TX-Gov Rasmussen Poll: Bell to 13%

His presence at these meetings could only help his cause.

Bell would naturally make sense as Perry was the brain behind the TTC. And he could hit Strayhorn on it (while she is opposed now, she sure has flip flopped on it- I'd love to see some Bell-Ringers with Flip-Flips!)


I can help you ActBlue.

You're right that "people need to take him seriously and get out there and listen to the level of chatter and excitement there is for him."

Whether we like it or not, Kinky is here to stay.  He's got the most loyal volunteers of 2006, and he's gaining momentum. Instead of attacking Kinky, down ballot Dems should embrace the new swing voters of 2006 - the Kinksters.  There's a bunch of close elections this year, and there's a huge potential to "throw the bums out" up and down the ballot.

1) There are Dems going to Carole but these Dems are of the "stratigic activist class". They are the people who may or may not be party faithful, but they are highly engaged and prone to waver with the winds. They are not bad Dems, but that are ones that put conventional reality ahead of the Partyline (think big $$ donors). They have every interest in beating Rick Perry and want to do that via any means possible, even if that means not using the Democratic candidate as the platform to do that if they don't see it as being viable. The good thing, is this class can be won back fairly easily by proving that Chris Bell *is* the viable candidate who can make the most effort against Perry.

2a) The second class are Dems going to Kinky. These are not Dems who are excessivly active in the Party, vote in the primary, or involved in campaigns all that much. The ones that do fit the above categories, are ones that may have stuck with the Party through Tony Sanchez but are tired of losing and see a rather lackluster lineup. They are throwing up their hands and letting their inner disgust with the inability for change to occur in Texas (they don't see if coming via Democrats any sooner than Republicans, if only because Democrats won't get elected). Kinky may be a one year thing, but for frustrated Dems it's an outlet and an exciting one at that.

2b) Kinky pulls away some of the casual Dems who see his vibrant campaign, if only because these Dems don't even know that there is a Democratic alternative, or don't see it as anything to invest their time in; they don't know (and don't care) about the big picture of political strategy that fortells a Rick Perry win if any substantial amount of Democratic base vote bleeds out from under Bell. These people are much harder to win back and may best help solve the big picture problem by staying home and forgetting about voting than actually showing up and casting a politically (to us) "ignorant" vote.


I can help you ActBlue.

I think the problems were there long before Tony Sanchez.  There is this question of primaries and this "well, I didn't vote for him in the primary and so I won't vote for him in the election" which I don't know is easily solved. The Bell supporters say they would have supported Gammage. But given the vitriole of the primary I doubt all would have. And some might have supported Strayhorn. The Kinky support among Democrats was pretty much there to begin with. It merely liked what it saw in Gammage. And they merely went back to Kinky. It is a curious thing to watch. Why I said this election will not be won on partisan lines. But it goes far beyond that.

The Texas Democratic Party just ain't what it used to be.  Bell will not bring people back. The party itself has to. And so far, well, forget it.

Too many candidates considered viable by everyone just simply haven't gotten the support from they needed from the state and the county parties.  Which always tend to pick their favorites. And focus on them.  Spending money on certain "favored" races when it was supposed to be used to buy a building for the party certainly didn't add any level of confidence. Just pointed out the arrogance of some. 

That is one reason why we have a Republican court in this state.  No one in the Texas Democratic Party was really paying attention.  And in some ways still aren't.

"The good thing, is this class can be won back fairly easily by proving that Chris Bell *is* the viable candidate who can make the most effort against Perry."

You must be joking. Some have too much money invested in Strayhorn to risk her wrath if they switch to Bell and she wins.  And she's safe if Perry wins. She is, after all, still a Republican. She didn't become an Independent. She merely is running as one.  She declared as a Republican.  So all will be forgiven.

Most at this point are beginning to accept the inevitable.  Perry.

The silver lining, again, may be that Kinky brings enough people to the polls who vote Democratic on the rest of the ballot.

