Spotlight won't be on Texas in 2008

Monday, August 28, 2006 For the first time in a half-century, Texas looms as a nonplayer in the 2008 presidential race. To be sure, prospective candidates are visiting the state to help raise the millions it takes to run for the White House. Veteran Texas strategists will figure in several campaigns. But that's likely to be the sum of the Texas role in choosing a successor to George W. Bush. Barring an unlikely vice-presidential selection, the state has no candidates for either national ticket. The strongly Republican tilt of recent years means Democrats are unlikely to spend much time and money contesting the state's 34 electoral votes. And the revised Democratic Party calendar means that, barring unexpected changes, the state once again will have little or no influence in picking the candidates. All of this marks a dramatic change for Texas over the prevailing practice of the past 50 years. Four candidates with strong Texas ties — Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and the two George Bushes — have won the presidency, Lloyd Bentsen ran for vice president, and every election saw at least one Texan in a major role. In fact, 2008 would be the first presidential campaign year since 1952 in which there won't be a single Texan serving as a major player, either as a presidential or a vice presidential candidate, or in the way the late John Connally helped Richard Nixon win the 1972 race. Bush, of course, will still be president. But he has pledged to stay neutral, and his low approval raises doubts about how closely prospective successors will want to identify with him. Other than that, the only potential factor that could add to the state's long list of candidates would be if the 2008 GOP nominee picked a Texan, most likely Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, as his vice-presidential running mate. Her name could come into play as one of the GOP's most highly regarded women officeholders if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York wins the Democratic presidential nomination. Otherwise, there would seem little reason to choose a Texan for either ticket. The Democrats, shut out in recent years from statewide offices, have no prospective national candidates. And the fact that the state has become so reliably Republican means the GOP probably will look elsewhere to bolster its electoral chances. One-party state The fact that Texas has become pretty much of a one-party state nationally is one factor in its lessened role in presidential politics. It virtually rules out a repetition of the way John Kennedy acted to broaden his appeal in Texas and the rest of the South by picking Johnson as his 1960 running mate. To be sure, the first Texan picked for a national ticket was a Democrat chosen when the state was as solidly Democratic as it is solidly Republican today, the late John Nance Garner. But Garner owed his choice as Franklin Roosevelt's running mate to the fact that it helped Roosevelt win the votes of California and Texas for the presidential nomination at a time when political bosses, rather than primary voters, made that choice. Nowadays, the top Texas officials are not only Republicans but, for the most part, very conservative ones who might have difficulty appealing to the broad swath of voters needed for a successful national candidacy. That does not rule out the prospect that, in a future election, the state will produce so charismatic a conservative Republican officeholder that he or she would be able to mount a national race. Texas still has one of the largest number of delegates in both the Republican and Democratic parties, a prize that would help win a presidential nomination. But barring any change in the state's plans for a primary on the second Tuesday in March, chances are excellent that Texas voters will again merely ratify the choices made earlier in the process by voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and other early voting states. Perhaps the Democratic Party's decision to insert Nevada caucuses between Iowa and New Hampshire and place a South Carolina primary before other states vote will create a more open nominating battle than in recent elections. But so many states from both parties are likely to hold February primaries, it's unlikely that either nomination still will be open by the time Texans vote. Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.