Harvey Kronberg and Ross Ramsey presented there talk "Areading Texas Tea Leaves: Implications of the 2008 Primary Elections" for the Texas Politics Speaker Series on March 25, 2008.

Dr. James Henson: All right. Welcome to the Texas Politics Speaker Series. We are happy to have two unique observers of Texas politics here with us today.

Before there were blogs, before there was the Drudge Report, before there was YouTube, RSS feeds, web portals and news aggregators, there was the Quorum Report, and there was Texas Weekly.

Harvey Kronberg, to my left, publishes, edits, writes for and speaks for the Quorum Report, one of the staples of political information for professionals in Texas politics, which you can find in its teaser version on the web at www.quorumreport.com. He has edited Quorum Report since 1989 and also contributes regular political commentary on News 8 Austin, as I think Mr. Garza probably noted.

Harvey came out of the Plan II program at this very college at this very university. So we're always very happy to have him back.

Ross Ramsey is the editor and the co-owner of Texas Weekly, another institution in the world of Texas politics on the web, at Texasweekly.com. They've very hiply lost the www, I noticed.

Mr. Ramsey: Yeah.

Dr. Henson: Ross spent 17 years as a professional journalist, not that he isn't still doing that, including stints at The Houston Chronicle and The Dallas Times Herald. Prior to taking over Texas Weekly, Ross did 28 months of time -- call it hard labor, I guess -- working for John Sharp at the Texas comptroller's office. He speaks widely on Texas politics for as an older, kind of cheekier bio that I notice is no longer on the site, you know, said, he, ASpeaks for groups with an inability to attract professional entertainment,@ which I've always loved.

I really wish you guys hadn't edited that out. But, I think, now that he's a soccer coach, you know, he has got to behave.

His new bio is much more business like, but I hope we'll see a little bit of the cheeky version today.

We're going to start with Harvey and Ross each talking for a few minutes about what's interesting in the post-election political landscape in the state. Then we'll open it up a little a bit less formally, including questions from you all.

And we didn't flip a coin, but, since you're immediately to my left, you're on the spot first.

Harvey Kronberg.

Mr. Kronberg: Well, thank you.

I should mention, by the way, that this is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Quorum Report and the tenth anniversary of us being online. When we first went online, it was dial-up, which means -- I didn't think anybody in politics would wait for -- what is it, a 28K download? But they did.

Well, obviously, we just saw one of the most fascinating primaries that I can remember in Texas politics. And rather than go -- I'm sure we'll dissect it a little bit as we go down the road, but what it signaled more than anything else was the revival, it looks like, of Democratic fortunes in Texas.

So I think what I'll do first is put down -- we're kind of at the end of the Republican narrative right now. That's not to say they won't rebuild a new narrative, but the coalition that normally holds the Republicans together that was created in the says of Ronald Reagan seems to be at least right now terminally tattered.

The social conservatives dislike the libertarian conservatives, who dislike the economic conservatives. Nobody's getting along inside the big tent, and the question is whether somebody like John McCain can bring them back out as a unified force.

So partially, that's -- what's going on is that the Republicans have lost their forward momentum. And for the moment, anyway, Democrats are simply running on not being Republicans, and that may be sufficient. If there is a single party, however, that can take these opportunities and blow it, it is the Democratic party. So this is not an automatic vote of confidence.

There are three or four prizes that are open to the Democrats right now. These are all benchmarks that we'll be looking at over the course of the election cycle.

The first is the Texas Supreme Court. The Texas Supreme Court became all Republican earlier in the decade. It was an epic battle between plaintiffs= attorneys and ultimately pro-business interests: homebuilders, oil and gas interests and insurance companies.

And at least for the moment, the homebuilders and oil and gas and insurance companies won. They took over the court, and it has been about as pro-business an entity as you could come up with. As some would argue, that means it has been very anti-consumer.

Certainly, over the course of the last few months, scandal has become affiliated with the Texas Supreme Court. And we have one justice accused of obstructing justice, of covering up evidence that his wife burned their house down. We have other ethical infractions. We discovered the other day that it's taking them two years to -- a year-and-a-half to two years to come out with decisions. It is a target of opportunity for Democrats right now.

And the Democrats have done something that they haven't done heretofore, which is to put -- to nominate people other than plaintiffs= attorneys, which are kind of lightning rods in Texas politics. That's the first prize.

The second prize is significant in that it lays the predicate for everything else if we're going to be a two-party state. That is Harris County.

