The Texas primary
economist.com | Jun 2nd 2012
MITT ROMNEY came one step closer to realising his dream on May 29th. Forty years after he first told journalists that he might go into politics, like both his parents, and five years after he embarked on his first bid for the White House, he is now the Republican Party's presidential nominee. The final nod came from Texas, where voters made him their candidate with 69% of the vote. He will get most of the state's delegates, putting him over the threshold of 1,144, and go to the nominating convention in August as the undisputed victor in this year's contest.
Mr Romney has had an irksome time with Texas. In the waning days of his own ill-fated presidential campaign, the state's governor, Rick Perry, griped at length about "vulture capitalism" at Bain Capital, the firm Mr Romney once headed, and then endorsed Newt Gingrich. Mr Gingrich and Rick Santorum, Mr Romney's strongest rival for the nomination, both vowed to win the state, reasoning loudly that a state with so many conservatives, Southerners and evangelicals would hardly favour a moderate north-eastern Mormon.
They were wrong. Even before they dropped out, polls found Mr Romney ahead in the state. Mr Perry, at least, had a change of heart: he switched his endorsement to Mr Romney and voted for him. But the endorsement was probably for Mr Perry's benefit rather than Mr Romney's. The governor has lately been behaving like a man who means to run for re-election. And the doubts about Mr Romney have continued. As the polls were about to open, one conservative state senator wondered whether Mr Romney would manage 50% of the vote.
The fact that he did so, and easily, may give some conservatives pause. The primary raises the question of whether Texans are really in an insurrectionist mood. The most exciting race was for the Republican Senate nomination, where David Dewhurst, the incumbent lieutenant-governor, faced a tea-party insurgent in Ted Cruz, a former solicitor-general. Mr Dewhurst won handily, but with less than 50% of the vote, meaning that the two will go to a run-off in July. Forcing a second round is a coup for Mr Cruz, who has won the hearts of conservatives outside Texas, but he faces an arduous climb. There were upsets on the other side, too. In the heavily Democratic city of El Paso the long-serving congressman, Silvestre Reyes, lost his primary to a young progressive, Beto O'Rourke.
Other incumbents, however, fared better, even in the face of lively opponents and a convoluted redistricting process that led to some of them campaigning in unfamiliar counties. Lloyd Doggett, a Democratic congressman from central Texas who has been targeted before by the redistricting maps, stoically won his primary in a landslide. Joe Straus, a moderate Republican from San Antonio who is the Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, was one of the tea party's top targets, since he has worked with Democrats. He, too, won his primary easily. And then there was Mr Romney. Winning with nearly 70% of the vote is not that much when no one is really running against you, but it was better than his critics expected.
Original Page: http://www.economist.com/node/21556272
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Victor Cuvo, Attorney at Law
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