Scary Movie

Perry Campaign Tries to Scare Senator Away
from Governor's Race in Calculated Gamble

By MIKE HAILEY

Governor Rick Perry's campaign is taking a calculated risk with its pre-emptive attempt to back U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison out of the governor's race before she's ever in it. That strategy appeared to be imbedded in the Perry campaign's confession last week regarding its role in the opposition research shooting of a 46-second video featuring the Texas Republican senator and her famous Democratic colleague, U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Captured at a women's history event in Washington earlier this month, the video shows the senators hugging each other and exchanging pleasantries as if they were allies or even friends instead of the bitter political enemies we've all come to expect partisans in Washington to be. The video appears to be designed for the partial purpose of exposing Hutchison's bipartisan bent to Republicans who will vote in a potential primary contest for governor next year. But Perry campaign manager Luis Saenz revealed what looks like the overriding motivation behind the political Indie production when he offered no apologies after being caught in an apparent prevarication about the video and sealed it with the footnote that Hutchison and her supporters "ain't seen nothing yet."

For shock value with the GOP activist base, Hutchison could have probably posed with Jane Fonda at a flag-burning rally and been no more vulnerable to criticism from the party faithful than she has been as news of the mini-documentary raced across the Internet in email after its release early last week. But while the video has been a source of scintillating entertainment from the grassroots level on up, Saenz's not-so-veiled warning makes it look like its central reason for being is to provide a source of angst for Hutchison by discrediting her with base voters she would need on her side if she hoped to prevail in a primary tussle with Perry in 2006.

The Perry campaign may think it has a better chance of scaring Hutchison away from a primary race for governor than it does beating her in one. Perry's team is betting that Hutchison has a thin skin and will eventually wither if they can keep up a full-court press. Despite winning U.S. Senate races in 1993, 1994 and 2000, Hutchison hasn't faced the kind of competition that Perry's had to overcome in his own races for agriculture commissioner, lieutenant governor and governor since he and the state's senior senator emerged on the statewide scene 15 years ago. As a result, Perry's campaign will probably be testing her political sensibilities every chance it gets between now and the time Hutchison decides whether to seek the job of governor or re-election to the Senate or to simply call it quits from politics and find something else to do in 2006. Perry's opposition research team sees Hutchison's Senate voting record as an unplowed field of clover - and while 98 percent of her votes might be litmus test conservative - it's the other two percent that some creative minds can use for cannon fodder.

As a former aide to Hutchison, Saenz should have an idea what buttons to push to help give the senator second thoughts and cold feet about picking a fight with Perry. But by the same token, the Clinton video shoot and other aggressive tactics by the Perry campaign could have the opposite effect of angering Hutchison and drawing her into the governor's race at a time when some high-level Republicans have been privately predicting that she won't be a candidate for governor in 2006. Backing Hutchison down may be harder than it seems - especially when considering the heavyweights she's enlisted for whatever campaign she decides to run next year.

Hutchison has signed up Terry Sullivan to manage her still-unspecified campaign - and she's hired Scott Howell to handle her media in place of David Weeks, who also works for Perry. Sullivan is fresh off a bloody battle for U.S. Senate in South Carolina where he guided Jim DeMint through a bruising primary and on to victory in a race that cost a record $25 million. Howell, whose company is based in Dallas, learned the ropes of political hardball under Lee Atwater at the Republican National Committee and worked at Karl Rove's company in Austin before starting his own shop about a dozen years ago. Like Rove and Atwater, Howell can play extremely rough when needed. Just ask former U.S. Senator Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat who lost a re-election bid to one of Howell's clients in 2002.

Howell's ads for Saxby Chambliss portrayed Cleland - who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam - as weak on national security and pictured him with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden to hammer home the point. Howell was accused of employing the race card for Republican candidate Dino Rossi in a U.S. Senate race in Washington state last year. The accusations were based on ads that appeared to show Hispanics with dark hands receiving welfare payments from the state. A South Carolina native, Howell teamed with Sullivan on the DeMint campaign and produced ads for President George W. Bush's re-election effort last year as well. There's no way that Howell and Sullivan will shy away from a confrontation with Team Perry if Hutchison can take the heat that the governor's campaign will be turning up often as she contemplates a possible challenge.

The Perry campaign, in contrast, doesn't have to waste any time wondering whether it can scare the other potential primary rival - Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn - out of any plans she might have to run for governor next year. That probably isn't possible because Strayhorn appears to be fearless. She confirmed that once again when she ripped the Texas House property tax bill to shreds last week. If Strayhorn doesn't run for governor it will probably be because she doesn't think she can draw enough primary support from moderate Republicans, independent voters and Democrats to offset an advantage that Perry will have with the GOP conservative base - not because she's afraid that she ain't seen nothing yet.

Mike Hailey's column appears regularly in Capitol Inside