texas Republicans was to fill Phil Gramm’s vacant U.S. senate seat in 2002 with GOP state attorney general John Cornyn, who defeated former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, a “charismatic and politically centrist” African American by a 55%-43% vote margin (Koszczuk and Stern 2005: 970). Cornyn, a former district court judge and state supreme court justice, was benefited by his “conservative credentials” and his “allegiance to Bush” (Koszczuk and Stern 2005: 970). A pro-business advocate of limited government, Cornyn has maintained a conservative voting record in the senate, and has led efforts to enact constitutional amendments banning gay marriage and flag burning (Koszczuk and Stern 2005: 969-970). He easily won reelection in 2008, outspending his Democratic opponent, a state representative by a 3-1 margin, as national Democrats financially abandoned their candidate to focus on more competitive races in other states (Robison 2008).

            Republicans continued their romp in 2006, as they not only reelected Senator Hutchison in a landslide, but also reelected Governor Perry and swept the other five statewide executive offices containing single executives (as well as the only statewide race for one of the three railroad commissioners), which included two races without incumbents running. With a sagging popularity, Perry found himself facing two Independents as well as a Democrat, all exploiting public discontent with the political situation. They included state comptroller and Republican Carole Keeton Strayhorn, who promised to place a high priority on public education funding and to expand the CHIP healthy children program, and who blasted Perry for making cuts in both areas (Chron.com 2006).  The other independent was comedian Kinky Friedman, who mocked his opponents’ political experience by reminding audiences that the letters “ticks” in the word “politics” stood for “blood-sucking parasites,” but soon found himself on the defensive for the racial slur of referring to Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston as “crackheads and thugs" who had raised the crime rate (Ratcliffe and Robison 2006). Democrats offered Chris Bell, a man who had a record of losing bids for the state legislature and for mayor of Houston, who after only one term had been redistricted out of his U.S. House district by the GOP-controlled legislature, but who was idolized by partisan Democrats for filing a successful ethics complaint against GOP House leader Tom Delay (Ratcliffe 2006). With Independents splitting relatively equally among the four candidates and with about 70% of the identifiers of the two major parties backing their party’s candidates, Perry’s 39% share of the popular vote compared to Bell’s 30% mirrored the 9% edge that Republicans held over Democrats in the exit polls (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/TX/G/00/epolls.0.html).

            Democratic futility reached a new high in 2010, as the party once again lost the governorship, despite offering a respected nominee who hoped to benefit from a bitter GOP primary battle. Projecting a more "moderate" conservative image with endorsements from such Washington "establishment" Republicans as former President George Herbert Walker Bush, GOP primary challenger Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison was nevertheless easily bested by Sarah Palin endorsed Governor Rick Perry, after Perry's relentless "railing against every decision in Washington" such as the bank bailouts and the economic stimulus law (McKinley 2010). Perry then beat respected 6-year Houston mayor Bill White, despite his endorsement by the Houston Chronicle, which blasted the incumbent for cronyism, refusing to debate or to meet with newspaper editorial boards, and blamed him for the state's low high school graduation rate and rising college tuitions (Houston Chronicle 2010). With Republicans outnumbering Democrats among exit poll voters 39% to 28% and conservatives outnumbering liberals by 51% to 14%, Perry's 90% support among Republicans and 81% support among conservatives was decisive (White received 94% and 85% backing of Democrats and liberals, respectively.) (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2010/results/polls/#val=TXG00p1). Further demonstrating the Republican dominance of 21st century Texas, the GOP achieved an historic high level of control of the state's U.S. House delegation, and control of over 60% of the seats in both chambers of the state legislature.

            Republicans did equally well in 2012, with landslide victories for Romney and GOP senate nominee Ted Cruz, and retention of over 60% of the state's U.S. House seats and state senate and house seats. Backed by the Tea Party, Ted Cruz, the son of a Cuban immigrant and the former Texas Solicitor General, first knocked off Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst in the party primary, and then used his 20-1 spending advantage to easily best Democratic attorney and former state legislator Paul Sadler (FoxNews.com 2012).

