Floor Play

Three days into his official presidential bid, and Rick Perry’s website isn’t much to brag about. It doesn’t even have a section on issue positions. Just the basics—who he is and how to give money.

But don’t worry. Rick Perry already ran one of the most innovative campaigns in recent memory last year, combining old-school grassroots organizing with social media. His website was a key piece in the strategy—a strategy that seems particularly well suited to running in Iowa and New Hampshire.

I outlined the story in my profile of Perry’s general consultant and chief strategist, Dave Carney:

Heading into Perry’s 2006 reelection campaign, Carney picked up a book to read on a plane—Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout. When he finished reading he promptly ordered copies for everyone he worked with. Then he called one of the authors, Yale political scientist Donald Green. Like many others who read the book, Carney was shocked by its findings: That old-fashioned, door-to-door campaigning is the most efficient way to turn out voters. Volunteer phone calls are pretty good too. But television ads, mailers and robocalls—the mainstays of modern campaigns and moneymakers for political consultants—have virtually no impact on voter turnout.

Carney invited the two authors, along with a couple other professors, to run experiments on Perry’s 2006 re-election campaign. When they returned with the same findings, Carney and the Perry team decided that in 2010, they would throw the playbook out the window.

For the 2010 primary against the popular and well-financed U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry’s team created “Home Headquarters.” (You can still see the old page at Perry’s current website.) Those who signed up agreed to identify 12 Perry supporters and get them out to early voting. The campaign offered door prizes like lunch with former quarterback Troy Aikman or tacos with country music star Pat Green. The campaign held off on television ads until just before election day, and they even charged for yard signs. Through reaching out online, the campaign continued to build supporters, and then quickly got them recruiting others. The website functioned as its own headquarters of sorts, offering tips on reaching out and giving luddites lessons in using Facebook and Twitter. Unlike the Obama campaign’s famous website, the Perry campaign focused not on fundraising but getting people to turn out to vote. The entire effort was a resounding success.

Perry’s team would be well-situated to take their strategy national. It has a natural connection to states like Iowa and New Hampshire, where small town politics rule the day. Having a well-organized network of supporters, each of whom operates somewhat independently, would almost certainly give the campaign an advantage, but few campaigns have been willing to try such a tactic. Perry’s 2010 campaign was, in many ways, unique. “Putting quite a lot of money into grassroots organizing, especially early grassroots organizing, is something that was not done in years past,” said Donald Green, one of the Yale professors who studied Perry’s 2006 campaign and considers the 2010 strategy a “bold new model.”

And should the Perry team recreate their home headquarters for a national audience, they’ll have plenty of people to turn to. For over a year now, wherever he’s been, Perry has asked audiences to text “FIRED UP” to a phone number. At this point, having criss-crossed the country recruiting businesses to move to Texas and speaking as the head of the Republican Governor’s Association, Perry’s bound to have talked to a lot of people in a lot of cities. And that means a lot of cellphone numbers.

Meanwhile, his chief competitors are hardly innovating online. Michele Bachmann’s site has the requisite links to Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube links. You can sign up to get email updates or click to donate money. But outside of a few web videos, the site is hardly what you’d call interactive.

Romney’s site has a promising icon for “Action.” Click it and you come to a page with four options: fundraise, gear up, donate and volunteer. Unfortunately, not a single one of these options has a link. You may want to volunteer but there’s no clear way to do it. You can start an account under the dorkily-named “myMitt” program shamelessly taken from Barack Obama’s also poorly named “myBO.” But unlike Obama’s social networking site, this has barely any instructions. Once you log-in, even the site’s donate button goes away. All you can do is create fundraising goals for yourself.