You reveal your fundamental misunderstanding of the gubernatorial race when you say that “some have too much money invested in Strayhorn to risk her wrath if they switch to Bell and she wins.”  Do you know Strayhorn is in her late 60s?  If she wins, she’s fine.  If she loses, she’s politically finished.  A person could flip parties twice and survive, but the rehabilitation from a second flip (if it's an unsuccessful flip) would take more time than Strayhorn has left.

This is Kinky in a nut shell (pun intended):

Question: So does this idea of the honorable cowboy have anything to do with why you threw your support behind President Bush in this last election? You did, didn’t you?
Kinky: Yes. I did in this last election, but I didn’t vote for him the first time.
Question: Who did you vote for in 2000?
Kinky: I voted for Gore then. I was conflicted. . .but I was not for Bush that time. Since then, though, we’ve become friends. And that’s what’s changed things.
Question: So it’s your friendship with him that’s changed your mind about having him as president more than his specific political positions?
Kinky: Well, actually, I agree with most of his political positions overseas, his foreign policy. On domestic issues, I’m more in line with the Democrats. I basically think he played a poor hand well after September 11. What he’s been doing in the Near East and in the Middle East, he’s handling that well, I think.

The one thing that makes Kinky sound bi-partisan from this interview (his 2000 vote for Gore) is a lie as confirmed by Kinky's Kerr County voting records.

As voters learn more about Kinky, the fact that this is a gubernatorial race with one Democrat versus three Republicans will have some effect.  I cannot predict a winner (other than to say it's certainly Perry's race to lose), but I can predict that it will not be Kinky. 

Why won't Kinky be as big a factor in the election as he is now? 

For one, I have spoken with over a hundred Kinky supporters and have met very few who know where Kinky stands on most major issues.  As this information becomes more widely known, as will happen as the election nears, Kinky's support will wane among those voters who feel let down that he does not represent what he has held himself out to be during his campaign.

Also, it is greatly detrimental to Kinky's campaign (and Carole's) that he does not have a base of support.  Perry's job is essentially to add votes to his hardest core base of about 30%.  Bell's job is to add votes to his hardest core of support which is about 18%.  Kinky and Carole have to win every vote one-by-one.

You should seek counseling for your grudges still simmering from the primary.  Vote for Kinky, but don't pretend that it's anything other than a vote for the funniest Republican in the race (if you like his kind of jokes).

That special name is "nonvoters." 

Jesse Ventura could count on a bump from ill-informed voters because Minnesota has a register-on-election-day law.  Texas doesn't. Kinky needs to keep his voters just excited enough to register and then, several weeks later, still excited enough to vote, but Kinky has to be careful not to get any of his supporters interested enough so that they bother to look into any issues to see whether or not they actually agree with Kinky's nonsense.

That's a tough line to walk.

Read that again. I understand the gubernatorial race. More than you do apparently. There are some very rich Democrats who won't support Bell. The ones who might if they thought he might have a better chance than Strayhorn to win wouldn't risk her wrath if they switched to Bell and Strayhorn wins.

But what it really comes down to which you and everyone else obviously don't want to accept is the simple and obvious fact that they will not support Bell. It has nothing to do with their supporting Strayhorn. Or anyone else  supporting Kinky. As for their base of support, well obviously they have a base or they wouldn't be on the ballot.

I could be like some and demand you produce the names of the hundred Kinky supporters you talked to. Or demand that you prove Kinky is a Republican.

Sounds like you're the one with the grudge. Because you haven't made a dent with me or anyone else with your "Bell is the only Democrat and all Democrats should support him on that basis" mantra.

I don't. And won't.  And so far, there are 23 others on BOR who don't. And probably won't.

I have looked at his voting record in Congress. You can call him a Democrat. I call him a Republicrat.

"Will work well with the Republican legislature."