            Republican dominance continued in 2014 as they re-elected Senator Cornyn and elected attorney general Greg Abbott as governor with landslide margins. Beginning in 1996 Republicans had won every gubernatorial and U.S. senate race with at least 55% of the vote. The GOP was also advantaged by Obama's unpopularity (64% disapproval in Texas) and by their usual modern party identification advantage among voters (CNN exit poll showed 38% were Republicans and 27% Democrats). Democrats proceeded to nominate as governor Wendy Davis, a twice divorced state senator who had become a hero to feminists by leading an 11 hour filibuster against a law providing for more restrictions on abortion clinics. Davis then found herself defending her TV ad that accused Abbott (confined to a wheelchair after a tree fell on him while jogging) of hypocrisy for opposing medical malpractice lawsuits while personally winning his own partial paralysis case (Bobic 2014). Meanwhile, Abbott boasted an ambitious Hispanic outreach effort, never failing to mention that his Mexican-American wife Cecilia was poised to become the first Hispanic first lady of Texas, and won 44% of the Latino vote (Hoppe 2014). The Democratic sacrificial lamb in the senate race was a wealthy Dallas dentist, whose political claim to fame was losing a Democratic U.S. house nomination two years earlier. Leaving nothing to chance, Republican Senator Cornyn granted interviews to Spanish language media, translated his campaign material and advertisements into Spanish, and proceeded to garner 48% of the Latino vote (Kofler 2014).

Republican hegemony persisted during the 2016 election year with some warning clouds on the horizon. The GOP continued to retain at least 63% of the seats in the U.S. House and in both state legislative chambers. While Republican Trump did carry the state, his modest 55% of the major two party vote was the lowest for a Republican since the 1990s, however.

Republicans continued to dominate elections in 2018, but Democrats made a strong showing in the U.S. Senate, holding the GOP incumbent to only 51% of the vote. Facing conservative Senator Ted Cruz, Democrats nominated Congressman Beto O'Rourke, a 4th generation Irish American who had held monthly town hall meetings and bragged about working across the aisle as a member of the Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees. O'Rourke "campaigned apart from party labels," was "hustling in small towns across the state with a come-one-come-all message," attracted "unmatched" "late fundraising," and benefitted from an aggressive grassroots campaign with "ten of thousands of calls" made and "doors knocked" (Elliott 2018). CNN exit polls found O'Rourke with a +10% favorable over unfavorable rating, versus Cruz's +2% favorable advantage rating, and the Democrat attracted half of Independents and 65% of moderates. The Republican 4 point advantage in party identification (exit polls showed 38% Republicans and 34% Democrats) was decisive as Cruz won 91% of Republicans and the liberal O'Rourke captured 92% of Democrats. Republican governor Greg Abbott won reelection more easily, beating Democrat Lupe Valdez, a former sheriff seeking to become the state's first openly gay and Latina governor. Her low campaign budget resulted in zero television ads (Weber 2018). Abbott's popularity was reflected in his being able to win 55% of Independents and 42% of Latino's (CNN exit poll).

The 2020 Senate contest continued the recent trend of more competitive races, as Republican incumbent John Cornyn won 55% of the vote against Air Force veteran and Purple Heart awardee Democrat M.J. Hegar, who touted three Afghanistan combat tours. Both candidates were associated with their party's major themes, as Mrs. Hegar campaigned with Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris and blasted Cornyn for not taking the pandemic seriously enough and for trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Cornyn meanwhile campaigned with Senator Ted Cruz, and blasted Hegar as a liberal who would hurt the state's oil and gas industry and defund the police (Svitek 2020). The expensive campaign may not have changed many minds, as Cornyn's 10% margin of error was almost identical to the 11% margin that Repblicans had over Democrats among CNN exit poll voters.

The 2022 gubernatorial contest saw Democrats offering former Congressman Beto O'Rourke (who had held Senator Cruz to a narrow victory four years earlier) to challenge Governor Greg Abbott's re-election. Despite exit polls in recent years showing a GOP advantage in party identification of 53-57% of the two party voters, the campaign was spirited. O'Rourke blasted the incumbent for such policy failures as the power grid failure during a deadly ice storm, the Uvalde school shooting, uninsured Texans being turned away from hospitals, and limited funding for public schools. Abbott blasted Joe Biden's inflation, the fentanyl pouring over the border, and pledged to protect police funding to fight crime. Courting the Hispanic vote, the Republican ran an ad with a single mom who was his Latino wife's niece, who affectionately referred to the governor with the Spanish expression "Tio" Greg (Mccarthy, 2022). Not even mentioning the controversial Trump, Abbott was fairly easily reelected.