All three candidates have time to unveil innovative strategies for winning the primary, and right now, Perry’s path is possibly the least obvious. experience, combined with his campaign’s willingness to take risks, has already yielded   has been running in enormous state, against tough candidates

Despite a whole lot of chatter, Gov. Rick Perry has yet to actually announce that he is running for president. That means he can hardly fundraise at full capacity and he isn’t moonlighting in Iowa and New Hampshire. So you might not expect to see the headline: “Rick Perry To Be The Republican Presidential Nominee.“

The banner comes from InTrade, a predictions market that takes odds on whether different things will happen. It allows you to buy and sell stocks on different predictions. And right now, the prediction that Perry will be the nominee is leading the way, currently valued more than such predictions for any of the actual, announced candidates. The news is particularly striking in light of the recent Rasmussen poll, which has Perry in a virtual tie with Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and within striking distance of former Massachussetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

By InTrade’s measure, Bachmann is slipping. The extreme Tea Party conservative peaked in early July, and even then, the site only showed her with an 18 percent chance of becoming the nominee. Now it’s down to 5.9 percent. Meanwhile Perry’s currently shown with a 35 percent chance, beating out Mitt Romney by almost five points.

Perry’s chart is striking. His stock value has more than doubled since the beginning of July. Except for a slight downturn last week, the governor’s value has been climbing pretty steadily. Despite taking some heat for his prayer rally and its advocates, Perry has plenty of people convinced that he’s the guy to beat. 

The news is important not because it’s necessarily accurate, but because it’s validating. Much like the polls, InTrade helps feed the notion that Perry can win, despite how long he’s waited to announce. The waiting is certainly a gamble—he’s avoiding some of the scrutiny the other candidates face and he doesn’t have to actually take anyone o head-on. But he’ll have to raise money fast and ingratiate himself quickly with Iowa and New Hampshire voters, who like to meet their candidates face-to-face. To raise enough money and initiate the necessary level of organization, Perry needs to remain a credible threat. The more Perry receives accolades, the more attention his non-campaign campaign gets, and the better his actual chances will be.

And predictions from InTrade can only help him. 

Rep. James White, the East Texas freshman and staunch Tea Party Republican, just discovered he will face a primary challenger—in the form of his current colleague, Rep. Mike “Tuffy” Hamilton, R-Mauriceville.

Hamilton is in the midst of moving to Hardin County. Thanks to the new district lines that the Legislature just passed, that means both Hamilton and White, who lives in Tyler County, will face each other in a Republican primary to battle out who will represent District 19. Both men have confirmed they plan on running against one another. 

Hamilton says he’s been planning the move, and knew for certain before the House voted for the new districts. “It was before we voted for the maps and after the maps were already out,” he said. 

When the state House redrew district lines in the spring using the 2010 U.S. Census data, most newspapers reported that Hamilton had been “paired” with Rep. Allen Ritter, R-Nederland, meaning under the new lines, the two incumbents were now living in the same district. Redistricting is an inherently political process, and those in control (in this case the Republicans) are always trying to make the draw a map that will magnify the impact of their voters and minimize support for the opposition. It’s also an opportunity for the leadership to punish those members who have fallen out of favor.

That’s why the Ritter-Hamilton pairing was a bit of a surprise. “Pairing” was bound to happen with the Republican 101-seat majority; it would be very difficult to draw a map that protected all the incumbent Republican seats. But Ritter had helped give the Republicans their supermajority when he and another member switched parties before the Legislative session began. Meanwhile Hamilton has been a pretty consisten supporter for Speaker of the House Joe Straus. 

White, on the other hand, threw his lot in with the anti-Straus crowd. White, who’s African American, ran as a Tea Party candidate, and won an unexpected victory against longtime lawmaker Jim McReynolds. I actually profiled his race back in October. Upon arriving at the Capitol, joined 14 of the most conservative members of the House in voting against Straus for speaker (despite there being no opposition). Throughout the session, he was one of the most extreme conservative votes.

Hamilton has had a much longer tenure in the House than the neophyte White, and that will likely give him a campaign advantage when it comes to fundraising. On a more disturbing note, during White’s previous race, many speculated that he would have trouble overcoming racial prejudice in the district. While he won in the midst of a Republican wave, such prejudice could be more of an issue in a GOP primary against opponent. White, however, is optimistic about his chances. “I think we’ll be alright,” he said. 

Hamilton says for his part, the race will be a positive one, focused on what he can for constituents, and that Speaker’s race politics have nothing to do wtih his decision. He says he’s been planning on moving to Hardin County for a while now.

Hamilton says he thought his move was pretty public. But turns out White never got that memo. ”I thought I was the only incumbent!” White said. 