Furthermore, you are wrong to assume I support Bell.  I will likely vote for Bell or Strayhorn depending on if one or the other has a chance of beating Perry.  You would also be incorrect to assume that my opposition to Kinky is based on the fact that Kinky is a Republican, which he clearly is, because certainly Strayhorn is also a Republican.  My opposition to Kinky stems from the fact that he's a know-nothing fraud who masquerades as something other than what he really is and because he is maintaining his vanity campaign for his own self aggrandizement and commercial profit at the expense of giving Texans a real opportunity to elect either Bell or Strayhorn in place of Perry.  Moreover, I oppose Kinky for the additional reason that his candidacy significantly magnifies the likelihood of re-electing the worst governor in modern memory, and neither Kinky nor his supporters hardly care about that. 

If Kinky were running on any coherent agenda, I could accept or reject that agenda on its merits. But he is not running on a coherent agenda; instead, Kinky's running as a self-promotional joke (which I could also accept if he were not simultaneously benefiting Perry's re-election efforts as a result of this sophomoric little joke).

Also, I have spoken with many financial contributors who have given substantial funds to Strayhorn even though they have supported Democrats in the past, and every one I have spoken to has expressed nothing but enthusiasm for Bell.  Why, you may ask, would they express enthusiasm for Bell if they have given significant funds to Strayhorn?  The simple fact is that they agree on the obvious point that Perry had a 99.9% chance of winning a two-way race against the Democratic nominee (in almost every case, the decision to support Strayhorn preceded the primary).  In a three-way race, Perry's chance of re-election is much less certain regardless of whether Strayhorn or the Democrat is the one who beats Perry (none of them take Kinky seriously and all agree with the nearly unanimous consensus among professional election analysts that Kinky will fade to 10% or less by November).  Many of those who committed funds to Strayhorn were principally interested in seeing her on the ballot both as a direct alternative to Perry and also as an indirect benefit to the Democrat candidate as another alternative to Perry. If you understood the polling, you would understand that every dollar that goes to Strayhorn is a dollar spent against Perry and whether or not Bell can beat Strayhorn to establish himself as the principle alternative to Perry is beside the point for these Strayhorn contributors.  I share their view that it is good news for Texas if the worst governor in modern memory loses, and that’s good news regardless of whether it is Strayhorn or Bell who is the one that beats Perry.

Finally, please do not mistake this post as an attempt to persuade you to change your thinking -- I'm not half that optimistic about either my ability to educate you or your ability to learn.  Still, there may be others who may read this who are better equipped to understand the point that Kinky is Perry's best friend in this election and who will see that Kinky has embraced many anti-progressive ideas as part of his hodge-podge of bad governmental notions and that Kinky is unworthy of support even as a protest candidate.

Right now, unless something changes, there isn't really a win condition for any candidate beyond Perry in this race.  Kinky is counting on bringing new voters to the poll to change the equation.  Grandma is counting on winning the exurbs.  Bell is counting on...  anyone know the answer to this one???

Kinky doesn't need the advertising and he knows it. So does everyone else. Perry doesn't really need the advertising either. Both he and Kinky pretty much have that "solid base" in place to build on and the only question with regard to Kinky's is how large the base may be by November.

As for Bell the reality is he just simply doesn't have the money to saturate the state. So his advertising will be here and there. Now and then.

The only sure thing is this race so far is Perry.

The only sure unsure thing is how many Texans really will go to the polls. This race will not be decided along partisan lines. Every other line. But not partisan.

I don't know, so I'm not listening to the polls.  I know that what Strayhorn says now is diametrically opposed to what she's said at other times.  She turned out to be exactly the opportunist she appeared to be.

As for Kinky, I'm sorry Kinky supporters, but I just don't vote for novelty candidates.  Besides, I browsed a couple of his books at Barnes and Noble's the other day, and they're just not all that clever.

I'm voting for Chris Bell.  When push comes to shove, I'm sticking with the Democrat. 

http://www.dallasnew...

