your connection to Texas & National Politics!
My good friend, Dr. Richard Murray has now updated his paper on the 2003
Houston Mayor’s race and has written a postscript. You can read the entire
paper at
“IX. Postmortem
Reviewing the 2003 mayoral race with the benefit of hindsight, one is reminded that every election is different, and each turns on factors not knowable in advance of the contest as well as things that could be reasonably anticipated. As noted earlier, I assumed the 2003 mayoral race would be long, expensive, bitter towards the end, and quite competitive. I was right about length and cost, but the election turned out to be surprisingly mild in tone, and there was little suspense in the end as Bill White romped to an easy win in the December 6th runoff. What happened to upset my predictions? Two big things: a surprisingly poor campaign by the 2001 finalist Orlando Sanchez and, more importantly, an almost perfect campaign by businessman Bill White, a first-time candidate for elective office. Let’s start with the Sanchez part of the puzzle.
What Happened to Orlando?
In December 2001 Councilmember Sanchez got 155,161 votes (48.3%) for mayor in his runoff with incumbent Lee Brown – the largest vote ever received by a losing candidate for the top city job. With Mayor Brown term-limited, the relatively young Sanchez, who had pulled together an unusual and impressive coalition of Anglo Republicans and Hispanics, was an early favorite for the 2003 open seat race. But this time he fell far short, getting just 87,238 votes in the November 4th General Election, and dropping to 81,824 votes (37.5%) in the December 6, 2003 runoff against White. The former council member thus received barely half the votes (52.7% to be technical) he got in the election just two years earlier, an astounding loss of support over such a short period. There were a number of keys to this collapse by my former student, including the following:
(1) Much of the support Orlando Sanchez received in 2001 election was an anti-Lee Brown vote. In a number of polls done in 2002 and 2003, only about 60% of the respondents who said they had voted for Sanchez in 2001 said they expected to vote for him in 2001. Sanchez, an attractive young Republican and conservative Hispanic, matched up well against the older, and often stolid, incumbent African American mayor. Sanchez had often clashed with Brown as a council member, and was an effective critic of a mayor widely disliked in the Anglo community. With Brown out of the race in 2003, Sanchez had a much harder time finding a message that stirred Houston voters.
(2) Events, which greatly favored Sanchez in 2001, broke decidedly against him in 2003. National Republicans and President Bush, who endorsed the Councilman two years ago, were riding high in the polls in November and December 2001. By late 2003, the President’s popularity among likely voters in the City of Houston was in the mid-forty percentile range, or lower than in the nation at large, and Mr. Bush largely avoided the race. On the other side, Democratic voters were turning against the President over the war in Iraq, were unhappy about a weak economy with no job growth, and angry at Congressman Tom Delay and other state Republicans for pushing through a congressional redistricting plan that moved about half the city’s electorate from one congressional district to another. The firefighters union, a key ally of Sanchez in 2001, sat out the mayoral race this year to concentrate on their successful collective bargaining referendum. And the big issues for voters in 2003 – mobility and what to do about it, and the weak economy – meant that Sanchez’s appeal as a fiscal conservative who would cut taxes and restrain the growth of city government resonated less well with voters more concerned about poor services. Finally, METRO’s light rail plan was a “wedge issue” among Republicans, which greatly complicated the Sanchez campaign’s approach to this important policy proposal.
(3) Sanchez ran a decidedly poor campaign in 2003. The candidate seemed listless and overly scripted in numerous public appearances, as if he could hardly wait to get the event over and get on to something more enjoyable. Internally, his campaign was not helped by infighting among consultants and supporters, especially that odd couple of Dave Walden (who had run Mayor Brown’s campaign against Sanchez in 2001) and businessman Jack Rains, who had been the dominate force in the almost successful challenge in that same election, but was marginalized for much of the 2003 race. Without Mayor Brown to beat on and a less favorable issue climate, this was no time for an underperforming campaign effort.
(4) The Sanchez campaign was based on a flawed strategy in 2003. As the race took shape, it became increasingly clear that for Orlando Sanchez to win, he had to get into a runoff with State Representative Sylvester Turner, an African American opponent who would likely find it difficult if not impossible to pull enough crossover votes to win a runoff election. The problem for the former council member was there was virtually nothing he could do to boost Turner into the runoff (other than to run third), and when Turner was eliminated on November 4, the Sanchez campaign faced a mission impossible. Having run no campaign in the African American community (Sanchez did not want to pull any black votes away from Turner in the first round), there was no realistic backup plan available to quickly reposition himself to appeal to citizens in Acres Homes, Sunnyside, Third Ward, and other minority areas where Bill White had been campaigning for months.
The flawed 2003 strategy also assumed that Sanchez’s support among Republicans and Hispanics in 2001 would hold in this year’s contest without a major field effort to lock up these folks. That was a notable mistake, as was assuming that having the Harris County Republican Party take a highly visible role would be a good idea in a city trending Democratic in partisan elections.
(5) But the most important factor in Orlando Sanchez’ decisive defeat was he had the great misfortune of running against a much stronger opponent than expected, who ran a near-perfect campaign. By the time the Sanchez camp realized how formidable White was going to be (probably in mid-September when he passed the “frontrunner” in published polls), the 2003 race was largely decided.
Who Was That Bald Guy?
