Big Win for Perry

Gov. Rick Perry easily won the Republican primary for governor yesterday, beating Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison by a wide margin.  A year ago, I was confident that the opposite would happen.  Perry has never been particularly popular and has never won a majority of the vote in a general election for governor.  Kay is was a very popular figure in Texas who holds the distinction of winning the most votes of any candidate in any Texas election ever.  So much for my political acumen.  I think things started going south for Kay in the summer and fall when she started waffling on whether or not she would resign her Senate seat to run for Governor.  She said she would, then she was going to wait until health care was finished, then she was going to wait for other important business to be finished, then she dropped the subject all together and never resigned.  It made her look less than confident and not fully committed to being governor.  Then, of course, the tea partiers asserted themselves and Rick Perry spoke their language.  He talked about secession, he talked about the 10th Amendment (dead wrong about both, but so what?), and he talked about Washington "messin' with Texas."  All he had to do was brand Kay as the Washington candidate and she was done.

On the Democratic side, former Houston mayor Bill White easily won his primary over Farouk Shami.  White's not a Washington guy, either, so Rick might have to refine his message a bit.  I will certainly vote for White, but the general election is Perry's to loose.  Demograhics are changing in Texas, but not fast enough to save us from another term with Rick Perry.