Previous Posts:
Introduction
Part 1: How will the Democrats campaign?
After taking a look at how I think the Democrats will campaign I'll now try to pivot over to the Republicans and their conservative bloc of candidates who, I feel, will do things just a little differently. It's going to be important in this election to sever the Abbott campaign from the remaining state-wide Republicans as I'll (hopefully) demonstrate below.
Republicans (Abbott specifically): Abbott has, and will, run his campaign fully on the Texas Miracle and will attempt to cast himself as the One who has been selected to steer the rudder with a steady hand. He will promote past successes including his work at Attorney General (glossing over the cases he lost of course) and will ceaselessly promote his "Working Texas" agenda which is in many ways a continuation of the direction the State has been moving. Abbott's Issues Page on his campaign website read's like a who's who of both republican and business wishes. He will focus on competency, portraying Wendy Davis as an out of touch Washington D.C. politician whose come to Texas to ruin what they have built. His primary message is going to be that his solutions are based on common sense, while Wendy Davis' are nothing more than a plan to raise taxes and throw money at the problems with no hard solutions in place. He will also, as he has already, dedicate campaign resources in an effort to paint Davis and Democrats as unfeeling and uncaring on handicapped issues.
Conservatives: (Taking the lead from Dan Patrick): In contrast to Abbott, the remainder of the candidates on the Republican slate are going to follow Patrick and veer right. Patrick has already said that the voters gave Republicans a mandate to pursue a conservative agenda and he will campaign heavily on that. Yesterday, on his radio station (AM 700 KSEV) I heard Patrick complain about "personal attacks from Democrats" and it will be curious to see if he spends much time on that rather than the issues.
It will be interesting to see the Republican platform coming out of the 2014 State convention because I have a feeling it will be much more conservative than the 2012 version. You can expect the remaining candidates, for Attorney General, Comptroller, Agricultural Commissioner and Land Commissioner follow Patrick's lead on all these issues.
Another promise that Patrick has made, and it will be interesting to see if the other Republicans will follow, is that he plans to campaign in traditional Democratic strongholds. Patrick believes that his 'invasion' framing of immigration issues helps him within the Hispanic community. Time will tell if Republicans find this to be an issue or not.
For the remaining campaigns it will be interesting to see how much effort they put into their respective races. So far, George P. Bush has made some insular speeches and has not really been actively engaged. Given his opponent it's very likely he won't need to be. Ryan Sitton had to campaign hard to win the nomination. He was shunted by the GOP "Pay for Play" slates and had the albatross of newspaper editorial board endorsements weighing him down. He ran a campaign based on his oil and gas industry experience. He'll probably do the same here, but will also focus on what he considers to be his opponent's lack of industry knowledge, and general disdain for the industry at large.
The last campaign worth mentioning specifically is Ken Paxton for Attorney General. In the primary and run-off, ethics questions arose regarding his campaign expenditures and filings. I would imagine that Sam Houston, the Democratic nominee, is going to attempt to gain some traction there. In addition to overcoming a candidate with a historical name (which is typically good for a few percentage points from low-information voters) it will be interesting to see how Paxton deals with this, again, or whether he chooses to ignore it as a settled issue.
Finally, unlike the Democrats, who will run a more coordinated campaign, the Republican campaigns will be mostly driven by the candidates. They can do this because they are both better funded in Texas and have deep bench strength when it comes to running statewide campaigns. There will be a few over-arching themes that I would expect Republicans to bring forward however. One will be Obamacare which, on a National level, is struggling as cost projections are proving to be under-estimated and for which Texas is being blamed for it's struggles. Expect Republicans to wear the responsibility for this as a badge of honor. Second, is the EPA. This has proven to be a winning issue with voters and is seen, by Republicans, as evidence of Federal overreach into issues protected by the 10th amendment to the Constitution of the United States. As the candidates wage their own campaigns expect to see coordinated Republican attacks continue against Washington D.C. and the Obama agenda. I think it goes without saying, this will be the sole focus of the Cornyn campaign.
Despite being slightly fractured along two lines, I do think the Republicans will all work together to move the slate forward. While I think Abbott is the least likely to strike a firebrand tone, I do think he won't be opposed to coat-tailing on the other candidates to get these fiery messages across. I think the State party, and other affiliated groups, will continue to take their "abortion Barbie" shots at Wendy Davis and will do most of the heavy lifting in terms of painting the Democrats as a progressive group way out of touch with Texas voters.
And that's it for the campaigning. Next week we'll start with the Governor's race and try and get a picture of what each candidate's governing style would be.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions please let me know.
