Immediately after Gov. Rick Perry’s victory in the Texas GOP primary, the press in began trying to discount the Tea Party movement. It had not met the artificially high expectations set for it, neither in the governor’s race nor in down-ballot challenges to sitting Republican members of Congress.
But this misses the larger point. After years of playing second fiddle to Texan values voters, fiscal conservatives made their voices heard in Tuesday’s Texas Republican primary. Although social issues like abortion, guns, and prayer in school still mattered in this race, taxes and government spending took center stage, up and down the ballot.
Just a year ago, a resounding Perry victory over U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was almost unthinkable. Hutchison had money, insider support, name ID, and high favorability ratings. Perry, suffering especially from an unpopular highway plan, looked like a goner. But Perry in the intervening time, he hung Republican dissatisfaction with Washington around her neck. Despite her opposition to much of President Obama’s agenda, Perry reminded voters constantly of her support for the TARP bailout and for pork-laden congressional appropriations bills.
Hutchison’s mistake was to run a general election campaign in a Republican primary. She emphasized ethics, cronyism, and property rights. She tried to seize on Perry’s unpopular toll road policy, and his botched attempt to mandate HPV vaccinations for sixth-grade girls.
When Perry trotted out the anti-Washington rhetoric, Hutchison’s campaign reacted as though they hadn’t seen it coming. Hutchison was already suspect with social conservatives because she has said she wouldn’t support overturning Roe v. Wade (although she opposes public funding for abortions and regularly votes for pro-life bills). Alienate her from the fiscal conservatives, and it becomes very difficult for her to win a Republican primary.
Ironically, the anti-Washington tone of the Texas governor’s race almost caused Perry to be eclipsed from the right. Debra Medina, a Republican activist from a rural farming community, ran a low-budget campaign based on nullifying overly intrusive federal laws and replacing property taxes with sales taxes. For a brief moment, Perry facing the prospect of a runoff against her, until Medina self destructed, equivocating on a major national talk show when asked whether the U.S. government had played a role in the 9/11 attacks.
Despite Medina’s failings, fiscal conservatism dominated the governor’s race and sold down-ballot as well. In the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, the Tea Party Movement became very vocal. During the 2009 legislative session, the Texas Legislature debated the Local Option Transportation Act — a bill that would have allowed cities and counties to raise taxes for roads. Several GOP incumbent state legislators who backed the local option tax hike bill just barely squeaked by, while incumbents opposed to the tax hike bill won easily. The Tea Party movement also did well in several important county-level races where taxation and spending were the main issues.
Republicans defeated in the GOP primary a state representative from Longview who voted against the “Voter ID” bill, and who killed a bill that would have prohibited Texas from giving in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants. A representative from Lubbock who voted against Voter ID is facing a runoff.
In short, the Tea Party movement did not nominate Medina for governor, but it did succeed in making taxes and limited government the biggest issues of this election. And Texas voters used that to send a message to Washington.