Harris County -- as you may know, Dallas completely flipped to Democrats two years ago. Every contested race inside the county was for Democrats or went for Democrats. They're trying to replicate that in Harris County, which -- the greater Houston area is about 5 million votes. We have a mayor there who's looking at potentially running for governor.

And if Barack Obama is on the ticket, the conventional wisdom is that Harris County is all but assured to flip Democratic. There's a large African-American population that has been trending Democratic, and if you end up with Dallas County and Harris County both going fairly seriously Democratic, then you have a tectonic shift that potentially plays out in 2010 statewide elections, including the governor's race.

And then the final prize. I don't really believe that the Democrats can win the Texas House, but, if they gain a couple of seats, they transform the power structure inside the Texas House and they undermine Speaker Tom Craddick.

And we'll get into that a little bit more, I'm sure, about why that would undermine Speaker Tom Craddick -- but that would be a sea change -- the first Republican speaker in years. But after redistricting, they had 88 Republicans. They're now down to 79 Republicans. It takes 76 to create a margin. Of those 79 Republicans, probably ten are what we call ABCs. That means Anybody But Craddick. There's Republicans that do not like the speaker and will vote for another Republican or another Democrat, anybody but Craddick.

Now, the joke was, as many of these people were Pete Laney supporters -- who was a Democratic speaker. And the joke was ABC actually meant Already Been a Chairman. Don't need to do that again.

But by and large, if I -- my guess is that if Democrats gain two, it changes the texture of the House sufficiently that we will have a pretty much wide-open speaker's race. Anybody but Craddick as speaker is a gain for Democrats and certainly a gain for the political center, which is the big shift.

So those are the three targets of opportunity, it seems to me, that are available for Democrats right now. And all of them -- if they succeed in any of these, it lays the predicate for potentially competitive statewide campaigns in 2010, which would be the first time since Ann Richards faced off against Clayton Williams really that we've got a potential for a competitive two-party state.

Mr. Ramsey: This is one of those things where you sort of start and -- you can always see these things very clearly in the rearview mirror. And it's hard to say when you're in a recession or you're in a political change that you're actually in it. But one of the -- you know, sort of like the thing in The Christmas Carol -- you remember the -- where he said, Spirit, is this the future that might be, or the future that will be? So it's the future that might be here.

Twenty years ago, Dallas County went from a classic, straight Democratic-solid county to a Republican party. In 1984, it went Aboop@ and just flipped. The only judge who survived that year at the courthouse was a guy who had the same name as the most popular DJ in town, Ron Chapman. And he was the only Democrat who survived in Dallas County politics for a long time.

Shortly after that, Harris County began to flip. And the party that was not in power began to make inroads because of scandals on the Texas Supreme Court and in the Texas high courts. And at that time, the first one they put in was Tom Phillips. They began to win some elections there. Phillips won in his own right in 1988 and broke the Democrat hegemony on the court.

And then in 1990 -- this kind of kept creeping along. In 1986, Bill Clements won again.

In 1990, the Republican cracked the middle of the statewide ballot with Rick Perry, who was a sort of back-bencher, out-of-favor House member who had switched parties, and with Kay Hutchison, who had left the House 15 years before and had gone to Dallas and run a candy company and worked for a bank. So she was completely out of politics. She was around it, but she was completely out of ballot politics for a long time.

And everybody thought when they got on the ballot, Well, you're nuts; you're not going to beat these people.

And in particular, there was a poll in 1989 that said of all of the statewide officials in Texas, the two most popular, the two most unbeatable, people on the Texas ballot were Senator Phil Graham and agriculture commissioner Jim Hightower. And that season actually began with people talking about whether Hightower would give up the agriculture seat to run against Graham in 1990.

So Rick Perry was considered nuts. That was a throw-away. This was Gallipoli. You're going over the fence here.

We all know what happened in 1990. Rick Perry won narrowly. Kay Hutchison won. And the Republicans began to creep in. At the same time, this was starting to happen in the House. They were starting to lose conservative Democrats to moderate Republicans. And the Republicans were starting -- you can go back and track, and their numbers begin to increase there.

So if you took a wild stab at what's happening now and took that one anecdotal set, we may be in what's a 20-year shift and has been over time, you know, kind of a regular 20-year swing in Texas politics. We're approaching a couple of things that'll make a big difference in this.

