Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison will run for governor. The original plan was for her to resign her seat early, head home and campaign. But the NRSC apparently convinced her to wait until later, lest her resignation trigger a Senate special election Democrats had a decent chance of pulling off.
Then the teabag parties happened, incumbent Gov. Rick Perry pandered to the secessionists, and a funny thing happened -- he became really popular with his state's rabid Right. Numbers that had been in the gutter last year suddenly started looking pretty damn good. In fact, the latest Ras poll of the Texas primary has Perry leading 42-38.
Perry's people, for their part, have been aggressively shopping their own internal numbers showing Hutchison up 45-39. They clearly don't want to panic her and have her come home any sooner. But her increasingly tenuous position hasn't escaped Hutchison's notice, and she's realizing that she can't unilaterally leave Texas to Perry while she sits in a useless minority in DC. So the question isn't if she's coming back home, but when.
Hutchison doesn't want to leave her party in a lurch, nor give up her day job and bully pulpit too soon. And she's probably loath to hand the governor a plum vacancy to fill – though, as we saw in Illinois, New York and Delaware last fall, governors don't always win friends when they get the chance to anoint a senator.
But as the primary gets closer, Hutchison will feel a stronger and stronger tug to return full time to Texas.
Adding to the drama, Houston Mayor Bill White is going around publicly telling people that Hutchison has assured him she'll resign in time for a May 2010 special election. White is hot for that Senate seat and has been gearing up his machine for that senatorial run, hoping to break the Democratic Party's long-running losing streak in the state.
But why would Hutchison tell the Democratic White about her intentions and not people of her own party? Seems bizarre. One theory is that former Lt. Gov. Fred Ben Barnes, the guy that got George W. Bush his cushy National Guard gig and a supposed Democrat, is close to both, and is making sure that White and Hutchison coordinate their near-term plans so they don't end up running for the same office. Beats me if that's true.
Still, whether she's talking to White or not, fact is that Hutchison has little reason to stay in DC, and every reason to hurry home. It looks like 2010 will be the year of the GOP primaries, with FL-Sen, UT-Sen, MO-Sen, and KS-Sen (and probably more) races slated to feature battles between movement conservative and establishment Republican. Texas will soon join these ranks, with Perry moving far Right (hence the fringe secessionist talk) to counteract Hutchison's broader appeal. And while it's laughable to consider her a "moderate", in comparison to Perry, that's how she'll be described.
So we're about to be treated with a battle royale in the Lone Star State, and given the polling trends, the longer Hutchison waits in DC, the tougher her task ahead.
Update: Missed this update when I wrote this up last night:
But that doesn't seem likely. Senior Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is preparing to run for governor and everybody expects her to resign to spend all of her time on what could be a wild primary battle with incumbent Gov. Rick Perry.
But when will she quit the Senate?
Cornyn, who also chairs the Senate Republicans' campaign committee, has pleaded with her not to resign early. After all, if there's a special election to replace Hutchison, Democrats would have a golden opportunity to pick up the seat, with a strong field including Houston Mayor Bill White and ex-Comptroller John Sharp. Cornyn would rather be safe than have to spend millions playing defense [...]
"My guess," he told Texas reporters at his Senate office today, is that Hutchison will resign "this fall sometime."
That would allow Perry to appoint an interim senator and allow a special election to take place in May 2010 instead of this November (which would happen if she resigned this spring or summer).
But Cornyn readily admits that he has no inside info.
"There's only one person who knows," the San Antonio Republican said, "and it's not me."
Funny that Hutchison isn't extending a simple courtesy to her fellow Texan by letting him know when she's quitting.