The Day She Whupped Him

---

---

"The public does not like you to mislead or represent yourself to be something you're not. And the other thing that the public really does like is the self–examination to say, you know, I'm not perfect. I'm just like you. They don't ask their public officials to be perfect. They just ask them to be smart, truthful, honest and show a modicum of good sense."

Ann Richards

---

It was 20 years ago tomorrow that Ann Richards won a wildly improbable victory in her campaign to be Texas' governor.

I didn't grow up in Texas, but I was living here during that election.

If I had grown up here, I might have studied Texas history when I was a boy. And I might be acquainted with other gubernatorial races in Texas that were more noteworthy, more memorable, more historic.

In 1990, after all, Texas had been a state for nearly 150 years. There must have been some wild, if not notorious, gubernatorial elections here in all that time.

Nevertheless, I will always remember the 1990 campaign — for many reasons.

First, I had been living in north Texas for a couple of years, residing in Denton and working on my master's degree. I wasn't living in Texas when Richards burst onto the national scene with her keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Like most Americans, it was the first I had heard of her.

But, when I had the chance to vote for her for governor, I didn't hesitate.

And while I wasn't always happy with the campaign she ran, I always felt Richards was the best choice for the job.

That brings me to my second point. The campaign for the 1990 Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Texas was, perhaps, the nastiest I have ever witnessed — and I witnessed some pretty nasty campaigns when I was growing up in Arkansas.

Richards' main rival for the Democratic nod that spring was a veteran politician named Jim Mattox, and, in the runoff for the gubernatorial nomination, he accused Richards — who had acknowledged being treated for alcoholism 10 years earlier — of having had problems with other substances in the past as well.

He made the accusations in ads and on Face the Nation.

"[Richards] avoided answering the charges and began to slip in the polls," wrote Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa in "The Almanac of American Politics 1992."

So she questioned the integrity of her rivals. "I have been sober for 10 years," Richards said. "Have Jim Mattox and (former Gov.) Mark White been honest for 10 years?"

"[H]er feminist base was enough to enable her to lead the first primary," wrote Barone and Ujifusa. "Her support in cities, where liberal women cast far more votes than ever before in Texas, was critical in the runoff against Mattox where she won 57%–43%."

---

---

In hindsight, I guess, Richards' race for her party's nomination was a picnic, a stroll in the park, compared to her general election campaign against the Republican nominee, Clayton Williams, a successful businessman but a political novice who quickly earned a reputation for making offensive comments.

Yep, Williams was really an amateur at politics. Mattox, on the other hand, was a pro. He'd been around the block a few times, and he knew all the tricks, both clean and dirty. But Williams had something in his favor that Mattox didn't have. He was the Republican nominee.

The general election campaign against Williams was quite different, really, from the party primary and runoff campaigns against Mattox.

While Richards was fending off Mattox and White on the Democratic side, Williams cruised to the GOP nomination against several high–profile rivals. He told voters he was running because his son had had a drug problem, and he promised drug offenders that he would "introduce 'em to the joys of bustin' rocks."

Texas voters were extraordinarily tolerant of Williams, though. At one point, for example, he likened bad weather to rape, saying, "If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it."

When I think of that general election campaign, I think of my mother, a Democrat throughout her adult life who always intended to vote for Richards, never considered voting for Williams yet she seethed, usually quietly and privately, whenever he opened his mouth.

Always an optimist, I think Mom would have been disheartened if Williams had won — and I think she, like most people in Texas, expected it. I believe she, and many others, thought Williams' election was inevitable — but they couldn't see how they could possibly relax and enjoy it for the next four years.

Yep, Texas voters were very tolerant of Williams — until, shortly before the election, when he and Richards bumped into each other on the campaign trail and Williams refused to shake her hand.

It was a defining moment, and it was memorably captured on film and replayed on newscasts across the state.

You see, even in 1990 — indeed, still, into the 21st century — Texas lived by an old–fashioned code of conduct. In Texas, a gentleman simply does not refuse to shake a lady's hand, no matter what he may think of her. It is rude, uncouth, socially unacceptable.

Richards, who always seemed to have some sure–footed political instincts, even if she didn't always follow them, "responded with just the right mixture of regret and toughness," wrote Barone and Ujifusa.

