How to Become the Next Governor of Texas

I started asking myself a question on my commute to Austin today, how will a four person race for Governor affect things. I don’t usually ask myself these kinds of questions, but I read The Jeffersonian last night and today saw multiple cars with a party sticker and signs of support for an Independent Governor.

All of a sudden things became clear. Having two independents on the ballot not only messes things on analyzing who will win the Governors race, it makes predicting the affects on down ballot races virtually impossible.

In this part, I will look at just the Governors race, soon I will look into the affect the top ballot will have on the down ballot races.

Let’s start by making the assumption that both Kinky Friedman and Carole Keeton Rylander Strayhorn are both on the ballot. Let’s further assume that the Green, Libertarian, and possible write-in candidate do not garner more than 3% of the vote (based on historic returns in a non-presidential year).

Making those basic assumptions, who is the frontrunner? Republican Rick Perry. Why? With 4 “major” candidates and multiple third party candidates the number to win the Governor’s race is a mere (hold your breath) 35% or so. Kinky and Strayhorn will split about 30-35% (neither will get it all and it doesn’t matter how it is split up), Chris Bell will get the non-disenfranchised Democrats and at this point that is 25-30%, and the third party candidates will get 2-3%.

Rick Perry’s approval rating has not fallen below 38% in the past year. This leads me to the conclusion that about 34% will stick around and actually vote for the Current Governor.

That’s right people, if you vote anyone but Bell, then you are electing Perry! Scary but true. I am all for an ideological vote, but within a certain frame of mind.

What that means, is that a 4+ person race for Governor means that Democrats have to out organize the field (possible) and convince Kinky and Strayhorn voters to change their mind (harder). It also means that Perry has to do very little to win re-election.

The flip side of this whole argument is how do Kinky and Strayhorn get the votes to actually upset the field and win?

Strayhorn has to convince the 34% of Republican’s sticking with Perry to either stay home or vote for change and at the same time convince them she is really a Republican even though there is an “I” next to her name. At the same time she needs to peel away moderate and conservative female Democrats. This is a weird tension because she can easily alienate one of these two groups by courting the other too aggressively.

Kinky, has to simply not get old and mobilize more young people that ever before. The other three candidates have institutional support, a record, and have been elected before. Kinky does not have any of those luxuries, and that’s why he is going to end up getting the lowest vote total of the four.

The Governors race is about either maintaining the status quo in Perry or voting for the viable alternative. Whoever positions themselves as that alternative first will win the 35% of vote needed to be the next Governor of Texas.