           

Party Politics in a Majority Republican State

 

            The historically dominant Democratic Party ruled Texas politics as the state entered the last four decades of the 20th century. Democrats held over 90% of state legislative seats and all of the sub-gubernatorial statewide elective offices. While Texas occasionally voted Republican in presidential elections, as did other Rim South states, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by a massive 6-1 margin among average Texans, preventing Republicans from winning such important offices as governor and U.S. senator. Republicans finally made breakthroughs in the closing decades of the 20th century, winning a U.S. senate seat in 1961, the governorship in 1978, and retaining control of their sole senate seat in 1984 (Table 13-1). But even as late as 1988, Democrats retained control of about two-thirds of state legislative and U.S. House seats and all of the sub-gubernatorial executive offices elected statewide (Table 13-2). 

            Throughout the years of Democratic Party hegemony, the ruling party remained a broad tent party, but a broad tent party that leaned to the right and that usually offered voters a candidate to the right-of-center. As late as 1971, Democrats controlled twenty of the state’s 23 U.S. House seats with congressmen maintaining such an electorally appealing moderate-to-conservative philosophy that 8 of the Democratic members had compiled moderate voting records, 7 were moderate conservatives, 3 were conservatives, 1 was a moderate liberal, and only 1 was a true liberal. Even the two Mexican American Democratic congress members were in the ideological mainstream with one being a moderate and one a moderate liberal. Texas Democrats even boasted an Arab congressman, whose voting record was moderate. Of the three GOP congress members, all were conservatives (Barone, Ujifusa, and Matthews: 1972: 782-821; 1973: 980). The existence of ideological diversity in the Democratic Party masked a lack of gender and African American racial diversity, though, as all of the congress members were males and none was African American. But such was also the case with the few GOP congress members.

In this era of Democratic hegemony, liberal Democrats typically lost the Democratic primaries, as occurred in gubernatorial contests as well as congressional races. As late as 1968 and 1972, liberal Democrats lost gubernatorial primaries to more moderate conservative or conservative Democrats, and those Democrats, Preston Smith and Dolph Briscoe, went on to win the general election. In 1970 when Republicans nationally were being electorally advantaged by offering candidates conservative on socially divisive race and civil liberty/lifestyle issues, moderate Democrat Lloyd Bentsen unseated liberal senatorial incumbent Ralph Yarborough, neutralizing the ideology issue and permitting Democrats to retain this senate seat (Table 13-3). 

Anguished liberal Democrats, unable to even win their party’s nomination, began to flex their muscles. In 1961 and 1966 liberals abandoned their own party’s senate candidates and helped to elect and then reelect Republican John Tower to the U.S. senate. They sought to “teach” their party a lesson, yet Tower’s voting record was just as conservative as most Democrats’ records’ could possibly be. Tower’s election was the first GOP senate victory in Dixie since Reconstruction, preceding even South Carolinian Strom Thurmond’s party switch (Table 13-4). In 1978 liberals were pleased when they unseated a moderate conservative incumbent governor of their own party, only to become dismayed by the election of the first Republican governor since Reconstruction, conservative businessman Bill Clements. When Tower vacated his senate seat in 1984, a “liberal” state senator upset a moderate conservative congressman in the Democratic Party, and then went on to lose to Democrat-turned-Republican Phil Gramm (Table 13-3). Gramm’s senate voting record was to be even more conservative than was the record of the congressional Democrat who had lost his party’s senate primary, making one wonder how liberals benefited from denying a more electable Democrat the party nomination (Table 13-4).

