Once again the Democrats ran a conservative for governor against a conservative governor. They seem to think that the way to win in Texas is to deny the progressive roots of the party and not offer the voters a real choice (after all, if voters want a conservative they know the Republicans are the conservative party). This strategy didn't work with Chris Bell in 2006 and didn't work with Tony Sanchez in 2002, and it looks like it's failing again in 2010.
White's campaign has just failed to gain any traction since the summer months. He has yet to get any closer than six points in any poll (including his own in-house poll). A few days ago two polls came out to show that Perry may actually be picking up steam. White trailed him by 8 points in a Rasmussen poll and by 10 points in the University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll.
Now there are two new polls and White is not doing well in those either. A Bloom & Weprin poll conducted for Texas' five largest newspapers (with a 3.8% margin of error) showed the following numbers for the governor's race:
Rick Perry (R)...............49%
Bill White (D)...............37%
Deb Shafto (G)...............3%
Kathie Glass (L)...............2%
A Public Policy Polling survey was also released. This poll was taken between October 26th and 28th and has a margin of error of 4.1%. Here is what it showed:
Rick Perry (R)...............53%
Bill White (D)...............44%
Undecided/other...............3%
The worst part of this is that the Democrats have some excellent down-ballot candidates. But since most of the money goes to the gubernatorial candidate for the party, these other candidates need for the candidate for governor to do well to give them a boost. It looks like they can forget any help from Bill White.
I'm still hoping candidates like Hank Gilbert and Linda Chavez-Thompson can win in spite of this disadvantage, but it's going to be very hard.
feck
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