And it was the last straw for the sensitivities of many centrist Republicans in Texas. On Nov. 6, 1990, some crossed party lines to vote for Richards. Some simply couldn't do that and chose instead to stay home or not vote in the governor's race.

Whatever they did, they did not vote for Williams.

They had been nudged in that direction for weeks. Richards ran some effective commercials that cast doubt on the ethics of Williams' business practices. And Williams didn't help his own cause when he admitted he didn't know what the only constitutional amendment on the ballot was about or when he confessed that he paid no income taxes four years earlier or when he spoke of his sexual experiences as a youth when he was south of the border.

Until that Kodak moment, when Richards offered her hand to Williams and he refused to shake it, Williams was a tolerable mixed bag for many voters. He was regarded, even by his Republican supporters, as unrefined, boorish, rough as a cob; when the chips were down, though, he was considered acceptable, not exactly the picture of a gentleman ... but close enough.

But refusing to shake Richards' hand was ungentlemanly. And that was unacceptable.

I really believe that, if Williams had shaken Richards' hand, he would have won that election, warts and all.

And, as a result, George W. Bush might never have been elected governor of Texas, giving him a springboard for his presidential ambitions. Because I'm sure that Bush wouldn't have challenged a sitting Republican governor in 1994.

But I suppose that is neither here nor there at this point. Williams lost and has never, to my knowledge, run for office in Texas since. Bush, of course, went on to defeat Richards when she sought a second term in 1994. After being re–elected in 1998, Bush was elected president (in the Electoral College) in 2000 and re–elected in 2004.

Richards, of course, was elected governor in 1990. No Democrat has been elected governor of Texas since that time.

It was not completely clear that a shift was occurring within the electorate in the final weeks of the 1990 campaign. But such a shift was, indeed, taking place. That silent snub was more devastating to Williams than all of his ill–advised comments rolled into one.

When the votes were counted, Williams (who had led Richards in polls by up to 20 points) lost by nearly 100,000 votes.

It may have been the most astounding reversal in Texas' political history.

The Dallas Morning News ran a rather blase headline the next day, something along the lines of "Richards Defeats Williams." I never felt that the headline in the Morning News adequately summed up the enormity of what had happened.

But its competitor, the Dallas Times Herald (which ceased publication about a year later), ran a more appropriate headline — "She Whups Him." I always thought it captured the spirit of the race.

To some, Richards always was an enigma, a contradiction. In many ways, I have to admit that Barone and Ujifusa were correct when they wrote of Richards, "Texas has a governor who is nationally familiar but whose position on issues is not widely known in Texas, a candidate who conducted for months a dismal and sometimes scurrilous campaign and once in office has shown a sure instinct for setting the right tone."

Four years later, Richards lost her bid for re–election to Bush — not because voters were displeased with her job performance (in fact, polls at the time indicated she had the approval of a majority of Texans) but because she had the misfortune of running against the son of a former Republican president in a Republican state in a decidedly Republican year nationally.

I wasn't living in Texas at the time, but I knew many people who were, and they told me the general attitude of the voters toward Richards was "She's done a good job, but let's give him a chance. He's the Republican."

In hindsight, it is hard to imagine any Democrat doing any better in Texas than Richards did in 1994. She got 46% of the vote; no Democrat who has been on a statewide general election ballot has performed better in the last 16 years, and most have fared much worse.

She never ran for office again. She campaigned for many Democrats after leaving office in 1995 and died of cancer in 2006.

Sweet Home Alabama

They held their primaries in Alabama this week, and I'm a little bewildered.

A black man named Artur Davis, who has represented west Alabama's Seventh District in the U.S. House since 2003, ran for governor and was handily beaten by the state's agriculture commissioner, a white man named Ron Sparks.

Unofficially, Sparks received 62% of the vote in what the Birmingham News called "one of the more remarkable upsets in Alabama primary history."

Huh?

I grew up in the South, but I have never lived in Alabama. In fact, I have seldom even been in Alabama. And — no offense intended to the congressman — I had never heard of Artur Davis until a few days before Christmas, when his colleague, Parker Griffith, switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

Obviously, my credentials as an Alabama insider are seriously lacking. Actually, I would characterize them as nonexistent.

