'Yes' for Texas Controller Is 'No' to Washington

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HOUSTON — Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison had all the advantages a year ago when she laid her plans to run for governor: a high popularity rating, a party shaken by President Obama’s victory, a big bankroll and, most important, the backing of influential Republicans, who felt the incumbent governor, Rick Perry, was too divisive and too conservative.

But by the time Republican voters went to the polls here in a primary on Tuesday, the political ground had shifted under Senator Hutchison, who lost in a three-way race to Mr. Perry.

Early on, he had courted the Tea Party movement and had wooed social conservatives worried about abortion and right-wing Republicans fed up with Congress. Throughout the campaign, Mr. Perry had run against Washington, portraying Ms. Hutchison as a spendthrift who had supported pork barrel projects and the bailout for the banks.

Speaking to supporters on Tuesday night in Driftwood, Tex., the governor said the election had proved the conservative movement in America was alive and well despite the Obama presidency.

“I think the message is pretty clear: conservatism has never been stronger than it is today, and we are taking our country back,” Mr. Perry said.

So strong was the anti-Washington sentiment here that a political neophyte from the far-right wing of the Republican Party, Debra Medina, came in third in the race with a respectable showing, despite having only a fraction of the money of Mr. Perry and Ms. Hutchison.

The senator called the governor and conceded defeat at 9:30 p.m. Central time, when the returns showed she was losing 31 percent to 52 percent, putting Mr. Perry over the mark he needed to avoid a run-off. She thanked her supporters, including the first President George Bush, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“It has been a long road and a hard-fought campaign, but tonight we fell short,” she said, calling on the party to unite behind the governor.

Mr. Perry will face Bill White, the former mayor of Houston, in the general election. Mr. White cruised to an easy victory over six other Democrats.

“You have got to give Rick Perry and his team a great deal of credit for being the longest-serving governor in Texas history and still running a campaign as an outsider,” said Mark Sanders, a Republican consultant. “Outsiders are what people want right now.”

The Republican primary in Texas reflects the grass-roots rebellion among conservatives against moderate Republicans and Democrats that has shaken up politics across the country, beginning with the defeat of the Democratic candidate for Senate in Massachusetts by Scott Brown, a Republican.

In California, for instance, the longtime Democratic senator, Barbara Boxer, is facing her toughest challenge in years from a field of three Republicans.

In Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist, a centrist Republican, is facing a strong challenge to his bid for the United States Senate from a more conservative candidate, Marco Rubio. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, once considered unbeatable, has a primary challenge from a conservative talk-show host, J. D. Hayworth. And in Kentucky, Rand Paul, son of Representative Ron Paul, the Texas libertarian, is giving the Republican establishment a rough ride.

These insurgent candidates have been tapping into the anger among independents, libertarians, evangelical Christians and right-wing Republicans — loosely tied together by the nascent Tea Party movement — who tend to oppose a strong federal government, dislike taxes, support gun rights, stand against abortion and fiercely protect privacy and property rights.

Mr. Perry began laying the groundwork for this race a year ago by loudly rejecting federal stimulus money for unemployment insurance. He also said he would not accept new federal aid for education.

Then on April 15, he was one of the few incumbents to show up to the first Tea Party protests, recognizing that an anti-Obama wave was building in Texas. That same day, he expressed sympathy for protesters who wanted to secede from the union, opening himself up to ridicule outside the state but playing to a deep streak of provincial pride here.

Mr. Perry was also helped by the national recession, which did not hit Texas as hard as it did the rest of the country, allowing him to claim his conservative fiscal policies were the reason.

Mr. Perry lost no opportunity to portray Senator Hutchison as “a creature of Washington,” even though she had voted against the second bank-bailout bill and the $787 billion stimulus bill. He even attacked her for bringing federal projects to the state.

His tirade against Washington resonated with many voters on Tuesday.

“I feel Perry is strong enough to butt heads with Washington, and I’m not sure Kay Bailey is strong enough,” said Susie Bradley, 67, a housewife from Fulshear. “I wanted to send a big message to Washington with all the trillions of dollars they are spending that we don’t have and ruining the future of our children and grandchildren.”

Ms. Hutchison, who said she would resign her seat, then changed her mind in the fall, never found an effective message, political strategists said. A senator since 1993, she is serving her third full term, which expires in 2012. She accused the governor of trying to do favors for companies that had hired his former aides. She said he had been in office too long and had bred a culture of cronyism. She tried to hang the 30 percent high-school dropout rate in the state around his neck.

None of those strategies worked. Poll after poll showed she was stuck with about a quarter of the people who usually vote in primaries, while he had more than 40 percent.

Many Republicans were clearly conscious of sending Washington a message with their votes, which, at a local school board office in the Houston suburb of Katy, appeared to be overwhelmingly in favor of Mr. Perry. Federal spending and immigration were issues on peoples’ minds.

“Kay Bailey Hutchison is part of the Washington system,” said Greg Seipel, 57, an offshore oil and gas engineer, who voted for Mr. Perry. “What Washington is doing now is spending, spending, spending without paying for the expenditures,” he added. “We don’t want to go along with what Washington says.”

In the past, the voters who come out for Republican primaries have proved to be from the most conservative wing of the party, and this year the party placed several nonbinding resolutions on the ballot that motivated them to show up, among them a measure urging mandatory sonograms for women seeking abortions and another allowing the word “God” and the Ten Commandments to be displayed on public buildings.

Others were concerned with the economy. Earl Bennett, 61, a retired businessman, said he voted for Mr. Perry because “Texas is not hurting as much as the rest of the country.”

There appeared to be more support for Ms. Hutchison in affluent sections of Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, where some voters said they thought Mr. Perry had served too long and had become a conservative ideologue.

“I think he’s too far right, even though I consider myself a conservative,” said Van Williams, 47, as he cast his vote at the Tom C. Clark High School in an affluent San Antonio suburb. “His leadership has been abysmal. He hasn’t solved anything.”

In rural areas, the Republican primary took on the tone of a cultural as much as political battle. Many voters in the farming community of Fulshear, outside Houston, for instance, expressed support for Mr. Perry, in part because they say he has helped keep the economy stronger than the rest of the country.

James C. McKinley Jr. reported from Houston, and Clifford Krauss from Katy, Tex. Pamela Kripke contributed reporting from Dallas, Rachel Marcus from Houston, and Staci Semrad from San Antonio.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/us/03texas.html