Texas gubernatorial election, 2006

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Texas gubernatorial election, 2006
Flag of Texas.svg
  2002 November 7, 2006 2010  

  RickPerry2006 (1).jpg Cbell headshot-1-.jpg
Nominee Rick Perry Chris Bell
Party Republican Democratic
Popular vote1,716,8031,310,353
Percentage39.0%29.8%

  Carole Keeton Strayhorn (1).jpg Kinky Friedman portrait (21610) (cropped).jpg
Nominee Carole Keeton Strayhorn Kinky Friedman
Party Independent Independent
Popular vote797,577546,869
Percentage18.1%12.4%

Texas Gubernatorial Election Results by County, 2006.svg
County Results

Perry:     30–40%     40–50%     50–60%     60–70%
Bell:     30–40%     40–50%     50–60%     60–70%

Contents

Strayhorn:     20–30%     30–40%     40–50%

Governor before election

Rick Perry
Republican

Elected Governor

Rick Perry
Republican

The 2006 Texas gubernatorial election was held on November 7, 2006 to elect the Governor of Texas. The election was a rare four-way race, with incumbent Republican Governor Rick Perry running for re-election against Democrat Chris Bell and Independents Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman. Perry was re-elected to a second full term in office, winning 39% of the vote to Bell's 30%, Strayhorn's 18% and Friedman's 12%.

Governor of Texas head of state and of government of the U.S. state of Texas

The Governor of Texas is the head of the executive branch of Texas's government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military forces. The governor has the power to either approve or veto bills passed by the Texas Legislature, and to convene the legislature. The governor may grant pardons in cases other than impeachment or in the case of treason, with permission by the legislature. The current Governor is Greg Abbott.

Republican Party (United States) political party in the United States

The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States; the other is its historic rival, the Democratic Party.

Rick Perry American politician

James Richard Perry is an American politician who is the 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy, serving in the Cabinet of Donald Trump. Prior to his cabinet position, Perry served as the 47th Governor of Texas from December 2000 to January 2015. A Republican, he was elected Lieutenant Governor of Texas in 1998 and assumed the governorship in December 2000 when Governor George W. Bush resigned to become president. Perry was the longest-serving governor in Texas history.

Perry carried 209 out of the state's 254 counties, while Bell carried 39 and Strayhorn carried 6. Exit polls revealed that Perry won the Anglo vote with 46%, while Bell got 22%, Strayhorn got 16% and Friedman got 15%. Bell won 63% of African Americans, while Perry got 16%, Strayhorn got 15% and Friedman got 4%. Bell also won the Latino vote with 41%, while Perry got 31%, Strayhorn got 18% and Friedman got 4%.

Perry was inaugurated for a second full four-year term on January 16, 2007. The ceremony was held inside the House of Representatives chamber at the Texas Capitol after thunderstorms cancelled the planned outdoor ceremony.

Texas House of Representatives

The Texas House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Texas Legislature. It consists of 150 members who are elected from single-member districts for two-year terms. As of the 2010 Census, each member represents about 167,637 people. There are no term limits, with the most senior member, Tom Craddick, having been elected in 1968.

Requirements

It is difficult for an independent gubernatorial candidate to gain ballot access in the state of Texas. The election law, summarized briefly, requires the following:

In the event a candidate does not qualify for independent status, they may still run as a write-in candidate. The candidate must pay a $3,750 filing fee and submit 5,000 qualified signatures. However, the filing cannot take place any earlier than July 30, nor later than 5:00 PM on August 29.

Primaries

Republican

Republican Primary Results [1]
PartyCandidateVotes%
Republican Rick Perry (inc.)552,54584.23
Republican Larry Kilgore 50,1197.64
Republican Rhett Smith30,2554.60
Republican Star Locke23,0303.51
Total votes655,919100.00

Democrat

Democratic Primary Results [2]
PartyCandidateVotes%
Democratic Chris Bell 324,86963.87
Democratic Bob Gammage 145,08128.53
Democratic Rashad Jafer38,6527.60
Total votes508,602100.00

Other candidates

Independent

Kinky Friedman Singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician

Richard Samet "Kinky" Friedman is an American singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician, defender of stray animals, and former columnist for Texas Monthly who styles himself in the mold of popular American satirists Will Rogers and Mark Twain.