Even when Democrats were able to pull out a general election victory, their actions in office seemed to be a far cry from their aging star, Senator Lloyd Bentsen, who maintained a strictly moderate voting record and who won greater and greater reelection margins as the years passed. Governor Mark White raised taxes, permitting Republican Bill Clements to stage a comeback and unseat him in 1986. Governor Ann Richards permitted herself to be tagged as a liberal partisan Democrat, as she opposed parental consent for minors’ abortions and became viewed as an advocate of gun control, while blasting fellow-Texan and President George Herbert Walker Bush, who carried Texas in both years that he ran (Table 13-4). Revenge was sweet for Republicans, as Bush’s son knocked her off in 1994 and then went on to decimate the state Democratic Party, winning an historic landslide reelection four years later that swept in an all-GOP slate of statewide executive officers. Democratic attacks on newly elected U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison ended up backfiring, as she went on to gain three landslide reelections and to post a solid conservative voting record. Democrats also proceeded to lose in 2002 the gubernatorial race and an open senate seat with politically-correct Mexican American and African American candidates, the former surviving a bitter party primary and winning the support of a prominent gay group (Table 13-3).

The GOP gubernatorial landslide of 2002 also ushered in the party’s control of the state house, giving them control of both state legislative chambers. They proceeded to institute an “innovative” redistricting of the state’s U.S. house delegation that gave Republicans nearly two-thirds of the state’s congress members after the 2004 elections. Democrats were reduced to retaining control of only 11 of the state’s 32 U.S. House districts. However, liberal Democratic activists could take solace in achieving “diversity,” at least with respect to racial characteristics. Three of the Democratic congress members were African American, four were Hispanics, and only four were white Anglos. Liberals might have also been pleased at the voting records of these Democratic officeholders, as six were liberals (which included three blacks and two Hispanics) and four were moderate liberal (including three Anglos). Only one first-year member rated as a moderate, and none of the Democrats voted as moderate conservatives or conservatives, the dominant groups in the pre-1970 Texas congressional delegation (Koszczuk and Stern 2005: 971-1027; see websites http://www.adaction.org/ and http://www.conservative.org/congress-ratings/). Perhaps this helps to explain why beginning in 1993 Republicans have won every statewide race for governor and U.S. senator in Texas, a state that last voted for a presidential nominee of the liberal national Democratic Party in 1976. Regarding the state’s congressional delegation, a decade ago political scientists were warning that “as long as conservative Democratic incumbents stand for reelection, there is a reasonable chance that they will succeed,” but that if candidates whom the GOP could paint with “the liberal brush” replaced them, then they would likely “be replaced by Republicans in many districts” (Feigert and Todd 1997: 202).

Yet Republicans also have their own little ideological demons to worry about, as they run the risk of becoming too conservative, even for average Texans. Fully 53% of Republican party activists in 2001 called themselves “very conservative” ideologically, while 38% were “only” somewhat conservative, and only 7% were moderate and 2% liberal (Feigert, Miller, Cunningham, and Burlage 2003: 192). Texas Republicans increasingly seemed to be a plane that might try to fly with only one wing- the right wing. After the 2004 elections, among the 16 GOP congress members reelected to Congress, 15 had conservative voting records and only 1 a moderate conservative record. None were even middle-of-the-road (Koszczuk and Stern 2005: 971-1027). Furthermore, the Christian right was flexing its muscles by the last decade of the 20th century, electing a majority of delegates to the state party convention in 1994, and “routing the regular Republicans” at all levels of the GOP organization throughout the 1990s (Murray and Attlesey 1999: 331 quote; Lamare, Polinard, and Wrinkle 2003: 275). One reporter wrote how “delegates prayed in the aisles at that convention… and even witnessed to reporters in the press pit”  (Ivins and Dubose 2000: 129-130). The losing candidate for GOP state party chair, who had previously warned against the “’gay-bashing and intolerance’ of the Christian right” and warned that the party was being taken over by “the Four Horsemen of Calumny: fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear,” was shouted down by delegates after proclaiming that “The Republican Party is not a church, and it is not a country club” (Ivins and Dubose 2000: 131).

However, one wonders whether state Democrats will be able to exploit the ideological homogeneity of state Republicans, as they themselves have been moving towards their own ideologically extreme pole. By 2001 fully 60% of state Democratic party activists were calling themselves liberals, with only 25% being moderate and 15% conservative (Feigert, Miller, Cunningham, and Burlage 2003: 192-193). Increasing Democratic liberalism, coupled with an emerging GOP advantage in the public’s partisan identifications, suggests that Republicans are the new governing authority in Texas, though they are nowhere near as dominant as the Democrats were in the first half of the last century.