In the course of researching my blog article on that decision, I learned about Davis' campaign and discovered that he had been saying that Griffith's decision "repudiates the hard work of many Democrats who sustained him."

I saw nothing at the time that indicated whether Davis or Sparks was in front in the governor's race. I knew nothing of their political philosophies (I have since learned that Davis is, based mostly on his congressional voting record, a centrist, but I still know very little about Sparks' views). And I will readily admit that my gut reaction was based on what I have seen and heard about Alabama and the Deep South all my life.

My gut reaction last December was that Davis would lose — eventually. I didn't know if he would lose the Democratic primary, because most blacks in America are Democrats and Alabama (like most Southern states) has a fairly large black population.

It was possible, I reasoned, that the Democratic Party in Alabama — the same Democratic Party that nominated George Wallace for governor four times — might nominate Davis.

That's the same George Wallace who was remembered in a PBS documentary by a black lawyer for being "the most liberal judge that I had ever practiced law in front of," but, after losing the 1958 gubernatorial nomination to a Ku Klux Klan–backed opponent, ambition may have gotten the better of him, and he vowed never to be "outseged" again.

After being sworn in as governor the first time in January 1963, he famously proclaimed, "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!" Accurate or not, that came to summarize Wallace in the minds of most Americans — a defiant, stand–in–the–schoolhouse–door racist.

And, more than 10 years later, Wallace lamented, after endorsing Jimmy Carter (the symbol of the "new" South) for president, that "I had to do things — say things — to get elected in Alabama that made it impossible for me to ever be president."

Well, Wallace (along with just about all of the American politicians who built state and national careers on the tragedy of racial conflicts) has been dead for many years now. But the attitudes that he and others exploited for their own political gain were generations in the making and cannot be completely erased in a single election.

Still, there is no doubt the parties have moved farther to each extreme. Wallace's son and namesake is a Republican now, and I wouldn't be surprised if most of the descendants of the Alabamians who elected the elder Wallace governor so many times now regard themselves as Republicans, too. Thus, it wouldn't shock me at all if Alabama's Democrats are more liberal than their ancestors.

So I couldn't conclude that Alabama's Democrats would not nominate a black man for governor — but, ultimately, I believed his candidacy was doomed. I found no reason to believe, as some people apparently did after Davis was elected in 2002 to represent a newly created district that is more than 60% black, that he was a rising star in Alabama politics. And, yes, I suppose that was not politically correct in the modern sense because I presumed his lack of statewide star quality was a racial thing.

---

---

Oh, yes, a lot of things have changed in the South, and, for all I know, Davis was doing much better in the polls at some point than he did when the voters cast their ballots this week. But maybe this was one of those Bradley effect deals, where poll respondents said they would vote for the black guy but, at the moment of truth, just couldn't do it.

OK, Davis lost the party primary. But if he had not lost the party nomination, I'm inclined to think he would have lost the general election — when the more conservative Alabamians will participate along with the left–leaners.

But, as I study accounts of the final weeks of the campaign, I wonder if maybe Alabama's Democrats actually gave the nation some reassurance that the state has progressed farther than most had dared to dream.

Maybe it was mostly about race. Maybe it was a case of the so–called Bradley effect.

But, maybe, it was something as simple and as basic as the adage so memorably expressed by Tip O'Neill: "All politics is local."

A couple of weeks ago, the Tuscaloosa News quoted a political science professor as saying that there was a significant difference in the candidates' approaches. Davis, he said, appeared to be structuring his campaign with the general election voters in mind while Sparks was focused on the party's voters, the ones he had to persuade to win the nomination.

Now, to put it bluntly, it is never a good idea to run as if you have already won the preliminary and you're mostly positioning yourself for the general election campaign. It seems like a recipe for disaster for any politician — never mind the politician's race, gender, age, religion, etc.

Maybe, to paraphrase Michael Jackson, it don't matter if you're black or white — as long as you tell 'em what they want to hear. Perhaps Democratic voters didn't want to hear Davis defend his vote against health care reform, which might have played well in November. Perhaps they were more impressed by the facts that the state's black leaders and the teachers and other groups that appeal to today's Democrats endorsed Sparks.

