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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (309821)	10/19/2002 3:24:34 PM
From: Mr. Whist	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

PsychoKen: Here's a much better story for you to read to your Sunday school class tomorrow. Seems that earlier this year, the GOP in Texas, in the name of "expanding the small tent," tapped a well-qualified (incumbent) Hispanic state Supreme Court candidate by the name of Xavier Rodriguez to be their poster boy for diversity. All of GWB's GOP Lone Star pols endorsed XR. Only problem was the bubbas in Texas said , "Nah ... we'd rather vote for the right-wing guy with the last name of Smith." This shoots the crap out of your theory that the GOP is attracting the Hispanic voter. ***************************************************** Headline: Smith Upsets X-Rod in Shocking High Court Republican Primary By John Council and Mary Alice Robbins, Texas Lawyer, March 18, 2002 In the most surprising outcome of the 2002 Republican primary election, incumbent Texas Supreme Court Justice Xavier Rodriguez lost his seat to a lesser-known candidate -- despite having the support of GOP heavyweights including Gov. Rick Perry. Rodriguez, appointed to the high court last August by Gov. Rick Perry, had the biggest campaign war chest of any Supreme Court candidate, spending $558,000; the money bought him statewide television advertising. Yet he lost to Austin solo practitioner Steven Wayne Smith by nine percentage points. Smith spent a mere $9,500 on his campaign. Several political analysts are shocked by Rodriguez's loss. They suspect the main reason Rodriguez's campaign went down in flames was due to the "name game" -- Smith has a familiar, ballot-friendly name that voters responded to while Rodriguez did not. Rodriguez agrees with that assessment. "I don't think it came down to my merits or the merits of Steve Smith," Rodriguez says. "I think it came down to who had a simpler name." Smith, the lawyer who filed Hopwood v. Texas, a seminal affirmative-action case that eliminated racial preferences in law school admissions at the University of Texas School of Law, could not be reached for comment by press time on March 14. Smith's campaign manager, David Rogers, dismisses the notion that Smith won the race on his name alone. "That's silly," Rogers says. "Steve ran on a message. He ran hard. He appeared at events from just south of the Red River practically to the Gulf of Mexico. His message was that he was a proven conservative." Smith will face Democrat Margaret Mirabal, a justice on Houston's 1st Court of Appeals, in the November general election. In 1998, Smith lost to Republican incumbent Deborah Hankinson in the Supreme Court primary, but his approach this year was the same as four years ago -- he cast himself as the true conservative in the race. "I'm running to give Republican primary voters a choice to vote for a proven conservative or to vote for a self-styled moderate," Smith said in a Jan. 25 interview with Texas Lawyer. Smith's campaign used a low-budget tactic of blasting reporters with e-mails. He assailed Rodriguez's conservative credentials, questioned whether President George W. Bush endorsed Rodriguez (Bush representatives said the president "supported" all Republican incumbent judges) and announced a federal suit challenging Canon 5(1) of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, which prevents judicial candidates from commenting on issues that may come before a court as a violation of his First Amendment free-speech rights. While some political analysts believe Smith's message may have sold well in a Republican primary, most agree that his name helped him clinch the race. Anthony Champagne, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Dallas who has followed Texas Supreme Court elections for more than 20 years, thought Rodriguez was a lock after he ran TV ads featuring himself with Perry singing his praises. "I've been trying to say to myself since last night, what am I missing? How did I go wrong here? I'm still amazed that I was wrong," Champagne said the day after the election. "The name game is still out there." stevenwaynesmith2002.org