RINO Kay Bailey Hutchison Concedes GOP Gubernatorial Primary to Gov. Rick Perry

rnc-logoLooks like this one is over. Even if Texas incumbent Governor Rick Perry doesn’t get 50% of the Republican primary vote in Texas, it wouldn’t matter as Kay Bailey Hutchinson has conceded. Fox News has the rundown:

Breathing fire at an Obama led federal government he says has Texas in its crosshairs, two term incumbent Republican Governor Rick Perry claimed his party’s nomination with more than 50 percent of the vote, avoiding a run off against three-term Republican U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Hutchison was once seen as the candidate who could deliver Perry’s first election loss in a lifetime of public office, but the governor, a darling of the social conservatives, forcefully painted the senator as too entrenched in Washington politics.

Speaking at his election night party in Driftwood after Hutchison conceded, Perry said he would unite a fractured Texas Republican Party in the November general election and stressed that Washington politics had no place in the Lone Star state.

“From Driftwood, Texas, to Washington, D.C. we are sending you a message tonight: Stop messing with Texas!” Perry said.

Perry, Texas’ longest-serving governor, had 51 percent of the vote compared to Hutchinson’s 31 percent, with nearly three-fourths of precincts reporting Tuesday night. About one in five voters cast ballots for a third candidate, Debra Medina, a GOP party activist who was backed by some in the state’s tea party movement.

The GOP nominee will face former Houston Mayor Bill White, who defeated Houston hair care magnate Farouk Shami and five others on Tuesday to win the Democratic nomination for governor.

Perry not only used voter anger and anti-Washington sentiment to paint Hutchison as a Washington insider and make her the issue, he out-maneuvered her on the ground.

The Perry campaign from the beginning took a big gamble and chose not to use yard signs, recorded phone canvassing, or direct mail, and instead concentrated on social networking on the Web, grassroots community organizing and, of course, TV.

The campaign saved millions and got a response they say exceeded their expectations, and has re-written the GOP book on field organizing.

Hutchison still has two years in the Senate. Some insiders think she’ll give up her seat. This past Friday she said she would make a decision after the general election in November — she won’t be a part of that now.

Hutchison told supporters in Dallas that she called Perry once she believed the election results were clear. She said that “we have fought valiantly for our principles, but we did not win.”

Perry said his main opponent’s concession speech is a victory for conservatives.

Hutchison, who was first elected to the Senate in 1993, had acknowledged that Perry’s anti-Washington campaign theme worked against her in the current environment. She told supporters in Dallas on Tuesday that she called Perry once she believed the election results were clear.

“We have fought valiantly for our principles, but we did not win,” she said.

Medina raised relatively little money and suffered a setback when she told talk show host Glenn Beck there were “some very good arguments” that the U.S. was involved in the 2001 terrorist attacks, yet she still managed to win over scores of voters who might have otherwise sided with the deeply conservative Perry.

“I’m a pretty conservative guy,” said Kevin Merritt, a 31-year-old software developer from the Dallas suburb of Frisco, who cast his ballot for Medina because he liked her goal of lowering property taxes and disliked Perry’s support of a now-dead project to build a huge system of toll roads.

Hutchison initially said she would step down from the Senate by the end of 2009 and focus full time on her run for governor. But she later changed her mind and said she had to stay in Washington, D.C., to battle President Barack Obama and the Democrats on health care. Her continued presence in Washington gave Perry more ammunition to cast her as a congressional insider.

Her continued presence in the nation’s capital gave Perry more ammunition to cast her as a congressional insider.

“It definitely hurt, but it was not my doing,” Hutchison said last week, discussing her decision to stay in the Senate. “It was the progress of health care reform. The game change for me is when health care kept being put off.”

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March 2, 2010 · Filed Under General Politics


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