Microtargeting.  :(

The shame is that on a local level, it's not that hard to do. A statewide effort calls for different data gathering. I know the DNC has upgraded theirs, but I'm not sure if that gets matched with the TDP or not. Thankfully, we've got a ton in Travis county, but I don't think it has a lot of the qualifiers that are mentioned in the article.

In a dream world, I'd love to work for the TCDP post November (with just enough money to survive) working on a 2 year ID program with stuff like that.


I can help you ActBlue.

Point: In McCarthy's crusade against Vietnam and his race against President LBJ 1968:  Although anti-war sentiment was high in the US , no one thought a little-known senator from Minnesota could possibly pose a threat to powerful President Johnson. When the votes were counted after the New Hampshire primary McCarthy rounded up 41% to Johnson's 49%. This “victory” for McCarthy "victory" stunned the political world and, within two weeks LBJ decided to not seek re-election.

Unfortunately many of the political polls are manipulated and that impacts the voter turn-out.  If the polls indicate your candidate is going to lose, you may decide it's not worth going to vote when you can go do errands instead.  The reverse of that happens as well.  If the polls indicate your candidate is going to win, you may decide you don't need to vote. So many other people are. What's another single vote?  In a plurality, it could be the deciding vote. 

In either case, you have politicians manipulating the polls to influence potential voter turn-out which all the voters usually realize when one of the politicians wins and then doesn't do all the things he or she promised.

The end result is voter turn-off.  People in mass numbers just simply don't vote because of the politics involved. People are tired of politics.  It's become like a football game. Except in this game, the special interests win no matter who is elected and the people themselves lose.

That of course is the main reason why many people support Kinky.  He isn't tied into the special interests. Or the parties that promote the special interests because the special interests donate so much money to the party.

If Kinky wins, it will not be because of Republican or Democratic voters per se. He will win because enough "disconnected" and "disillusioned" voters turned out to vote. 

People should accept that polls mean nothing in the end. Only their vote means anything. 

All the polls indicate that Perry will win.  Unless too many Republicans assume he will and decide not to vote.

And if that happens, well, then we probably will indeed have a surprise.

Why is Kinky's support so low among likely Black voters?

What could be diminishing Kinky's support in the Black community to less half the level of the widely disliked governor?

Could it be the video from Kinky's appearance last November on CNBC's "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch" where Kinky explained his view that criminals should be punished by locking them in prison and making them "listen to a Negro talking to himself"?

Could that be why Kinky is so distrusted in the Black community?

Or perhaps Kinky is so unpopular among Black voters because Donny Deutsch asked if Kinky's statement was possibly a little racist, and Kinky replied that "Negro is a charming word."

Maybe that's why Kinky is widely unpopular among Black voters.

Likewise, the crosstabs at the SurveyUSA poll show that Kinky has the least support of all the candidates among Hispanic voters.

Why is Kinky's support so low among likely Hispanic voters?

Could it be the newspaper interviews where Kinky promises to take "a harder line on immigration" than any of the other candidates and where Kinky says the Tejano protesters marching in favor of immigration reform are "half playing hooky"?

Could it be the other newspaper interviews where Kinky says "Mexico is not a poor country" and "I will divide the border into five jurisdictions, assigning one Mexican general to each and providing a trust fund for that general"?

Maybe it's those interviews where Kinky says "all of these politicians are afraid of offending Hispanics ... I want the border off the evening news until we get something resolved."

Obviously, Kinky is not "afraid of offending Hispanics" – or Black voters, for that matter. Maybe that's why Kinky is the least popular candidate among minority voters in Texas.

(Links to all sources at http://stopkinky.blo...)

You want to talk about offending minorities? Look at the Texas Democratic Party "machine" and it's "gay-baiting" at the convention.  We couldn't have a gay man become chair of the Texas Democratic Party. I found that offensive. You didn't? I then found it puzzling that the same gay man who was unacceptable as party chair became the field director for the Democratic candidate for governor. Something wrong with that picture.

At least Kinky isn't becoming a laughingstock across the state by running a "Godzilla" ad.