I have known Bill White casually for 25 years or so (about the same as my acquaintance with Orlando Sanchez and Sylvester Turner), and knew he would be a potentially strong candidate for mayor when he began pointing to the race in 2002. Bill is smart, has a tremendous work ethic, lots of friends across the political spectrum, and had apparently amassed sufficient wealth to provide the seed money for a high dollar campaign. But he would be a 49 year old rookie in a tough race against two former finalists who entered the contest with large bases of presumably reliable support (Blacks for Turner and Anglo Republicans for Sanchez). How could he avoid the fate of Chris Bell and George Greanias, two progressive white candidates who ran third in earlier mayoral contests? And besides being untested and not well-positioned in terms of a voter base, Bill White is “telegenically challenged” by a combination of premature baldness and somewhat larger than normal ears. As a longtime teacher of political marketing, I have noticed the near total absence of bald guys in major elective office since Dwight Eisenhower left the presidency in 1961. Rudy Giuliani famously combed his sparse topping to minimize the onset of male pattern baldness in his races for mayor in New York City, but Bill didn’t even have that option. So, my early guess was that Bill White had maybe a 15% to 25% chance – a real chance to be sure, but still a fairly long shot - of ending up as Houston’s mayor. Obviously, I greatly underestimated the man and his campaign.
White won, in part of course, because of the poor campaign waged by his principal opponent, as noted above. But there is much more to his landslide victory than the other guy’s lackluster performance. Let’s review a few of those factors that made Bill White an unexpectedly tough opponent.
(1) Start with personal qualities of drive, determination, discipline, brains, and stamina. Bill White had clearly been preparing for this race for a long time, and when his chance came he was ready. Whether it was taking an intensive language course in Spain during the summer of 2002, or the clearing the decks at home and in business so he could campaign virtually non-stop for a year, Bill White had a plan to systematically overcome the obvious handicaps of being virtually unknown to city voters and having no elective office experience. One of the many areas where he surprised me was his great stamina in a race that was more physically demanding than any in my memory. Day after day, from morning to late night, he could keep up the pace while his opponents faded or dropped out. Superficially, he looked like the least able to run a marathon campaign, but survived it better than his younger competitors.
(2) Continue with a brilliant game plan to compete everywhere in the city – across all neighborhoods and all voter groups. Taking advantage of his time (and money), White would put a campaign in the field of unprecedented breath and depth. The great value of a broad-based strategy in a diverse city is hard to overestimate. Mostly notably, in a two-round election, candidates with strength in different parts of town are able to adapt to differing matchups in the finals, in contrast to both Turner and Sanchez in 2003, who badly needed to run against each other in the finals. The success of White’s strategy is evident in the following estimates of the three major candidates’ vote shares across different communities in the 2003 general election and runoff. Table 3 shows White got some votes in all racial/ethnic groups in the first round, and had very broad and substantial support in the runoff. His voter coalition was the broadest of any winning mayor since Kathy Whitmire’s in 1981.
Table 3. Estimated Vote Share in Different Voter Precinct Groupings in 2003 General Election Runoff White% Sanchez% Turner% White% Sanchez% Racial/Ethnic Anglos…………………. 46% 48% 6% 48% 52% Blacks…………………...18% 1% 81% 96% 4% Hispanics………………..46% 47% 7% 56% 44% Asians………………… ..70% 25% 5% 72% 28%
(3) And then, execute the strategy flawlessly. Start early with an up-beat, positive, and issue-substantive television message aimed at building positive name identification and “bringing the city together,” while eschewing “negative” campaign tactics. Then, when Sanchez begins running some negative ads, label him as the bad guy who’s taking the contest into the gutter. Use your financial edge to dominate paid advertising from August through the runoff. Supplement the “airwar” side of the campaign with a multi-faceted “ground war” built around paid and volunteer workers that get out thousands of yard signs, walk every sizeable neighborhood in the city, and make tens of thousands of phone calls to targeted voters. Have a top-flight GOTV (Get Out The Vote) effort on election day.
(4) Seek and garner the lion’s share of key endorsements, ranging from the still popular former mayor, Bob Lanier, to the Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, The Houston Chronicle, and the Houston Police Officers Union. Soften the negative backlash of an endorsement by Mayor Brown by announcing it along with those of all four living former mayors of the city (Louie Welch, Kathy Whitmire, and Fred Hofheinz as well as Lanier).
(5) And last but not least, have more money than the other guys and spend it very wisely. Many wealthy people invest their money in high-profile races for elective office. Most lose. Bill White avoided that fate by using his own funds as “seed money”, and raising more than three times his own contribution to his race (about $2.2 million). White also spent his money judiciously, and got much market value out of volunteered services. In the end, I would say he got a $12 million campaign out of $9 million. Orlando Sanchez got a $2 million campaign out of $3 million raised.
(6) Hire and retain a top-flight, low-profile staff. From Michael Moore, the campaign manager, to neighborhood block walkers, the White campaign was run in a professional, deliberate manner with minimal hiccups. Even the “Bogus Bill” episode, which many observers criticized the campaign and candidate for, was, in my judgment, properly handled.
Put all of this together at a time when voters were looking for a “fix it” mayor, and the man and the moment came together, giving us one of the most surprising and complete election victories ever for an open seat race for mayor of Houston. Now we’ll see if running a great campaign translates into being an effective CEO of a city facing very serious problems.”