Anyway, I believe race did play a part in what happened. Maybe its influence was very subtle. In spite of all the talk of a post–racial America, it seems to me that such change is coming more slowly in the South than it is in other regions. At some point, I hope the South can overcome its racist legacy, but it will require a certain amount of tolerance and understanding on the part of the rest of America.

There seems to be a one–size–fits–all mentality outside the South about black politicians. Since Obama's election in 2008, the conventional wisdom appears to be that it is all a matter of strategy — especially if you read Jeff Zeleny's article on the Alabama primaries in the New York Times: "[T]he decisive defeat of Artur Davis ... illustrates the limits of trying to replicate the strategy that helped carry President Obama to office," he writes.

That strikes me as being willfully ignorant of certain facts — one of which is that there is nothing of the sort to replicate in Alabama. Two years ago, more than three–fifths of Alabama voters voted for John McCain.

I don't know if Davis openly sought to emulate Obama's national triumph in a Deep South state or if that objective was a presumption by some in the outside media, but, if that was the strategy, it leads me to ask a simple question: Why?

Blacks have seldom won statewide races in America — and almost never in the South. And it is worth remembering that most Southern states did not vote for Obama, either. It may be hard for people in other regions to understand, but even with the sizable black populations in this region, Obama has never been especially popular here.

And maybe that is, to a certain extent, the product of racial conflict.

Because, you see, another fact that has been conveniently ignored is that, in 2008, the results in Alabama clearly were polarized by race. Whites, who account for nearly 69% of the state's population, voted heavily for McCain; blacks voted heavily for Obama.

The same thing happened in other Southern states, too. It just wasn't as pronounced as it was in Alabama.

And, yet, as I say, Davis' voting record was a centrist one. Alabama Democrats who wanted to win a governor's race for the first time in the 21st century should have been tempted to nominate Davis — and, yet, most of them picked his white opponent.

You can reach a racist conclusion based on that information if you wish. And, human nature being what it is, there may always be those voters who make choices based on irrelevant factors like race or gender or age or religion. Politicians don't get to choose what the voters get to use to make electoral decisions.

But maybe the message from most of Alabama's Democrats wasn't that a black man had been rejected by the voters (although there is no getting around the fact that a black man did lose the primary).

Maybe the message was that voters have evolved so much in this country that a black Democrat can be defeated in his party's primary because his views did not reflect the voters' — not because he was black.

Isn't that what Martin Luther King was talking about when he spoke of being judged not by the color of one's skin but the content of one's character?

Why I Won't Vote in the Texas Primary

Last month, I wrote that I have turned my back on a lifetime as a Democrat and now consider myself an independent.

Here in Texas, we have open primaries, which means there is no official party registration. I can go to my polling place and simply declare in which party primary I wish to participate. I voted in the Democratic primary in 2008. This year, I could walk into my polling place and tell them I wanted to vote in the Republican primary and I would be allowed to do so. No questions would be asked.

Now, if it turned out that the primary in which I did not vote produced a high–profile runoff, I could not participate in the runoff. Texas isn't that liberal (actually, Texas isn't "liberal" about most things).

It was a different situation when I lived in Oklahoma. When I registered to vote there, I had to declare my party allegiance. If my allegiance changed, I had to go through the procedure of re–registering. It was possible to register as an independent, but, unless the independents held their own primary, you couldn't participate in a state primary if you were registered as one.

It is interesting that many people who have known me most or all of my life — and therefore know that I have been a Democrat all my life — have asked me, upon learning that I now regard myself as an independent, if I am going to vote in the Republican primary or if I support Republicans for various offices.

I can only wonder when being an independent became synonymous with being a member of either political party. Perhaps it has to do with one's disenchantment with one's original party. If it does, then maybe the logic — as twisted as it is — is, well, he's not a Democrat, anymore, so he must be a Republican.

Maybe that would be true of some people today, but I believe I am honest enough (with myself, at least, if not with others as well) to acknowledge if I am actually switching parties. And that is not what I did. I am now an independent.

There was a time, not so long ago, when independents were seen as allies of Democrats. In recent months, though, they have been increasingly seen as friendly to Republicans.

