PC and AHC: Purple Texas

A rough element of one of my TL ideas are changes in Texas politics, wherein:

1998: John Sharp narrowly defeats Rick Perry for Lt Governor (Bush still re-elected Governor)
2000: As Bush is still elected President, Sharp assumes the office of Texas Governor, giving the state a couple of years of Democratic Governance before...
2002: Kay Bailey Hutchinson defeats Sharp's bid for a term in his own right; she appoints John Cornyn to her old seat; meanwhile, Rick Perry wins the other US Senate seat from Texas; the Democrats also do (somewhat? slightly?) better in the state legislative elections than OTL

First, does this sound plausible so far? Second, what would need to happen, after 2002 TTL, for Hutchinson and/or Cornyn to be in a tight race come 2006 -- and subsequently, for Texas to be "in play" come 2008, or 2012 failing that? Third, how would the elections be thus effected? (After all, the 2008 Democratic nominee had 220 "safe" ECVs, and if Texas' 34 were up for grabs...)
 
An earlier economic collapse -> Mitt Romney winning the Florida '08 primary and then becoming the nominee would put Texas in play I'd think.

Your scenario could be enough on it's own. The problem with the Ds in Texas is incompetence; if John Sharp can consolidate the party, and DeLay's gerrymander doesn't happen, the Democrats are going to be in a stronger position for nabbing a Senate seat. The governorship could've been theirs IOTL if Kinky had run as a Democrat, so that's fairly simple.
 

Jasen777

Donor
Well, I don't know how good of a Senate candidate Perry would've made if he had lost the Lt. Gov election (which he easily could have, Dubya's coattails barely carried him).

If a couple post-Bush years in the governorship help keep the Texas state Democratic Party from collapsing, Texas could have gone the way of West Virginia or Arkansas were there's considerable vote splitting and Democrats can win in state elections. But it would likely still be a fairly safe Republican state in presidential elections. If Bullock hadn't had cancer he could have inherited the governorship (wouldn't had to have retire from the Lt. Gov) and very likely could have won it in his own right, that would seem even more likely.
 
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If a couple post-Bush years in the governorship help keep the Texas state Democratic Party from collapsing, Texas could have gone the way of West Virginia or Arkansas were there's considerable vote splitting and Democrats can win in state elections. But it would likely still be a fairly safe Republican state in presidential elections.

Will admit, I had not considered this as a possibility. What else then, aside from a generally less gutted Texas Democratic Party, would need to happen for Texas to be competitive in the Presidential races?
 
I'd love for that to be a reality.

The problem with Texas is that while the major cities have gone Democratic, esp Houston, Austin and SA, the rural and suburban voters have stayed 70-80% GOP.

The state legislature and Congressional delegations should be roughly 60% Dem if you went by population and likely voting patterns, but thanks to gerrymandering and so forth, the GOP dominates state government and the whole patronage system of local and state government.
We're a bandwagon state. Once a party establishes itself as dominant, everyone flips.

Plumber, you're dead on re: the self-destructive tendencies of the Texas Dem party.
However, the Texas Dem party has to square some very uncomfortable circles between the old-school rural Blue Dogs, intramural spats between black, Hispanic, and liberal white politicos making a consistent message damned near impossible, and coming to some kind of consistent stand on female reproductive rights. That messes up the ground game and political coalition-building to be seen as an effective alternative to the GOP.

My POD's for Dem competitiveness would be butterflying W's election as governor with Ann Richards' re-election, Henry Cisneros not imploding as he did, and finding some way to keep the rural population voting Dem.
 
This was OTL from 1952-1996 (and until 1992 a Democrat had never won without Texas) and all signs are pointing to Texas returning to being purple in the next few cycles, the time we're living in now might just be seen as a blip.
 
Texas is a purple state already I reckon. It's only 45% white. Three problems: abysmal Hispanic turnout, Texas Democratic disorganization, gerrymandering.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
A few election changes don't alter the underlying social, religious and demographic trends in Texas, though.
 
I had a thought of the Superconducting Super Collider being saved. With a major piece of tech in the center of Texas, Dallas-Ft. Worth sees the sort of research influx that the North Carolina Reasearch Triangle has.

A butterfly of Gov. Ann Richards surviving due to not making inappropriate comments to some Girl Scouts means that the Texas Democratic Party isn't castrated so early wouldn't hurt.

The demographic changes of incoming highly educated and the Democratic party being not in pieces is able to play at the state level, doesn't get gerrymandered out of existence and is potentially a Dem pick-up with the correct candidates for POTUS/VPOTUS, or at least is enough to make the GOP sweat.
 
Looking over the past few Presidential elections, I'd say that* a realistic definition of "competitive", would be a difference of less than eight percent (so something like at least 46%), making Texas one of the ten tightest states of 2008.

Texas is a purple state already I reckon. It's only 45% white. Three problems: abysmal Hispanic turnout, Texas Democratic disorganization, gerrymandering.

Well, the latter two have come up, and I'd buy a (brief) Sharp Governorship and averting the 2003 redistricting both being enough to sufficiently curb them, Democrat disorganization and gerrymandering respectively; so that just leaves Hispanic turnout.

As to 2008 Presidential tickets who could flip the state -- I'm kind of hoping this can work with Obama still winning in 2008, but I'm far less married to the GOP Ticket remaining as OTL. So maybe would Obama v Romney four year earlier, combined with the OP, be enough?

Another question -- if Perry loses his 1998 Lt Governor bid, and comes back to win a 2002 Senate bid, what kind of Senator would he be TTL? I wonder if he's flexible enough that, given the circumstances in his home state (TTL) if he'd even be capable of running for re-election as a pragmatist/"moderate"? (I realize that seems crazy, but if a Democratic Presidential candidate does find a way to make the state competitive...)

*absent someone like Ross Perot
 
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