Table 13-1

Governors and U.S. Senators and Their Parties in Modern Texas

 

 

Democrats

 

Republicans

 

Governors

Senators

Senators

 

Governors

Senators

Senators

1970

Smith*

 

Bentsen*

 

 

Tower

 

1972

Briscoe*

 

Bentsen

 

 

Tower*

 

1974

Briscoe*

 

Bentsen

 

 

Tower

 

1976

Briscoe

 

Bentsen*

 

 

Tower

 

1978

 

 

Bentsen

 

Clements*

Tower*

 

1980

 

 

Bentsen

 

Clements

Tower

 

1982

White*

 

Bentsen*

 

 

Tower

 

1984

White

 

Bentsen

 

 

Gramm*

 

1986

 

 

Bentsen

 

Clements*

Gramm

 

1988

 

 

Bentsen*

 

Clements

Gramm

 

1990

Richards*

 

Bentsen

 

 

Gramm*

 

1992

Richards

 

Bentsen

 

 

Gramm

 

1993

Richards

 

 

 

 

Gramm

Hutchison+

1994

 

 

 

 

Bush*

Gramm

Hutchison*

1996

 

 

 

 

Bush

Gramm*

Hutchison

1998

 

 

 

 

Bush*

Gramm

Hutchison

2000

 

 

 

 

Perry+

Gramm

Hutchison*

2002

 

 

 

 

Perry*

Cornyn*

Hutchison

2004

 

 

 

 

Perry

Cornyn

Hutchison

2006

 

 

 

 

Perry*

Cornyn

Hutchison*

2008

 

 

 

 

Perry

Cornyn*

Hutchison

2010

 

 

 

 

Perry*

Cornyn

Hutchison

2012

 

 

 

 

Perry

Cornyn

Cruz*

2014

 

 

 

 

Abbott*

Cornyn*

Cruz

2016

 

 

 

 

Abbott

Cornyn

Cruz

2018

 

 

 

 

Abbott*

Cornyn

Cruz*

2020

 

 

 

 

Abbott

Cornyn*

Cruz

2022

 

 

 

 

Abbott*

Cornyn

Cruz

 

Note: Cell entries indicate the governors and U.S. Senators elected in or serving during the years listed at the left.

* Indicates that the officeholder was elected in that year.

+ Kay Bailey Hutchison won a special election in 1993 after Bentsen’s resignation to become Treasury Secretary.

+ Lieutenant Governor Rick Perry became governor in 2000 after Bush’s resignation to assume the presidency.

Table 13-2. Republican Growth in Texas

 

 

Year of Election

 

Pres.

Vote

(% Rep)

 

U.S. Senate Seats* (% Rep)

 

Gov. Pty.*

 

Party Ident(% Rep of 2 pty.)

 

U.S. House Seats (% Rep)

 

State Senate Seats (% Rep)

 

State House Seats (% Rep)

 

Sub-Gov. Office (% Rep)

 

1970

 

NA

 

50 (47)

 

D-46

 

16

 

13

 

6

 

7

 

0

 

1972

 

67

 

50 (55)

 

D-48

 

NA

 

17

 

10

 

11

 

0

 

1974

 

NA

 

50

 

D-34

 

NA

 

13

 

10

 

10

 

0

 

1976

 

48

 

50 (43)

 

Dem

 

NA

 

8

 

10

 

13

 

0

 

1978

 

NA

 

50 (50)

 

R-50

 

28

 

17

 

13

 

15

 

0

 

1980

 

57

 

50

 

Rep

 

33

 

21

 

23

 

24

 

0

 

1982

 

NA

 

50 (41)

 

D-46

 

32

 

22

 

16

 

24

 

0

 

1984

 

64

 

50 (59)

 

Dem

 

NA

 

37

 

19

 

35

 

0

 

1986

 

NA

 

50

 

R-53

 

39

 

37

 

19

 

37

 

0

 

1988

 

56

 

50 (40)

 

Rep

 

41*

 

31

 

26

 

38

 

0

 

1990

 

NA

 

50 (62)

 

D-49

 

49

 