But the reason I am an independent — and the main reason why I will not vote in the Texas primary on Tuesday — is because I am disgusted with both parties.

As I mentioned last month, politicians will have to earn my support by demonstrating satisfactorily that they are acting in my best interest. And I am simply not convinced that any of the candidates on either party's ballot is acting in my best interest.

For awhile, I did think about voting in the Republican primary — but only because Gov. Rick Perry is on the ballot and I loathe him so much that I wanted to vote against him.

Perry was the lieutenant governor when George W. Bush was governor, and Perry became governor when Bush resigned to go to Washington. I think of it as Texas' version of Dumb and Dumber.

If the polls are to be believed, I may get the chance to vote against Perry in November if I want to (I've done that before, though, and it hasn't helped). He's being challenged in Tuesday's primary by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who was, at one time, a bigger vote–getter than Bush in Texas. In 2000, more than 4 million Texans voted for her when she ran for a second full term as a U.S. senator. She outpolled Bush, who was running for president that year, by more than 200,000 votes in Texas.

But Hutchison may turn out to be the Martha Coakley of Texas. When she entered the race last year, many polls showed her leading Perry, although her leads were never as impressive as I thought they should be. I heard many political observers speak of her as the inevitable nominee, although I was never convinced that she was inevitable. And, indeed, it seems that lead has disappeared, and Rasmussen Reports says Perry is close to majority support in his bid for the Republican nomination.

Close, but not there yet.

Modern polling techniques are usually pretty reliable so a "Dewey Defeats Truman" moment doesn't really seem likely here, but it's possible that recent polls could be wrong. If they are right, then Perry is a couple of percentage points away from a majority, with Hutchison more than 20 points behind him.

What's more, nearly one out of every 10 Republicans hasn't decided how to vote, Rasmussen says. If the poll is right, Perry still has time to win enough support from the undecided group to secure a majority — and, hence, the nomination — without having to make a pitch for Hutchison's supporters.

Or the supporters of the third candidate, Debra Medina. She's kind of like Texas' Sarah Palin — except she hasn't been elected governor yet and, from the looks of things, won't be the GOP's gubernatorial nominee this year. Probably the less said about her, the better.

For awhile, she seemed to have some momentum, and it looked like she might make this a genuine three–way race. But she started making controversial comments about alleged 9/11 insider conspiracies, and the momentum went away.

I thought about voting for Hutchison and perhaps helping to force Perry into a runoff that he might lose, but I decided that voting against is not something I want to do anymore. I want to vote for someone. I don't see any real difference between Hutchison and Perry so the best reason I could have for voting for Hutchison would be that she isn't Perry. And that isn't enough for me.

The movement from Medina seems to have gone in Perry's direction, and there is a lesson in that for incumbents across the country who have been anticipating an anti–incumbent mood in this midterm election year. Such a fervor does not seem to be evident within either party, except in certain cases, so there isn't likely to be much evidence of an anti–incumbent wave during the spring/summer primary season. Where that is likely to be encountered is in the general election this fall, when independents are thrown into the mix.

Of course, independents can vote in either primary here — and in several other places as well. I could vote in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, but the front–runner, the former mayor of Houston, is far ahead of his opponent.

So I've decided to be merely an interested bystander this spring, then I'll see if either nominee persuades me this fall that he/she is concerned about my best interests. If neither one does, I'll sit that one out, too.

As a bystander, I will say that I find it curious that, regardless of the lead Perry apparently has in the primary, his lead over the presumed Democratic nominee is smaller than Hutchison's. But neither seems to have a majority — yet — in this state that hasn't elected a Democrat to a statewide office in 20 years.

My vote might yet matter to both sides in the fall. It probably means a lot to the candidates in the primaries on Tuesday. But no one has met my standard.

I put too much value on my vote to just give it away to the one who comes closest to living up to my standards. That seems to be one of the problems in America. We seldom get good options, but, because somebody has to win, we give to whichever candidate the voters decide is the "lesser of two evils."

Well, I have voted for the lesser of two evils far more often than I care to remember, and I have decided I simply will not just give my vote away to someone who just partially meets my requirements.

I want an exact match.