|
June 2, 2004
Texas Democrats Hang Targets on
Powerful
House Incumbents in Hopes of Turning Tide
By
Mike Hailey
Capitol
Inside Editor
Texas Democrats have plastered pictures of several powerful
Republican incumbents on their campaign dartboard in a state
House strategy that mixes offense and defense in anticipation
of a perfect storm they see brewing on the near horizon.
Top Democratic strategists have penciled in power-player
names like State Reps. Talmadge Heflin
of Houston and Ray Allen of Grand Prairie
on an unofficial list of about a dozen House Republicans
they perceive to be vulnerable at the polls for a variety
of reasons this year. The Democrats also think they have
a shot at Republican State Reps. Dennis Bonnen
of Angleton and Toby Goodman of Arlington
along with five first-term members - State Reps. Ken
Mercer of San Antonio, Jack Stick of
Austin, Mike "Tuffy" Hamilton of
Mauriceville, Martha Wong of Houston and
Todd Baxter of Austin. The top ten list
of possible pick-ups includes an open East Texas seat that
now belongs to State Rep. Wayne Christian,
a Center Republican who decided to forego a bid for re-election
in order to run for a seat on the GOP's new Congressional
map.
The Democrats held the GOP at bay for several election
cycles while concentrating on defense when they had a majority
in the lower chamber. The defensive posture was also due
in part to former Democratic Speaker Pete Laney's
attempt to maintain a measure of bipartisanship by discouraging
challenges to sitting incumbents of either party. But with
Laney's Texas Partnership now dissolved - and Congressional
redistricting killing off the last vestiges of the once-vaunted
bipartisan House spirit - Democrats see this year as an
opportunity to actually reduce the 88-62 margin that Republicans
now enjoy in the Legislature's lower chamber.
"We're rebuilding the House," says State Democratic
Chairman Charles Soechting, who's been
on the job for only seven months and has drawn no apparent
challengers in his bid for a full two-year term. "The
first thing you have to do is get rid of the dead wood."
But it will take more than positive thinking and clever
sound bytes to unseat veteran House members like Heflin,
the second most powerful member of the House as chairman
of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee, and Allen,
an 11-year House veteran who leads the Corrections Committee
as its chairman. While the Democrats see their strategy
as bold and aggressive, Republicans dismiss it as a political
pipe dream by members of a party that has no where to go
but up.
The magnitude of the Democrats' challenge is reflected
in the fact that only one of the incumbents targeted by
Democrats is in a district where a majority of voters backed
a majority of the Democratic Party's candidates two years
ago. The GOP's statewide candidates pulled between 55 percent
and 60 percent of the November 2002 vote if not more than
that in the other districts on the Democrats' target map.
Republicans acknowledge that Heflin's melting-pot district
in west Houston will be competitive eventually - but not
as long as he's around. More than a third of the voters
in House District 149 are white - and the remainder are
split fairly evenly among African-Americans, Hispanics and
Vietnamese. The Vietnamese population is the fastest growing.
Heflin's Democratic challenger - Hubert Vo
- is praised by Democrats in Austin as the strongest Vietnamese
candidate to ever run for the Legislature. Pit two years
ago against another Vietnamese candidate who wasn't as strong
as Vo, Heflin did not fare as well as most of the Republican
statewide candidates who received an average 58 percent
of the vote in his district that year. The Democrats held
Heflin to 56 percent - and this year they have him listed
among the five GOP incumbents they think they have the best
chance to defeat. The winner this year could be the candidate
who does the best job registering and turning out Vietnamese
voters.
GOP strategists say that Bonnen is safe - and they speculate
that he's on the Democrats' hit list to appease environmentalists
who've been less than thrilled with his work as the House
Environmental Regulation chairman the past two years. HD
25 went two to one for statewide Republicans in 2002 and
Bonnen claimed 69 percent of the vote. But Democrats see
labor as a sleeping giant in Bonnen's heavily-industrialized
Brazos County district - even though his opponent, Wade
Weems, isn't necessarily rated as one of the toughest
challengers the Democrats are fielding this year.
But Katy Hubener is. And that's one of
the reasons Democratic strategists see Allen as one of the
most vulnerable incumbent Republicans in state House races
this year. An environmental activist from Grand Prairie,
Hubener and the Democrats think they can capitalize on questions
they will raise about possible conflicts between Allen's
work as a private consultant and his public role as the
chairman of the committee that oversees the state's prison
system and its dealings with private prison concerns. Democrats
see Allen as another Rick Green, the young
Republican who lost his Central Texas House seat in a cliffhanger
to an even younger Democrat last year. But while Democrats
attacked Green on ethical issues with some success, Republicans
think their candidate beat himself for the most part by
overestimating his position and spending nothing on television
while Democrat Patrick Rose put several
hundred thousand dollars into a media campaign. Republicans
say that Allen is more effective on the campaign trail and
far more pragmatic than Green. Allen, for example, says
he has cleared his private dealings related to prisons with
the Texas Ethics Commission. While Republicans are not that
concerned about a loss in HD 106, they predict that the
district would return to the GOP column in 2006 even if
Democrats pulled off an upset this year. Republicans running
statewide garnered 57 percent of the votes there in 2002.
