Those who study tea leaves in Austin and elsewhere in the state are trying to figure: After being re-elected with just 39 percent in 2006, is he serious? Or is he just trying to avoid a lame-duck image during the 2009 legislative session?
It could be both. Perry may be keeping his options open, and by shifting from hints of another race to a declaration, he’s signaling those who fund Texas politicians not to mess with The Guv.
On the other hand, his early declaration is also providing fuel to some non-fans whose opposition to his re-election, if it has anything like the horsepower of their fight against Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor project, could be a significant factor.
Perry was asked, outside a meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Grapevine: Might the Republican primary gubernatorial field in 2010 include Hutchison, Dewhurst, and himself?
“I don’t know about them, but it will be Perry in 2010,” Perry told reporters. “I don’t know about the other two. You need to ask them.”
Hutchison, who came close to running for governor in 2006 and has been telling folks around the state she’s planning to run in 2010, didn’t back down. Her carefully parsed statement seemed to rain on the job Perry is doing.
“I am encouraged by the growing number of Texans asking me to return home to run for governor to provide leadership for our state,” she said.
“It is too early to make an announcement about the 2010 race. Right now I remain committed to serving the people of Texas in the United States Senate and helping our Republican candidates win crucial elections this fall.”
Her term lasts through 2012, though she’s said she might resign early.
Dewhurst is also paying attention.
“My focus is on the 2009 legislative session and continuing to build on our successes over the past five years,” the lieutenant governor intoned in a statement. “Whatever I decide to do after that will be based on what’s best for Texas.”
If Perry does run in 2010 and win and serve out his third four-year term (added to the two remaining years of Bush’s that he served), it means he is now barely more than halfway through his time as governor.
The very idea that Perry would seek another term has the Democrats, who call him “Governor 39 percent,” cackling with glee at the prospect of a GOP primary bloodbath in 2010.
However, the Democrats could have a battle of their own. Those eyeing the race include Houston Mayor Bill White, who was state Democratic chair in the mid-1990s and has built a small fortune, and former Comptroller John Sharp, who’s lost two races for lieutenant governor but is still moving around the state.
Others possibilities are AT&T executive John Montford, now of San Antonio, a popular former state senator from Lubbock who then became chancellor of Texas Tech University, and Lyndon Olson Jr. of Waco, a well-liked former state representative who chaired the State Board of Insurance, was ambassador to Sweden, and has made millions in insurance and banking.
Members of “Independent Texans” say of another Perry term things like “over my dead body,” according to Linda Curtis of Austin. She blasted Perry’s controversial Trans-Texas Corridor and said Perry “slipped by us” in 2006, when independents split their votes between Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman.
“It won’t happen again,” she predicted.
On the other hand, don’t count Perry out. If Texas House members in the 1980s had been polled as to who among them would become the longest-tenured governor in Texas history, Perry’s name might not even have come up.
Ric Williamson, Perry’s man at the head of the Texas Department of Transportation board and architect of the Trans-Texas Corridor, who died Dec. 30, didn’t like to fly in small airplanes. However, he made an exception to fly with Perry, who had gone from state representative to agriculture commissioner to lieutenant governor to governor.
Why?
“Because,” Williamson reportedly said, “He’s the luckiest SOB in the world.”
Veteran Texas political writer Dave McNeely can be reached at davemcneely@yahoo.com.