Country music, also known as country and western, and hillbilly music, is a genre of popular music that originated in the southern United States in the early 1920s. It takes its roots from genres such as folk music and blues.

Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—either professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.

Libertarian

Campaign

Perry

Incumbent Rick Perry became governor in late 2000 when then-Governor George W. Bush resigned following his election as President of the United States. He had been elected lieutenant governor in 1998. Perry was subsequently elected governor in his own right in 2002 and successfully ran for a second full term in 2006.

George W. Bush 43rd President of the United States

George Walker Bush is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He had previously served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000.

President of the United States Head of state and of government of the United States

The President of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.

Perry's overall poll ratings had plummeted since the 2002 election, plagued by budget woes, battles over school financing reform, and a contentious and controversial redistricting battle. His approval rating dropped to 38% during the latter part of the 2005 legislative session. Perry then improved from this position, more recently holding a 44% approval rating, with 51% disapproving, as of a September 2006 poll. [3] Texas election laws do not require a run-off in the event that a majority is not achieved, and so Governor Perry joined only two other Texas governors to achieve the office by a plurality of less than 40%. The Texas Governor Elections of 1853 and 1861 both won with less than 40% of the vote.[ citation needed ]

Despite weak polling numbers, Perry had the support of the Texas GOP. According to Perry's campaign website, he gained 142 separate endorsements. Perry had endorsements from virtually the entire Texas GOP Congressional delegation (all but two members),[ citation needed ] every other Republican statewide officeholder (except Strayhorn and judicial officeholders; the latter by law cannot endorse political candidates), 51 of the 62 members of the Texas Republican Party executive committee, and nearly every major Texas pro-business, fiscal conservative, and social conservative organization and PAC. Perry even managed to gain the endorsement of the Teamsters Union,[ citation needed ] notwithstanding Texas's strong right to work laws.

In the United States and Canada, a political action committee (PAC) is a 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation. The legal term PAC has been created in pursuit of campaign finance reform in the United States. This term is quite specific to all activities of campaign finance in the United States. Democracies of other countries use different terms for the units of campaign spending or spending on political competition. At the U.S. federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, and registers with the Federal Election Commission, according to the Federal Election Campaign Act as amended by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. At the state level, an organization becomes a PAC according to the state's election laws.

Friedman

Kinky Friedman contemplates a question from the audience at a campaign rally in Bastrop, Texas. Kinky friedman 2006.jpg
Kinky Friedman contemplates a question from the audience at a campaign rally in Bastrop, Texas.

Kinky Friedman, an independent candidate, gained a good amount of popular support among Texas voters. He claimed that country-music lovers, college students, animal lovers, ranchers, and anyone who didn't vote in the last election were among his supporters.[ citation needed ]

Friedman briefly enjoyed a high standing in the polls, and surpassed Democrat Chris Bell by Independence Day.[ citation needed ] As Election Day drew near, his campaign fizzled out as much of his wide support was among young voters. He finished fourth in the election with under 13% of the vote. His website claimed that "he doesn't put much stock in unscientific political polls among "likely" voters, saying, "It's Kinky Friedman versus apathy". Friedman stated during the campaign that he was going after the 71% who didn't make it to the polls in 2002.[ citation needed ]

Bell

Chris Bell, a former Congressman from Houston, filed an ethics complaint against former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as a lame duck who had been defeated in his party's primary after the controversial mid-decade redistricting in the state.[ citation needed ] Bell announced his run in July 2005.[ citation needed ]

Bell's official strategy was to get Democrats to unite behind and vote for a Democrat, predicting (and betting on) a splintering of the Republican vote among Perry, Strayhorn, and Friedman, giving the Democrats the needed plurality to win the election. [4] Running on a platform of ethics reform and education issues, he stayed with the pack of three candidates with better name recognition. After a good debate performance, his poll numbers improved significantly to where he had taken second place in nearly every poll afterward.

Strayhorn

Carole Keeton Strayhorn, the Comptroller of Public Accounts, was initially pegged as running in a potentially contentious three-way Republican primary battle with bitter rival Governor Perry and U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Hutchison declined to run for governor in late 2005, instead opting to run for re-election to the Senate. This left Strayhorn and Perry vying for the GOP nomination. Believing her chances to be better running as an independent and appealing directly to voters, rather than those of the Republican Party first, she announced her intent to challenge him in the general election instead. Had she run in the primary, the December 2005 Scripps Howard Texas Poll of match ups had Perry in the lead against Strayhorn by a 55%-24% margin.

