The Lone Star Report
February 5, 1999
Staying on Message Key to Perry Victory
By: William Lutz
About 11:00 p.m. on Nov. 3, in a crowded hotel ballroom in Austin, hundreds of Democratic partisans swarmed around television sets, desperately waiting for new results to come in. Their candidate, John Sharp, was trailing Republican Rick Perry by three percentage points.
Around midnight, a rumor began circulating among the Capital press corps that the campaign's senior staff were upstairs in Sharp's hotel room crying. About 12:30 a.m., the unthinkable happened. Sharp conceded. For the first time since Reconstruction, a Republican will hold the most powerful elective office in Texas.
No one in that room expected or understood what happened. How could the choice of the old-guard lobby lose? Why would Texas voters throw out the "good ol' boy" Democratic culture that served them so well for more than a century?
Simple. Rick Perry understood the importance of message.
As the only Republican to win statewide office in 1990, Perry knew that a winning campaign develops a good message and sticks with it while causing the other campaign to get off message. Perry and his campaign manager Jim Arnold developed a plan they both believed in and stuck to even when the Austin pundits doomed Team Perry to failure.
Perry lacked Sharp's exhaustive knowledge of the ins and outs of state policy, and his plethora of policy proposals. But he turned that into an advantage, understanding that simplicity is the key to connecting with voters. While Sharp talked about tax credits and performance reviews (stuff only Austin insiders truly understand), Perry promised "safe streets" and "the best schools in America." Even when the lobby demanded more specific proposals, Perry stuck with those broad themes and was rewarded on election night.
Two other key campaign actions allowed Perry to implement this plan.
First, Arnold hired the campaign staff with the idea that a well-rounded team is more important than a person's standing among Texas campaign operatives. People with egos went to another campaign. The end result was a campaign with little infighting and a sense of humor.
Arnold also tried to hire people who had worked for key Republican office-holders to unify the party behind Perry and promote communication between the campaign and Republican elected officials.
One key hire was communications director Ray Sullivan. He brought substantial experience to the table, having worked both in Congress and for Gov. Bush. Likewise, Sullivan had worked constructively with diverse factions of the Republican part; he served both conservative U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson and moderate U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. He knew the Capital press corps and how to handle hostile questions gracefully. Sullivan is widely credited with keeping the campaign on message despite the normal distractions. Another key hire was Deirdre Delisi, the director of the Perry research team and a former staff member of Sen. Bill Ratliff (R-Mt. Pleasant).
Second, Arnold found ways to distract Sharp and put him on the defensive. Sharp planned to position himself as a technocrat who saved taxpayers $8.5 billion by working in a bipartisan fashion. Perry knew Sharp would make his Texas Performance Review (TPRs) the centerpiece of his campaign. The Perry campaign would have to discredit the TPRs or at least make it more difficult for Sharp to use them to his advantage.
So Arnold set the campaign's research department quickly and set ambitious deadlines so that the research could be released early, rather than in the campaign's final days. Unlike many other statewide campaigns, Perry's had its consultants and in-house staff research the same areas and double-check the results to ensure that the campaign would not have to retract anything released publicly.
The research team dissected the TPRs and found many of the so-called savings did not wash. In many cases, TPR "savings" involved raising taxes or fees, shifting costs form one biennium to another, or getting the federal government to pay for something previously paid for by the state.
The Perry campaign shrewdly avoided attacking Sharp directly, which would have distracted from his positive message. Instead, Perry gave this information to the Associated Republicans of Texas (ART), who dispatched Sen. Jerry Patterson (R-Pasadena) and Reps. Carl Isett (R-Lubbock) and Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands) to tour the state, talking to editorial boards about the shortcomings of the TRP's. Sharp's spokesmen spent much of their time defending the TRP's to the press rather than pushing Sharp's programs and themes.
The research department also set Sharp up to make the biggest blunder of the entire campaign. In the TRPs, Perry's researchers found a proposal to use the school lunch program to fund some prison meals. So the ART ran an ad in a couple of small markets featuring "prisoners" touting Sharp's suggestions and hoping for a Sharp victory.
The Sharp campaign felt a need to respond forcefully on the crime issue. So the campaign ran the Gary Wayne Etheridge ad, claiming that Perry voted for a law that allowed a convicted felon who later raped and murdered a teenage girl to be released.
But Perry had kept his research team intact as a rapid response unit. The team found the prison records showing Etheridge had been released under a law Sharp voted for. The team found also that the law Perry voted for would have kept Etheridge behind bars. The press savaged Sharp, and the voters were turned off by the ads.
Arnold also took Sharp off message by exploiting Democratic divisions. Gov. Bush's political consultant, Karl Rove, shrewdly manipulated the Republican primary field to produce a team that would unite behind Bush. The Democrats didn't have the same cohesion.
The Perry campaign intentionally made a big deal out of the candidate's connections to Bush, distributing "Bush/Perry" posters and bumper stickers in an effort to portray the campaign as a presidential-style ticket. President Bush's heavy involvement was no accident.
Given Gov. Bush's popularity, a "Mauro/Sharp" ticket would not work. Several lobbying groups, notably the Texas Farm Bureau, tried to promote a "Bush/Sharp" ticket. This never took hold either. Sharp's refusal to campaign with Mauro also caused substantial friction within the Democratic ranks.
Many Democratic insiders thought political history and momentum would carry Sharp to the lieutenant governor's office, just as many Republican members of Congress seemed sure the party would gain seats. The Perry campaign knew the race was winnable but always maintained an underdog attitude.
The lesson from Perry's campaign: Message and organization decide elections; historical trends and conventional wisdom don't. |
