DOES THIS SOUND KENYAN?- GOVERNOR'S RACE EXPOSES REPUBLCAN RIFT IN TEXAS

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: August 14, 2009

HOUSTON — Gov. Rick Perry looks as if he stepped out of a Marlboro billboard: square-jawed, weathered face, a shock of black hair, steely eyes. He even says “howdy” when he enters the room. His public persona is so folksy that many opponents have underestimated his political skills.

But Mr. Perry, a conservative ideologue whose recent flourishes include expressing sympathy for secessionists and supporting a failed effort to add a “choose life” logo to license plates, is already the longest-serving governor in Texas history and has announced that he is running for an unprecedented third term.

The battle shaping up in the Texas Republican Party over whether he deserves another four years mirrors the larger conflict between the Republicans’ moderate and conservative wings on the national level, strategists say.

“This is a civil war,” Mr. Perry said in an interview, “brother against brother.”

Mr. Perry’s opponent is Kay Bailey Hutchison, the state’s senior senator. On most issues, Ms. Hutchison is also a steady conservative hand, but her tone is more moderate, her positions on social issues are more nuanced, her votes on government spending are more pragmatic.

The senator plans to formally open her campaign with a five-day tour of the state next week. She cuts a patrician figure on the hustings, a slender woman with a mellifluous voice and an easy smile. She has taken aim at the governor’s failure to reduce property taxes and his support for toll roads, but her main message has been a warning that the party cannot stay in power unless it widens its appeal.

“I do not want a governor who is going to narrow our base, make it dwindle,” Ms. Hutchison said in a speech this week. “That is what has happened at the national level, and that is not going to happen in Texas.”

“I will work to build the Republican Party,” she added, “not make it narrower. I am for Ronald Reagan’s big tent.”

Elected to the Senate 16 years ago, Ms. Hutchison, now 66, has wanted for a long time to be governor. She pulled out of the governor’s race in 2006 only after several major Republican donors persuaded her that Mr. Perry would not run for a third term.

Mr. Perry, 59, denies he ever made such a promise, though some Republican donors now supporting Ms. Hutchison insist he did. In any event, the bad blood has made it impossible for party leaders to head off a primary fight this time around, several prominent Republicans said.

Ms. Hutchison argues that Mr. Perry’s aggressive courtship of conservatives has alienated moderates, independents and minorities. The party lost all the state’s major metropolitan counties in the presidential election last year, an ill omen for the future, and its majority in the Texas House has shrunk to a single seat.

The senator has the support of a handful of people who helped put George W. Bush in the White House. She has also attracted the support of Republicans with deep pockets from Dallas and Houston who backed Mr. Perry in the last two elections.

Some of those people fear that the rightward tilt of the state party organization leaves an opening for a Democrat to win back the governorship for the first time since Ann Richards captured it 19 years ago. Others say Mr. Perry has not done enough to cut taxes on property and businesses.

Mr. Perry, on the other hand, enjoys strong support from evangelical leaders and the voters who usually turn out heavily in the primaries: members of antitax groups, religious conservatives, creationists, foes of abortion and a variety of other Texans opposed to big government.

A former Air Force pilot, Mr. Perry began his political career as a Democratic state legislator from West Texas. Switching parties in 1989, he won a race for agriculture commissioner.

He was elected lieutenant governor in 1999, then became governor in December 2000 after Mr. Bush won the presidency. He has captured the two elections since.

“He’s been consistently underestimated by people, politically,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics project at the University of Texas. “He’s locked down the conservative section of the primary base. The people that don’t like him make fun of him for the things that have strengthened his position. People think these are Neanderthal throwback positions, but Rick Perry and Jon Stewart don’t have any overlapping constituency.”

In years when there is no presidential election, fewer voters generally turn out for the primaries. Since Republicans typically dominate statewide races in Texas, the winner of their primary usually cruises through the general election. That means a relatively small number of highly motivated conservative voters play a pivotal role in choosing the governor, strategists say.

Ms. Hutchison is hoping to break that formula by drawing more moderates and independents to the primary. She has painted Mr. Perry as a divisive party leader more interested in partisan politics than in solving the state’s problems. “People want someone who has a vision for the future,” she said, “and we are not seeing new ideas.”

On the other side, Mr. Perry is betting he can cast Ms. Hutchison as a Washington insider with questionable credentials as a conservative. “We would say it’s a fight between a real, proven conservative and one who is not so conservative,” he said.

So far, only Tom Schieffer, a businessman, former ambassador and onetime state legislator, and the singer and writer Kinky Friedman have announced candidacies for the Democratic nomination, although Ronnie Earle, former Travis County district attorney, is exploring a run. Whatever the outcome of that race, political scientists here say, its winner will be at a big disadvantage against either Mr. Perry or Ms. Hutchison.

Ms. Hutchison has amassed $12.5 million for her run, to Mr. Perry’s $9.3 million. Though she has yet to resign from the Senate to stump full time, her campaign is already in high gear, its press office producing daily attacks on the governor.

But the senator was largely silent for the first half of the year, and her early reluctance to engage Mr. Perry has hurt her, Republican strategists say. Several recent polls suggest that he now has a significant lead among primary voters.

While both candidates say taxes and fiscal policy will be leading issues in the campaign, they can both claim to be tightfisted with the public’s money, and so their differences on some social issues are likely to become a battleground.

He is firmly against abortion, for instance, while she backs many restrictions on it but opposes overturning Roe v. Wade. He is against embryonic stem cell research; she supports it.

Against that kind of backdrop, Ms. Hutchison was led to tell Republicans gathered this week in Horseshoe Bay, near Austin, that she was just as conservative as the governor.

“I’m not from Washington,” she said. “I’m from Texas.”