Texas Senate Race

Monday evening I got to attend the last debate between candidates for US Senate from Texas: David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz. Earlier I listened to a radio debate they’d had last week on the Matt Patrick Show. I’ve been leaning toward a candidate for a while, but I wanted to be fair and hear them, just to be sure. [The Monday night debate was filmed and moderated by KRIV, the local Fox TV station, and was presented at King Street Patriots. I haven’t found a full recording to link yet, however.]

Ted Cruz and David Dewhurst
photo from KSEV.com

Let’s start with this understanding: Texas is a conservative state. It hasn’t always been, but it finally elected a Republican governor in the early 1990s and hasn’t gone back, and the legislature has grown continually more conservative since that time. When I started going to Texas state conventions in 2004, most of what we heard was conservative, but mixed in was still a fair amount of “Let’s not be too extreme; we might not want to go that far.” No longer. The last couple of conventions, if anyone had attempted to give a “moderate,” squishy message, they’d have heard boos.

So if you have two candidates in a runoff election for the Republican candidate in Texas, you can be certain that all the words will be conservative. So, to know if they really mean it (and possibly both do), you need to know more of their background, their records, and their hearts—if you can sense that, which is why I wanted to hear them in person.

David Dewhurst has been around a while. He has been Rick Perry’s lieutenant governor since George W. Bush left the governor’s mansion for the White House. He’s done his job well enough. Texas has moved more conservative in that time. Our business climate is better than most states: no income tax, lower taxes and less strangling regulations. That’s why one of the biggest problems is dealing with surging growth while the recession slogs on with high unemployment (around 7% in Texas, lower than the rest of the nation, but still too high).

If you look at the last legislative session (2011), a lot of incremental pro-life legislation got through. And Texas is standing up to the federal government’s health care and other intrusions on our sovereignty. I had wanted a TSA anti-groping bill to go through, but it failed. At the time I believed it was David Dewhurst’s fault that it didn’t come up for final vote. But I am fuzzy on details now. It passed the state senate (where he is essentially the head as lieutenant governor, the way the VP is in the US Senate). It was in the state house where it didn’t come up for final vote. I wanted an answer about how that went down. I wanted to ask this question, but didn’t get a chance (and it didn’t come up during the two debates I heard):

I’m concerned about TSA’s infringement against our right to be free from illegal searches and seizures. What do you see that can be done about it at the federal level, and at the state level?

But I still don’t know their answers. Mostly I was satisfied with their conservative answers to the rest of the questions. Ted Cruz has the advantage of speech. Dewhurst speaks well enough, but he is likely to talk Texas slow, with stories to make a point, and maybe some generalities. He mentioned that he grew up with a stuttering problem, and while he has overcome that (I’d say beyond anything I could notice; I never knew this before), he says he’s a doer, not a talker.

Ted Cruz, a lawyer and former state solicitor general, who has helped argue for Texas on constitutional issues before the Supreme Court issues, is smooth and organized. He’ll answer a question with, “We’ll do these three things,” and then list them. So there are style differences. I can see how Dewhurst can be appealing, and why he’s been reelected without much of a fight. But I prefer Cruz’s style when there’s a “debate” with limited time, and we want to get the answers as efficiently as possible. It shows thoughts organized in a way that are likely to lead to measurable actions.

The two mostly agree on issues, as well as on many solutions. Both agree that immediate full repeal of Obamacare is a first priority—and neither of them like the phrase “repeal and replace.” Just repeal. Cruz said he would “keep not a single word of Obamacare.” Both agree that we need to use market reforms to keep Medicare and Medicaid from bankrupting us and enslaving future generations—but we need to keep our promises to those who need it and have gone through their working lives counting on the help.

Cruz made one of his lists about how to go about the needed reforms: allow insurance across state lines, encourage health savings accounts (that can be passed along to heirs), and de-link health insurance from employments, to make insurance portable—to empower the patient and disempower government.

Dewhurst is very a successful businessman—an oil-related business he built from the ground up and still runs. He grew up poor. His dad was killed by a drunk driver when Dewhurst was only three (he mentioned this more than once in the debate). His mother went to work, and taught him faith, integrity, truthfulness, humility, and hard work.

Cruz mentioned (only once, although it was also in his introduction) that his father escaped from Cuba at age 18, broke and unable to speak the language. But with hard work and perseverance he and Cruz’s mother were able to prepare the next generation for success in America.

Contention in this campaign, as well as during the debate, comes down to accusations against each other. I’ve heard many (many times) of the Dewhurst-approved ads claiming Cruz is crooked, un-American, chooses to advocate for the wrong side (a Chinese-owned company in a case against another Chinese-owned company, if I understand correctly). Cruz was effective when he held up a campaign card, right after telling us about his father’s ordeal in coming from Cuba, and told us to imagine how his father felt when he recently received that card in the mail and read on the back that his son was un-American. Dewhurst said it didn’t say that, but, really, I’ve heard the ads and probably seen those very leaflets: the wording might not be exact, but the implication is clear. That is what Dewhurst was saying.

The kerfuffle the other way was about Dewhurst’s position on immigration and whether he had ever been for amnesty. There was, according to Cruz, a speech Dewhurst gave, I think in 2007, where he said he could support a guest worker program (which isn’t exactly amnesty, but he was talking about creating a legal pathway for those already here, so Cruz has a point). Cruz pointed out the inconsistency, such as it is, and cited Dewhurst’s Lieutenant Governor website as the source with the speech. And then suddenly the speech was no longer there at the previous link. Cruz said Dewhurst must have removed it for political reasons. Dewhurst, while claiming his position has always been consistent, only argued that the speech was not taken down in response to the ad but had been archived a year prior.

Cruz has also claimed that Dewhurst shouldn’t take credit for as much budget success as he has claimed, that some of it is “smoke and mirrors.” This raised the ire of Sen. Dan Patrick, who said the claim maligned the entire legislature, which had done remarkable work and made real budget cuts. Patrick may be right. It is difficult to get traction when coming up with negatives in either record, but at least Cruz has been attacking record rather than character.

This is the worst these two can dredge up; clearly this isn’t Chicago. In the dirty ads contest, I’d say Dewhurst has thrown the most mud. And while negative campaigning in general does work, it also works at the risk of making both sides look bad.

One question was, “Will you keep your promise to be conservative after the election,” and I liked Cruz’s answer, and I’m sorry I didn’t write fast enough for an exact quote. He said yes, but then everyone would say that. So it’s like his father said about being Christian; make sure there’s enough evidence to convict.

I am persuaded to vote for Ted Cruz. I think they are both conservative enough. I think Dewhurst believes he is conservative, but possibly in the way Rick Perry believes he is conservative. Conservative—as long as the support of the people and the legislature make sure they’re conservative. And then they get credit for being kept in line. When I heard Ted Cruz talk about the Constitution, and arguing for our God-given rights, I believed he understood the philosophy of conserving our founding documents.

There isn’t much opposition from the Democrat (unknown to me at this point, until I eventually look up who it is). So it is generally believed this runoff election will decide who will be the next senator from Texas. Early voting is currently underway through Friday. And election day is Tuesday, July 31^st.