Is The Media Serious About The 2010 Governor’s Race?
A column last week by the Austin American-Statesman’s Ken Herman has us at Hank HQ wondering if the media is really serious about legitimate coverage of the 2010 governor’s race.
Granted, Herman’s column is supposed to be funny, but it shows, instead, how far the mainstream media is from being in tune with Democratic primary voters who will decide from as many as seven candidates to pick their nominee next March:
While Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison are shredding each other in the GOP gubernatorial primary, the two “leading” Democrats (translation: the only two there is an outside shot you’ve ever heard of) are working on establishing their Democratic credentials.
His candidacy — and that of Austin deli maven Marc Katz, to date the only Democrat announced for lieutenant governor — raises a potentially troubling problem for Texas Democrats when they think they have a better chance of winning a statewide race than they have in years.
What if they somehow wind up with Friedman as their gubernatorial candidate and Katz as their lite guv candidate? It doesn’t just seem like a ticket made up of a guy trying to sell books and a guy trying to sell pastrami carries the kind of credibility Democrats need this year. But we’ll see.
First, Herman leads voters to believe that he believes Friedman is actually a serious and legitimate candidate. Second, He doesn’t even bother to examine the entire Democratic Primary field and zeroes in on two candidates—neither of whom have the grassroots support or statewide name recognition Hank has.
Herman also, by and large, seems to assume that Democrats won’t actually make up their minds based on the substance of campaigns, but rather the flash (or, in the case of Kinky Friedman, the action figure). Texas Democrats are smarter than that, but Herman doesn’t seem to think so.
Filed Under: Primary
