Yesterday, during time-outs in the Hornets-Spurs game, I was subjected to Kay Bayley Hutchison's campaign ads. As the TV switched back to Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili "sacrificing their bodies" (as Sean Elliott likes to put it), my boyfriend and I looked at each other and said, "So THAT's what she's running on?"
Her big issue, with which she tries to lure Republican voters away from the incumbent governor, is toll roads. Yes, toll roads. Of all the crap that Perry has pulled over the years, that's what she wants to focus on.
The ad shows a Texas country highway, and a voiceover announces:
This is not a European road. Yet.
According to KBH's claim, Gov. Perry wants to bring in foreigners (apparently from Europe, but no specific country or company is mentioned) to benefit from the privatization of Texas highways.
Gordon Dickson of the Star-Telegram writes:
U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s campaign began running ads last week showing a highway sign flashing messages critical of the defunct Trans-Texas Corridor, a favorite toll road project of Gov. Rick Perry. The governor’s camp fired back with a similar ad on YouTube using highway sign images to criticize Hutchison for not explaining how she would pay for new roads.
Debra Medina, another GOP candidate, is not running toll-road-specific ads. But in campaign swings she has poked at Perry for pursuing foreign investment in toll roads and wondered why needed roads can’t be built with current funding.
A veteran Republican strategist doubts that the toll road messages will sway many Republican voters. The ads also ignore that some of the state’s largest highway projects, which many Dallas-Fort Worth commuters are eager to see completed, involve toll roads and foreign companies.
"This is not a clean-cut issue. It’s true that Republicans don’t like toll roads, but people forget where the Trans-Texas Corridor came from," said Royal Masset, former Texas Republican Party political director. "The libertarian wing [of the party] pushed toll roads because we believed toll roads to be more fair than raising taxes."
Governor Rick "Goodhair" Perry's people respond on his website:
It is against Texas law to convert existing roads to toll roads without a local public vote, though Sen. Hutchison may be unaware of that fact considering she has been in Washington for the past 17 years. In 2005, Gov. Perry signed legislation into law sponsored by former State Representative Mike Krusee and then-State Senator and current Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples prohibiting such a conversion (HB2702, 79th session). On 1/5/10, WFAA reported, "[Perry] signed a second bill that would allow the state to switch a free road to a toll road only if voters in that county approve. The state and Perry can't do anything without voters going along."
(Emphasis mine.)
Of course Slick Rick has to point out that Kay is "out of touch with Texas" because she has been in Washington too long. He conveniently omits that Kay has been in D.C. for 17 years because Texas voters sent her there. Besides, Perry's approval rates do not exactly reflect that HE is in touch with his fellow Texans.
He has a point, though. The already-dead Trans-Texas Corridor is not particularly high on most voters' priority list. However, poor Kay is in a dilemma: the issues that really matter to people (poverty, education, teenage pregnancy) require solutions that do not fit in with the wingnut creed. The Republican answers to such problems have been tried and do not work.
So all she has to go with is good old xenophobia (foreigners will charge you for using the roads your tax dollars already paid for) and people's aversion to pay for the maintenance of the infrastructure they take for granted until it fails.
There are so many negatives one could point out about Gov. Perry that it would take an hour-long ad to get it all in. But if Kay wants the teabagger vote, she can't go there. So toll roads it is.
Btw, I tried to visit her website, but you have to sign up as a supporter first before you can get to the content part. I couldn't find a current ad on YouTube either, so no embedded video for now.
As I Manu Ginobili -- bleeding from the nose but victorious -- being interviewed, I still couldn't get over that silly ad. Toll roads. Good luck with that.
P.S. Before the Texas bashing commences, "y'all" need to know that the secessionists (the ones who are serious about it, that is) are a vocal but small minority. While most Texans see themselves as Texans first, they do consider themselves Americans too, especially when it comes to war and the Olympics.