He also says House leaders didn’t like having a supermajority because it “increased the level of responsibility and accountability.” Many moderate members referenced the unprecedented level of power that Tea Party groups and anti-tax groups like Empower Texans had around the Capitol. Michael Quinn Sullivan, who heads Empower Texans, could inspire fear in moderate Republicans with the threat of negative blogposts.

White argues that because the leadership disliked such scrutiny, the ultra-conservatives like him are under attack, rather than getting protection. “The establishment Republicans in the House, I do not think they like having 101 Republicans,” he said. ”They had a mission to make sure we would never have a large majority again.”

This could get exciting. 

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Monday was a rough day at the Legislature for education advocates trying to protect teacher contracts and assuage the $4 billion cuts to public schools. They lost on both fronts. But largely unnoticed were some minor victories contained in the school finance language of Senate Bill 1, a must-pass piece of legislation that the chambers must vote on by Wednesday, when the session ends. 

In broad strokes, the school finance deal contained in the bill barely differs from the deal that the House and Senate negotiated during the regular session, before it was derailed by a Sen. Wendy Davis’ filibuster. Despite the woefully unequal funding structure already in place, the plan cuts approximately 6 percent from all districts in the first year of the bienium and in the second year, takes three-fourths of the cuts from wealthier, “target revenue” districts. (For more on the plan, see here.)

Most importantly, however, the new plan represents a shift in funding philosophy. Instead of funding school districts automatically, based on how much our formulas say they need, the new system introduces a new factor into the equation that allows the legislature to fund districts based on what money is available. The shift would mean that for the first time since 1949, school districts could not count on the state to fund them fully year to year. Furthermore, in the first version of the bill, if a district’s needs changed during the year (for instance, if more students entered than were expected) the state was no longer obligated to settle up such costs.

State Rep. Diane Patrick, R-Arlington, successfully attached an amendment to the House version of the bill that limited the changes to the next two years, after which school financing would revert back to the current system. After that, schools would once again get automatic funding. Furthermore, her amendment required the state to settle up with school districts that did not receive as much as they were entitled to. 

The final version of the bill—which will very likely pass today—includes the settle-up language and a watered-down expiration date. Instead of expiring in 2013, as Patrick’s amendment originally dictated, conference committee agreed to let the new school finance plan expire in 2015. That may not sound like much of a victory, but it’s one of the few areas where the special session has offered improvements to what would likely have passed during the regular session.

In other areas, there’s much less for education advocates to be excited about.

Monday the House and Senate both passed Senate Bills 2 and 8. Senate Bill 2 had once been a source of great hope for Democrats. State Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, successfully attached an amendment to the House version of the bill that said if the Rainy Day Fund exceeds $6.5 billlion, up to $2 billion of surplus money would go toward public education. The maneuver earned Republican support because it did not actually spend Rainy Day money currently available. But the victory was short lived. Pressure from fiscal conservative groups soon scared many formerly supportive Republican members. The House ultimately asked negotiators to strip out the measure. When the bill came back from conference committee, the Howard amendment was gone, and the bill passed both chambers without the extra funds. It now seems like the $4 billion cut to the state’s school districts is all but written in stone.

Meanwhile, Democrats also saw one of their few legislative victories in the regular session go down in flames. The House and Senate passed Senate Bill 8, the so-called “mandate relief” legislation that makes it both easier and cheaper to fire teachers, as well as allows school districts to distribue furloughs and pay cuts. The bill, which was carried by Senate Education Committee Chair Florence Shapiro and House Public Education Committee Chair Rob Eissler in their respective chambers, gives greater power to school administrators and according to proponents, it will give school districts various options for cutting costs. It’s only fair, they say, given that the state is cutting funding.

During the regular session, however, teachers groups worked feverishly in a successful effort to kill the measure. For them, it represented an assault on contractual protections that teachers fought long and hard to gain. Shapiro never found the requisite two-thirds support to consider the bill on the Senate floor, while Eissler’s attempts to pass the thing fell victim to a series of technical points of order. The session ended without either chamber passing the measure, one of the few victories Democrats and teachers groups could claim. During the special session, however, the bill flew through both chambers and came out of conference committee without a hitch. 

In the face of losing the Howard amendment and seeing “mandate relief” passed, the victories in Senate Bill 1 will likely be cold comfort to many in education. But it may be the only comfort they get for a while.