Republican say the numbers don't lie. But Democrats think
they might be deceiving - and they are hoping to hitch their
comeback on a pendulum that they sense to be swinging their
way for a change. The Democrats attribute their confidence
to a hodgepodge of factors they believe to be going their
way. They think they will be able to do a better job of
turning out base voters in the wake of the Congressional
redistricting fight that took three special sessions, a
federal trial and several million tax dollars to resolve.
They also think that their candidates will get a boost from
lingering resentment over the remap process among independent
and some Republican voters who sometimes split their tickets.
They think that they can effectively use the debates over
the state budget and school finance against the Republican
majority.
Soechting, who is responsible to a large degree for the
Democrats' new attitude and style, so far is unopposed for
a full two-year term in a chair's election that will be
decided officially by delegates at the Texas Democratic
Convention in Houston on June 18-20. That frees him up to
concentrate on the new offensive strategy. A San Marcos
trial lawyer, Soechting thinks the GOP's statewide percentages
in 2002 are a poor gauge for projecting what voters will
do this year. While most Democrats on the ballots in 1998
and 2000 had to worry about possible coattails from George
W. Bush, Soechting says the "fresh bloom"
is gone and that the president could even be a liability
at the top of the ticket this fall amid public dissatisfaction
with his handling of the war in Iraq and the economy. The
Democrats also predict that high unfavorable ratings for
Republican Governor Rick Perry will produce
a counter-coattail effect that gives Democratic candidates
a bump down ballot. And they think they're in position to
benefit from a throw-the-bums-out mentality that Democrats
say is reflected in recent polling that shows more than
three-fourths of Texans disapproving of the GOP-controlled
Legislature's recent performances.
In some races the Democrats think they've recruited candidates
that are superior to the Republicans they're opposing -
and in others they will attempt to benefit from Republican
opponents' potential baggage going into the campaign.
Democrats say that they've stayed mum publicly on the ongoing
grand jury investigation into the flow of corporate money
into House campaigns during the 2002 campaign season. But
they have to be assuming that there will be or at least
could be some degree of electoral backlash against Republicans
as a result of the probe. The GOP has accused Travis County
prosecutors of being politically motivated and in cahoots
with the Democratic Party while conducting the investigation
- a charge that Democrats deny. It's effect on the election
will likely depend on its progress at that point - if it's
still under way in five months.
The Democrats think they have excellent candidates with
former MTV Rock the Vote director Mark Strama
challenging Stick in Northwest Austin and Houston attorney
Jim Dougherty on the ballot opposing Wong.
They like their chances with Orange lawyer Rex Peveto
against Hamilton - and they think that Robin Moore
of Nacogdoches will have a better shot against former Nacogdoches
Mayor Roy Blake Jr. for an open HD 9 seat
than she did trying to unseat Christian two years ago.
Mercer is the unanimous number one target on the Democrats'
Texas House list - mostly because he's the only targeted
Republican who's currently representing a district that
Democratic statewide candidates carried two years ago. Mercer
had the indirect help of a grand jury that had indicted
his Democratic opponent in connection with a public corruption
scandal that erupted in San Antonio during the final month
of the general election campaign. This time the Democrats
have David Leibowitz, a local lawyer who's
been willing to tap his own abundant financial reserves
for the campaign, running against Mercer in a district where
52 percent of the voters backed Democrats in 2002.
The other incumbents that the Democrats see as potentially
vulnerable are State Reps. Anna Mowery
of Fort Worth, Sid Miller of Stephenville
and Joe Crabb of Houston.
The House has not felt like home to the Democrats since
they were relegated to a second-class status by Republicans
who seized control of the House in the 2002 elections. Considering
that Republicans a year ago at this time were talking about
picking up 10 more seats in this year's elections, the Democrats
would view it as a major victory if they could finish 2004
with a net House gain or even break even. If it swings the
other way and Republicans add several more seats to their
total, the GOP would be getting within perilous reach of
a supermajority - 100 members or more - by the 2006 elections.
Democrats would see the vestiges of their once-dominating
power slip away if the GOP hit the two-thirds mark. There
would be no more Ardmores - no banding to try to stop a
constitutional amendment from passing - unless they conspired
with Republicans to do so.
For all the Democrats' newfound confidence and optimism,
the odds still appear to be stacked against them as they
try to ground the Republican juggernaut that wrestled control
of the state away in the past eight years. Until proven
otherwise, Texas is a Republican majority state.
Coming Soon: Republicans have become old pros in the
art of targeting House seats
| 