30

 

26

 

37

 

33

 

1992

 

52

 

100**

 

Dem

 

50

 

30

 

42

 

39

 

33

 

1994

 

NA

 

100 (61)

 

R-54

 

NA

 

37

 

45

 

41

 

17

 

1996

 

53

 

100 (55)

 

Rep

 

NA

 

43

 

52

 

45

 

20

 

1998

 

NA

 

100

 

R-69

 

NA

 

43

 

52

 

48

 

100

 

2000

 

61

 

100 (67)

 

Rep

 

55+

 

43

 

52

 

48

 

100

 

2002

 

NA

 

100 (56)

 

R-59

 

60

 

47

 

61

 

59

 

100

 

2004

 

62

 

100

 

Rep

 

57+

 

66

 

68

 

58

 

100

 

2006

 

NA

 

100 (63)

 

R-57

 

NA

 

59

 

65

 

54

 

100

 

2008

 

56

 

100 (56)

 

Rep

 

51+

 

63

 

61

 

51

 

100

 

2010

 

NA

 

100

 

R-57

 

53

 

72

 

61

 

66

 

100

 

2012

 

58

 

100 (58)

 

Rep

 

56

 

67

 

61

 

63

 

100

 

2014

 

NA

 

100 (64)

 

R-60

 

58+

 

69

 

65

 

65

 

100

 

2016

 

55

 

100

 

Rep

 

52

 

69

 

65

 

63

 

100

 

2018

 

NA

 

100 (51)

 

R-57

 

53+

 

64

 

61

 

56

 

100

 

2020

 

53

 

100 (55)

 

Rep

 

57++

 

64

 

58

 

55

 

100

 

2022

 

NA

 

100

 

R-56

 

NA

 

66

 

61

 

57

 

100

+ Exit poll results of voters (Bullock and Rozell 2007 for pre 2005 years; CNN exit polls afterwards; 2008 results from Bullock 2018).

++ Fox poll, reported in Buchanan and Kapeluck, The 2020 Presidential Election in the South, p. 11.

* Combines 1987 and 1989 polls in Murray and Attlesey (1999).

** Republican Hutchison was elected in a special election in 1993, garnering 67% of the vote.

Note: NA indicates not available or no election held.

Source: The Almanac of American Politics, 1972-1984; CQ=s Politics in America, 1986-2006; Lamis (1990); Murray and Attlesey (1999); Vedlitz, Dyer, and Hill (1988); Feigert and McWilliams (1995); Feigert and Todd (1994); Bullock and Rozell (2007b); Bullock (2014); Feigert, Miller, Cunningham, and Burlage (2003); Jones (2011, 2017); and Websites http://elections.sos.state.tx.us/elchist.exe and http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu/

Table 13-3

 

Factors Affecting Elections of Texas Governors and U.S. Senators

 

Officeholder (party-year 1st, imp. elections)

Issues

Candidate Attributes

Party/Campaign Factors

Performance Factors

Governors

 

 

 

 

Preston Smith

(D- 1968, ‘70)

Conser Dem/ progress. Rep

 

Liberal loses in Dem primary/

State rep, sen, lieut. gov./

Dolph Briscoe

(D- 1972, ‘74)

Mod.cons. reformist wins/ bad Rep year

 

Liberal loses in Dem primary/ labor, rural vote

Rich rancher and banker Dem/

Bill Clements

(R- 1978)

Rep. successful businessman

Dem fails to unify Dems.

Cons. Dem gov unseated by lib.

Rich Rep. has camp. $

Mark White

(D- 1982)

Recession and incr. utility rate

 

United Dems., poor-minority 

Mod. cons. Dem atty. gen.

Bill Clements

(R- 1986)

Dem tax and spend liberal

 

Weak Dem primary win

Rep former gov.

Ann Richards

(D- 1990)

 

GOP sex joke blunders

Partisan feminist Dem.

Dem Treasurer

George Bush

(R- 1994)

Pro-educ cons vs. lib. Dem.

Likeable Rep, compassionate

 

President’s son and sports owner

Rick Perry

(R- 2002, 2006, 2010)

Dem wins gay support//Rep anti-Washington conservative

Dem lacks camp exper./ loser Dem/

Bitter Dem primary/ Rep majority pty/Rep majority pty.