Strayhorn was seen as a moderate alternative to Perry, and found support among moderate Republicans and independent voters. Although a few polls had her tied for second going into Election day, she finished with 18.13% [5] of the vote, 12% behind Bell and 21% behind Perry.

Werner

James Werner was the Libertarian Party candidate. According to Werner's campaign website, he has a master's degree in Spanish and Latin American literature from the University of California, a bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University and is currently working for an Austin-based educational software company.

Werner previously ran for Congress in 2004 as the Libertarian nominee. Contending for the 25th District, he garnered 26,748 votes or 0.61%. [5]

Dillon

James "Patriot" Dillon was the only announced write-in candidate, according to information from the Texas Secretary of State's office. [6] [7]

Polling

SourceDateBell (D)Friedman (I)Perry (R)Strayhorn (I)Werner (L)Margin of Error (+/-)
WSJ/Zogby October 31, 200628.5%14.4%36.7%15%2.1%2.9%
Houston Chronicle/KHOU October 29, 200622%10.5%38%21%1%3.2%
Rasmussen October 27, 200625%12%36%22%**4.5%
SurveyUSA October 24, 200626%16%36%19%1%4.3%
WSJ/Zogby October 19, 200626.2%13.2%37.5%13%3.9%3%
Dallas Morning News October 5, 200615%14%38%18%**3.5%
WSJ/Zogby September 25, 200622.3%18.9%33%15.5%1.5%2.6%
Survey USA September 19, 200623%23%35%15%2%4.3%
Rasmussen September 13, 200618%16%33%22%**4.5%
WSJ/Zogby September 5, 200625.3%22.4%30.7%*11.1%2.6%2.9%
WSJ/Zogby August 28, 200623.1%22.7%34.8%9.6%****
Rasmussen August 9, 200618%18%35%18%**4.5%
Rasmussen July 24, 200613%19%40%20%**4.5%
WSJ/Zogby July 24, 200620.8%20.7%38.3%11%****
Survey USA June 26, 200620%21%35%19%**4.2%
WSJ/Zogby June 21, 200619.7%17.5%37.7%14.1%****
Rasmussen June 12, 200614%20%38%19%**4.5%
Survey USA May 22, 200618%16%41%20%**4.1%
Survey USA April 26, 200615%16%39%25%**4.2%
Rasmussen April 20, 200617%15%40%19%**3%
WSJ/Zogby March 30, 200620.7%16.6%36.3%19%****
Dallas Morning News February 18, 200619%10%36%16%**3%
Rasmussen February 14, 200613%9%40%31%**4.5%
Rasmussen January 5, 200614%12%40%21%**4.5%

* denotes polling result winner is within the margin of error

** denotes data was not reported by the pollster

Results

Percent change available only for parties that participated in the 2002 Texas gubernatorial election.

Texas general election, 2006: Governor [8]
PartyCandidateVotes%±
Republican Rick Perry (inc.) 1,716,803 39.03 -18.78
Democratic Chris Bell 1,310,35329.79-10.17
Independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn 797,57718.13
Independent Richard "Kinky" Friedman 546,86912.43
Libertarian James Werner26,7480.61-0.86
Independent James "Patriot" Dillon (Write-in)7180.02
Majority406,4509.24
Turnout 4,399,068-3.40
Republican hold

See also

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References

  1. 2006 Republican Party Primary Election Archived 2014-01-09 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. Texas Almanac
  3. "Results of SurveyUSA News Poll #10269". SurveyUSA. Retrieved 2007-01-02.
  4. Stanford, Jason. "3 Republicans, 1 Democrat Archived 2006-06-21 at the Wayback Machine ."". 2 January 2006. Accessed 26 March 2006.
  5. 1 2 http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2006&fips=48&off=5&elect=0&f=0
  6. http://www.sanantonio.gov/library/news/letter/nl200611.asp?res=1280&ver=true
  7. http://www.co.travis.tx.us/county_clerk/election/20061107/files/ENightCume1.PDF
  8. "2006 General Election". Office of the Secretary of State (Texas). Archived from the original on 2014-01-09. Retrieved 2007-01-02.