Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) will announce she is delaying her resignation from the Senate so that she can continue to represent Texas in the Senate while pursuing the Republican nomination for governor in the Lone Star state. […]
The decision also gives Hutchison an employment insurance policy: If she loses the primary, she’ll still have the Senate seat until at least 2012.
What an embarrassing climb-down for Hutchison; after enjoying years of media acclaim as the state’s most popular pol, her lack of traction against Gov. Rick Perry and his teabagging base sure makes it seem like she’s losing her confidence in a race that, at one point, seemed like it would be hers for the taking. It almost makes you wonder if Hutchison will bother challenging Perry at all!
Assuming Hutchison can’t beat Perry in the gubernatorial primary, this also means that the Democratic candidates who were laying the groundwork for a spring 2010 special Senate election — former Comptroller John Sharp and current Houston Mayor Bill White — will have to decide whether or not to extend their campaigns for 2012. It’s also conceivable that one of the two may feel compelled to shift gears to the gubernatorial race.
UPDATE: The Associated Press reports that KBH is still planning to resign from the Senate regardless of the result… just not before the primary:
Hutchison, a Republican, plans to tell Republican women in a speech in Galveston on Saturday that she is stepping down in 2010 because there are too many important issues facing Congress for her to quit this fall as she had originally planned. Her campaign provided the prepared remarks to The Associated Press on Friday.
“I realize this will keep me in the Senate past the primary election,” Hutchison’s speech says. “These issues are too important to leave the fight to a newly appointed freshman senator who will be selected in the midst of a political storm.”
In the speech, she makes it clear that she will leave the Senate in March regardless of whether she or Perry wins the primary.
I guess we’ll see about that one. (Hat-tip: conspiracy)
LATER UPDATE: Both the White and Sharp campaigns wasted no time in contacting me and reiterating that yes, they’ll be running for Senate regardless of when the election takes place. (And according to BOR, that includes 2012.)
What a looser. Jeez, and to think I was looking forward to a Mid 2010 senate election to see what the mood the country was in.
I don’t see how she can win the primary while juggling her senate duties but as the Rasmussen poll makes clear resigning now would hurt her even more. The AP says she will leave the senate regardless of the result but I have my doubts.
http://www.google.com/hostedne…
Shame the Dems can’t shift their warchests because Perry is very beatable in the general. Another great example of the teabaggers hurting themselves.
wants something to point to the teabaggers. She can said, “I voted against the socialist 99.9% of the time!”
The Texas Senate Race in 2010 will be in November and not May? Provided that Hutchison does step down.
This is the same issue I was thinking about in 2008. Obama resigned his position but McCain kept his – who had more motivation to win at that point?
KBH is a coward! I knew this race was too good to be true. I told a group of lawyers in Dallas who were trying to organize a fundraiser for her that they are better off burning their $$ cos she’ll never beat him. Is she going to try and out-Tea bag the grand poohbah of the Tea-baggers? I doubt if she’ll even make the race (when do nominations close?) and I fully expect her to return to the Senate. McConnell and the big money Texans that bankroll the GOP will put enormous pressure on her to remain in the Senate cos (a) she’ll win another term and (b) even if a GOPer is more likely to retain her seat, it will be an expensive race with funds that are better spent attacking Dem incumbents. Forget it folks…this race, if there ever was one, is over!
Does anyone else really miss Molly Ivins right now? She’d be having a field day with Governor Goodhair and the Breck Girl tussling over a teabagger base.
to the Governor’s race. To be quite honest, we are not going to win a special Senate race in Texas (except possibly under an Obama landslide in 2012).
But we may win the Governor’s race if Perry is the nominee. Yes, the teabaggers will be in full force. But the old-line GOP voters who backed Strayhorn in 2006 and likely will back Hutchison in the 2010 primary may well be willing to defect to the Dem if Perry is the nominee. Especially if that nominee is White (Sharp is closer to the old conservative Southern Dem, while White is probably more appealing to business Repubs.)
Short of that, I think Tom Schieffer (a Bush Democrat), might be appealing enough to old-line Repubs against Perry as well, if he can raise money and run a good campaign. This is a race, because of redistricting, I will support any partisan Democrat, regardless of how conservative he/she may be.
Of course, if Hutchison wins the nomination, she is Governor.
I don’t understand it…
Its the same thing with Judd Greg, any particular rhyme or reason for this kinda stuff to happen?
If she unequivocally pledges to resign from the Senate whether or not she beats Perry in the primary, it’s going to be hard for her to wiggle out of that if she does want to keep her seat. It’ll make her even more vulnerable to losing a Senate primary.
I’d say she’s already vulnerable to a primary challenge from the right if she decided to stay in office and ran for re-election in 2012. Even though she’s very popular among moderates and independents, Texas is full of extreme right-wing teabaggers who will come out en masse to vote against her in a closed GOP primary since she’s seen as a “moderate.” There are plenty of right wing House members who would love to move up to a Senate seat. I could especially see her moderately pro-choice stance being used against her by a Louie Gohmert or Pete Olsen in a primary.
Hell, you can definitely tell the GOP has purged the party of almost all the moderates when Kay Bailey Hutchison can be considered a moderate voice.
She will be in the primary all the way up until the primary election, lose it, but not resign her seat either before or after. She will give the same excuse as she is giving now about not resigning. But I dont think she’ll run for re-election in 2012.
Really, I think Bill White would stand a better chance against a highly vulnerable Perry than your not unpopular GOP Senate nominee. Not saying they’ll be popular, either…but just not unpopular unless they do something really stupid. But I guess White just doesnt care to be Gov. Definitely seems that way. Winning a Senate seat in TX is not an easy thing to do…but beating a vulnerable Perry…much different.
Perry use to be known as the ‘Religious Right’ candidate in the race rather than the ‘fiscal conservative’ but now hes focusing so much on fiscal issues that i think even the fiscal conservatives will strongly rally behind him. Kind of hard to believe that he use to be a Democrat until like the mid-80s. He was even a Democrat in the TX Legislature! Before switching sides. Now hes basically a far right Republican. Talk about a switch…
Of Ann Northup’s primary against Ernie Fletcher. I was quite surprised that Fletcher not only won, but cruised to victory in that primary. In retrospect, my sense is that Fletcher had that tribal appeal to the conservative base with Northup clearly lacked. Hutchison seems determined not to make that same mistake, but it’s turning out to be hard to out-teabag Rick Perry.