But ask yourself why does Kinky single out "Negroes" when he says we should punish criminals by locking them in prison and making them "listen to a Negro talking to himself"?

Why is it not an equal punishment to lock criminals up and make them "listen to a Jew talking to himself" or "listen to a cokehead talking to himself" or "listen to a cliche-packing hack writer talking to himself"?

Why does Kinky single out "Negroes"?

In that context, the word "Negroes" isn't as "charming" as Kinky says it is.

P.S.  Your attempt to smear Bell as homophobic is as ill-informed as the rest of your gibberish.

Bell actually voted against and campaigned against the gay marital discrimination amendment.

Kinky gave nothing but lip service on this issue (mainly he made jokes), but he didn't care enough to vote when it was on the ballot.

I didn't attempt to do any such thing. I was referring to the "gay-baiting" of Glen Maxey at the convention by the Boyd Richie supporters. 

I also pointed out how odd that they didn't want him as chair but don't seem to mind him as the field director for Chris Bell. Again, something wrong with the picture.

Learn to read.

Look at is stand on UT text books. That is omething you should be concerned with!

This is total B.S.!!!! I worked for hom in DC and he did nothing of this sort.
Check out his votes.
He believes in equal and civil rights for all!

Several of the GLBT organizations endorsed Gammage. And are not endorsing Bell. For whatever reason. There are quite a few reasons from what I've heard.

I did imply and infer and state several times here and there that he is a hypocrite. 

I think it is important to discuss the issues of equal protections and rights under the law for everyone but I also think at this moment in time in Texas it is also political suicide. 

The best time for any politician in Texas to talk about it is after they've been elected. 

Unless you're Rick Perry.  Who keeps talking about it. Probably because some keep spreading the "gay governor" rumor. Thinking it gives them a political advantage. When it actually puts them at a political disadvantage.

are you guys govt. majors???

also there are several good voting record sites. there is one that has all votes. i wil try to find and post to try and give you answers.. have you looked at his blog for these answers??

"Will work well with the Republican legislature."

That was broadcast loud and clear through every newspaper endorsement of Bell in the primary.

Thanks, but no thanks.

2. Who said "Negro ... is a charming word"?

3. Who said "Mexico is not a poor country"?

4. Who said "good fences make good neighbors, and, Mr. Fox, help us build that fence"?

5. Who said "I will divide the border into five jurisdictions, assigning one Mexican general to each and providing a trust fund for that general"?

6. Who said "all of these politicians are afraid of offending Hispanics ... I want the border off the evening news until we get something resolved"?

7. Who said the Tejano protesters marching in favor of immigration reform are "half playing hooky"?

8. Who said "every crazy redneck in Texas is already supporting me"?

9. Who said we should grant "amnesty for hard-working illegal immigrants already in this country"?

10. Who said "I'm not pro-life, and I'm not pro-choice. I'm pro-football"?

11. Who said "I have mixed feelings on parental notification" about abortions for girls under the age of 18 and "on the counseling requirement, I'm not sure, but I know the less I talk to social workers, the better. No issue with the public-funding restrictions, but I would want to investigate further."?

12. Who said "you uppity women I don’t understand why you gotta go and try to act like a man"?

13. Who said "I am not anti-death penalty"?

14. Who said "let's do away with the death penalty"?

15. Who said of Bush's Iraq War "I agree with most of his political positions overseas, his foreign policy"?

16. Who said what Bush has "been doing in the Near East and in the Middle East, he’s handling that well, I think"?

17. Who said my "voting record doesn't look strong, but my voting record is better than Dick Cheney's"?

18. Who said "I am going to see non-denominational prayer and the Ten Commandments put back in the schools"?

19. Who said we should turn over public school physical education classes to corporations and charge them whatever they will pay to "get their hooks into the athletes while they’re still young"?

20. Who said "I've been stoned a lot of times ... and I don't regret any of it ... I quit doing cocaine when Bob Marley fell out of my left nostril"?

It's just as boring here as it is on Democratic Underground.