Hutchison's Texas Gov Bid Falls Short
Well, that was quick. Three term U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's highly anticipated gubernatorial run ended tonight with current Texas Governor Rick Perry scoring a first round knockout. Hutchison didn't even secure enough votes to keep Perry under the 50% margin that he needed to avoid a runoff.
There's no way around this: Hutchison failed to gain any traction against Perry at any stage in the campaign. From the get go, Hutchison waffled repeatedly about whether or not she planned to run at all. And then when she decided to run, the question was whether she would step down as senator to campaign or not. Almost immediately, all of her press focused not on her campaign but about her inability to decide whether she actually wanted to enter the race at all.
Once the campaign actually started, Hutchison failed miserably to answer the simplest and most essential question for a candidate running for any office: Why are you running? Hutchison was immediately bogged down with widespread reports in the Texas media that she was livid with Perry for reneging on a deal that was supposedly made between the governor and senator that in return for Hutchison's bowing out of a 2006 primary bid, Perry would step aside and allow Hutchison to take her “turn” as Governor of Texas. The campaign never effectively countered this report and voters found the Hutchison campaign's argument for replacing Perry, which was essentially that Perry had been governor for too long and that it was time for a “change,” uncompelling, particularly when Texas has fared well economically throughout Perry's tenure.
When that didn't work, Hutchison switched to the Hillary Clinton argument: “he can't win in the general election.” This argument was easily debunked when virtually all polls showed Perry running ahead of the Democratic nominee (who won by a healthy margin tonight) Bill White throughout the campaign.
In the end, Perry easily defeated her. He talked about jobs and the economy religiously and used his considerable political talent to exploit amongst Texas voters the considerable frustration with Washington and tie Hutchison to the legislation they hated the most (most notably, TARP).
But for Hutchison, that's not all she wrote. She will presumably lick her wounds and head back to Washington, where Republicans need as many of the “Washington insiders” that we also refer to as Senators as they can get. Hutchison is a talented politician. Maybe she will learn and be ready for prime time next go round.
What's another four years anyway, Kay?