Another Texas Fold-’Em

Democrats knew they had talked a big game. They could see that they were up against culture, current events and inertia, that it would be hard to seize any, let alone all, of the state’s top elected slots.

But few analysts forecast the dramatic stumble Texas Democrats took this week. After all the racial strategizing, all the cash and all the heady expectations, the party ended the campaign exactly where it began: utterly marginalized in a government flush with President Bush’s former statehouse friends. In a downfall probably caused by voters’ paltry participation, Democrats once again failed to win a single statewide election.

“This was supposed to have been a heroic effort,” University of Texas political scientist Bruce Buchanan said. “But apparently the [Democratic] turnout machine didn’t work. They spent plenty of money, but we have to infer that it wasn’t effective.”

In the end, the Democrats failed to lure the white, centrist vote they needed to sway the election, analysts said. Moreover, the racially mixed ticket apparently wasn’t enough to galvanize the state’s minority vote in the numbers Democrats had needed to overcome the weight of incumbency -- and the influence of the former Republican governor in the White House.

“The Democratic Party will really have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what went wrong,” Democratic consultant George Strong said, “and why they can’t appeal to Anglo voters.”

It wasn’t long ago that Texas was a sturdy Democratic bastion. It was in the 1980s that, tugged by conservative economics and pushed away by liberal social politics, white voters turned en masse to the Republicans. A weakened Democratic Party was left hungry to yank the state back, and it saw its salvation in demographics. The party looked to the burgeoning Latino population, and upheld the “browning” of Texas as the proof positive that Democrats would rise again in the land of LBJ.

And so they ignored the odds, assembled a “dream team” of candidates, and declared 2002 the year of the great comeback.

Democrats picked Ron Kirk, the business-friendly centrist who had made history as Dallas’ first black mayor, for the Senate race. Next tapped was Tony Sanchez, a Latino oilman who rallied the crowds with flawless Spanish and promised to wrest the governor’s office from the grip of career politicians. The party rounded out the ticket with a white candidate for lieutenant governor named John Sharp, a perennially popular legislator and comptroller.

Some analysts point to Sanchez as the comeback’s soft spot. In debates and vigorous advertisements, Republican incumbent Rick Perry hammered at his opponent -- and there were plenty of opportunities for attack.

Most damaging was a recent spot that linked Sanchez to drug traffickers who killed a Drug Enforcement Administration agent in Mexico. That final blow got Sanchez angry enough to call Perry “a liar,” and it drew angry rebukes from groups who believed Republicans were playing on racist stereotypes about wealthy Latinos. But the damage was done.

“The candidate at the top of the ticket for Democrats had a flaw,” Rice University political scientist Bob Stein said. “He may not be a crook, and he may not even be negligent, but what Rick Perry was able to convey was that this guy was not the guy” to run the state.

It was Sanchez who lost most dramatically -- by a ratio of nearly 2 to 1 -- and who was most reluctant to concede. The oil magnate emerged bleary-eyed Wednesday to deliver a terse concession speech in Austin, then turned away without answering questions.

Going into the elections, Democratic die-hards admitted -- some privately, some publicly -- that a complete turnaround was highly improbable. Sanchez was lagging far down in the polls going into the election. Kirk was closer, but Sharp was the only candidate who appeared poised to win without staging an upset.

“It’s tough when you’ve got the former governor sitting in the White House,” said Democratic contributor Aletha Beane, 59. “I have friends who vote Republican because they think it’s the churchy thing to do.”

But Democrats expected to come closer than they did. Kirk hoped to come within spitting range of his GOP rival, Atty. Gen. John Cornyn, and an upset was regarded as a strong possibility. Instead, Kirk lost with 42% of the vote to Cornyn’s 56%.

In the race for lieutenant governor, Sharp narrowly lost to Republican David Dewhurst, a state land commissioner and former CIA agent.

Then there were the lower ballot races, where Democrats hoped to catch some votes.

Thousands of volunteers streamed through minority and lower-income neighborhoods on election day to pound on doors and offer free baby-sitting or a ride to the polls.

The Democrats counted on the “knock and drag” ritual to counterbalance the voting in the white, generally Republican suburbs.

It was the last-minute get-out-the-vote effort, they said, that would prove that the pollsters had undercounted minority voters and therefore underestimated Democratic standing.

But if anything, the polls overstated the Democrats’ position.