The Texas Tribune has two recent posts of interest. First, "The Polling Center: Voter Empathy," by Jim Henson.
"You've been in my life so long, I can't remember anything else," the beleaguered Ellen Ripley says wearily to one of the salivating creatures with whom she's realized a perversely intimate relationship (if you don't know, don't ask) in a scene in the third "Alien" movie. The Republican gubernatorial primary, now mere days away from a result, begins to feel like that.
It's been a long grind. Both publicly and privately, at first a lot of observers thought Perry unlikely to succeed in winning an unprecedented third gubernatorial election. Whether he crosses the 50% threshold or is forced into a run-off when the polls close next Tuesday, the results of the last UT/Texas Tribune Poll suggest that Rick Perry's synchronous orbit over a big chunk of the Republican primary electorate has helped him prove those observers, not to mention KBH boosters and donors, very wrong. The insiders may have thought the Senator was, as the well-traveled meme went, the most popular politician in Texas. Turns out Perry knew his target audience better than the Senator — and better than her supporters in the Republican donor pool, too.
From the early days of the race, many political insiders missed Perry's resonance with primary voters.
And, here is the detail:
Even potential areas of Perry vulnerability during the last year have come in areas where possible weaknesses turned out to be not only harmless, but perhaps even strengths. A significant Perry stumble in an earlier phase of the primary campaign — the handling of the Cameron Todd Willingham case and the machinations related to the Texas Forensics Science Commission — occurred in the safe territory of strong support for the death penalty. Our survey found, unsurprisingly, a huge wellspring of support for the death penalty: 53% of our overall sample strongly support it and 25% somewhat support it. Only 18% said they opposed it the death penalty to any degree. Ninety percent of Republican primary voters supported it.
More strikingly, this support for the death penalty is supplemented by an apparently widespread belief among Republican primary voters that the death penalty is administered fairly in Texas. When asked, "Generally speaking, do you believe the death penalty is applied fairly or unfairly in Texas today," 83% of Republican primary voters responded "fairly," with only 7% responding "unfairly." This unified public opinion about the legal process surrounding the death penalty very likely helped insulate Perry from any state-level consequences of the national criticism he received for his seemingly unshakable faith in a demonstrably shaky process and helped protect him from the Hutchison campaign's half-hearted attempts to charge him with cronyism while stepping softly around the specific issue of the Forensics Commission.
To many, situations like the Willingham affair bespeak a range of factors — a hapless Hutchison campaign, a feckless electorate, a continuing run of luck (to his most vituperative detractors, dumb luck) on Perry's part. There will be plenty of time to weigh all these things, because, much as many of us can't seem to recall life without the 2010 election, it's far from over: the primary voting is not done, there could be a run off, and there's a long hot summer of pivoting toward the November election. Some things seem clear right now, though: in a political season marked by politicians scrambling to connect with an unsettled, angry electorate, Rick Perry has not alienated his base; and when it comes to campaigns, as we are likely to witness in the November sequel, he can be quite the predator.
Emily Ramshaw writes, "The Buck Stops Where?" for today's Tribune.
The attack ad could write itself: On Gov. Rick Perry’s watch, Texas weathered a sexual abuse scandal at the Texas Youth Commission, fight clubs at state institutions for the disabled and deaths of kids monitored by Child Protective Services.
But three of the biggest messes of Perry’s 10-year tenure — two of which spurred U.S. Justice Department investigations — have been noticeably absent on the campaign trail. While U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry’s chief Republican primary opponent, has hit the airwaves on toll roads, immigration and education, she has largely steered clear of these high-profile social services debacles.
And:
The one big social issue Hutchison has homed in on is Perry’s support for mandatory HPV vaccines for adolescent girls, but that issue is far more politically charged than the TYC or the state schools. Hutchison was silent on the Cameron Todd Willingham death penalty case, which looked to some like a high-profile fumble for Perry but would have jeopardized Hutchison’s already fragile relationship with Texas voters, who overwhelming favor the death penalty.
Recent Tribune polling on the death penalty is here; related posts, in the public opinion polling index.
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