Dem supported Bush/ anti-incumbent split/

Greg Abbott

(R- 2014, '18, '22)

Pro-choice Dem loses//ideological battle

Rep wheelchair bound, Hispanic wife/Dem gay Latina/Rep has Latino wife and niece

Rep exit poll advantage, Obama unpopular, pro-life voters united/Dem low budget, no TV/Rep exit poll edge

Rep state atty gen., Sup. Ct. justice for 19 years//Rep incumbent

Senators

 

 

 

 

John Tower (R- 1961, ’66, ’72, ‘78) 

Dem extreme  conservative/ conser Dem/ big Nixon win/ labor-lib. Dem.

Attractive Rep, known name///

Liberal Dems defect/ Dem angers groups/ camp $, media/  GOP gov. win

 

Lloyd Bentsen

(D- 1970, ’76, ’82, ‘88)

Stresses bad economy/ cons Dem image/ mod vs. cons/

/ Bright, hard working Dem//

Dem wins labor & minorities/// Nat’l Rep abandon cand.

Dem unseats lib Dem incum///

Phil Gramm

(R- 1984, ’90, ‘96)

Reagan landslide// Dem blasted as liberal

Rural redneck Rep./ unknown Dem st. sen./ outsider Hispan

Split party, lib beats cons Dem/ GOP camp. $ / GOP camp. $

Party switcher conservative// conser. GOP

Kay Bailey Hutchison

(R- 1993,’94)

 

Dem self-deprecating/ pty. witch hunt, weaker Dem.

Low turnout elect., Rep. women clubs/ divided Dems

Treasurer/ GOP spending advantage

Jon Cornyn

(R- 2002,'08, '20)

Conservative vs. black Dem. //Liberal Dem vs. conser. Rep

 //Female war veteran Dem

Pro-Bush Republican/big spending edge /GOP party edge

Atty. gen., judge, sup. ct./Dem mere state legis./GOP incumbent

Ted Cruz

(R- 2012, '18)

Conservative Tea-Party Rep./Conser. GOP

Rep. Cuban immigrant son/Dem Irish Amer., non-party campaign 

Rep. 20-1 spending advantage/Dem grassroots camp., GOP party Id edge

Rep. former Texas Solicitor General/

 

Table 13-4

 

Programs of Texas Governors and U.S. Senators

 

Officeholder (party-year 1st elected)

Progressive Policies

Neutral Policies

Conservative Policies

Governors

 

 

 

Preston Smith

(D- 1968)

 

 

Anti-federal VISTA program

Dolph Briscoe

(D- 1972)

Labor leader appt., Hispanic appoints

 

Slow implementing health care legis.

Bill Clements

(R- 1978)

Mexican-Amer appt.

 

 

Mark White

(D- 1982)

Mexican-Amer. appt., sales tax for educ.

 

Teacher accountability

Bill Clements

(R- 1986)

 

 

Vs. migrant worker safety, vs. tax hikes

Ann Richards

(D- 1990)

Pro-minor abortions, black-women appoint., lottery & tax hike, vs. guns,

Works to bring and keep industry in state

 

Pro-NAFTA

George Bush

(R- 1994)

Mexican American appointments

Works across party lines

Tort reform, anti-crime, tax cuts, education testing

Rick Perry

(R- 2000, ’02)

Hispanic appointments.

 

Anti-gay-abortion, fiscal conservative, CHIP cuts

Greg Abbott

(R- 2014)

University Research Initiative

 Texas roads funding

large tax cut, tough border security

Senators

 

 

 

John Tower

(R- 1961, ’66) 

 

 

Conservative voting record

Lloyd Bentsen

(D- 1970)

 

Moderate voting record

 

Phil Gramm

(R- 1984)

 

 

Conservative voting record

Kay Bailey Hutchison

(R- 1993,’94)

Reaches out to women and Hispanics with issue summits

Bipartisan stalking, homemaker, veterans issues

Conservative voting record

Jon Cornyn

(R- 2002)

 

 

Conservative voting record, anti-gay, anti-flag burning

Ted Cruz

(R- 2012)

 

 

100% ACU conservative record in 2013