In the 2010 election, we'll pick the people who are going to draw redistricting maps. And if the Democrats can break in now and start cracking the ballot now, they'll begin to have some leverage on those things. I don't think they'll actually be drawing those maps in 2011, but they'll begin to have some leverage on that.

The Senate is locked in until redistricting. There's no way that the senate's going to change party power; the Democrats may get a little stronger, but those maps are just really strong maps. That district's going to elect a Republican, that district's going to elect a Democrat, and almost no amount of politicking is going to change the Senate around.

The House is really close. And I think what you can say about the House -- I agree with Harvey. I don't think the Democrats take it this time.

But what you can say about the House is that the margin in the House is so narrow that the next speaker, whether it's Tom Craddick or his replacement, is going to be a very short-term speaker, because I think the guy after that -- you're either going to get Tom Craddick on his way out -- you know, maybe he'll win this one; maybe he'll win two more; he's very good at this -- or you'll get a Democrat or another Republican who's an interim speaker, like Rayford Price back in the day.

So I think, you know, whoever's at the top of the House doesn't get there with the governing majority. And I think they're in a very tenuous situation. It becomes a very hard place to get things done. Some people like that. If you're out to kill bills, it's a very easy place to do it. And if you're out to try to start something, it becomes a very, very difficult -- even more difficult -- place to do it.

And then there's this weird anomaly this year, this Barack Obama thing. Rick Noriega -- Jim and I were talking before we started about that Rick Noriega got into the Senate race as a Democrat. He's a House member. You guys might know him. He's a Texas House member from Houston. He decided to run for the United States Senate.

And part of the predicate for this was -- he's running from Houston. That's about 28 percent of the electorate. And if you look at the past couple of Democrat primaries, the top-voting counties aren't the most populated counties in the state. The top three counties are Hidalgo and Cameron -- and places like that. It's not Harris and Dallas.

So they figured, He has got an Hispanic name; he's -- the only place where he's well known is Houston; this will get him elected as the Democrat nominee pretty easily. And then, you know, they'll start from there. Well, something funny happened on the way out of Iowa, and the United States presidential race came here. And all of a sudden, the math changed.

So what happened in the Democratic primary, among a million other things, is that the counties voted the way they're populated. The top vote came from Harris, the second came from Dallas, the third came from Tarrant, and, you know -- click, click, click -- down the thing like that.

Rick Noriega had an unexpectedly very close election. And what that showed, either momentarily or as a trend line, is that, I think, if you get Obama on the ticket in November, you have the chance to sort of change the water level in Texas elections.

There was -- Warren Buffett, the investor, does a letter to his stockholders every year. And he was moaning about the mortgage crisis, And he said, you know, What happens is, when the water goes out, you can tell who's swimming naked. What happens here is that people are situated so that they're probably not going to win their races unless the water level changes significantly.

And you could get an election -- I'm not saying you will, but you could get an election here where the water level goes up a little bit and some of these people who right now we don't think will get elected could get elected. That could tilt the House a little bit. It probably won't tilt the Senate. It'll tilt a couple of congressional races. But it could be very interesting in changing the math in Texas politics.

There are three or four other things that can also change the water level. And then I'll quit talking.

I think Obama's the main thing. I think if he's on the ticket in November, there's a chance that we get the same kind of turnout phenomenon or some version of it in November that we got in March. And we'd get it nationwide, but we're talking really about Texas.

I think any kind of new terror attack or something like that could change the water level. All of these change it in different directions. A terror attack probably changes it in favor of Republicans. If it's war that we're talking about and that becomes the spike, that probably benefits or potentially benefits Democrats. If it's the economy, that benefits the party that's not in power. That's Democrats. It's a very uncomfortable year to be an incumbent.

We were talking the other day to a group that included Harriett O=Neil, who's on the Texas Supreme Court. And we were talking about what Harvey mentioned, all of these judges in trouble. People don't distinguish between the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

So you've got a judge over here -- if you're a Democrat running for office, you say, You've got a judge over here who let a guy die because she wouldn't take papers after five o=clock. You've got a judge over here whose wife is in arson, who tried to bury the evidence on the fire in his house. You've got three judges who are using their campaign funds to travel around the state.

And you don't have to mention when you're saying all of that that none of the people you're talking about are on the ballot; you just say that they're all Republicans and they're all judges, and you try to run that way. So that's a high-water race.

So I think that's kind of the layout. If it changes when we go by it and we look in our rearview mirror in six months and none of this happened, just remember my name is Harvey Kronberg.

(General laughter.)

Dr. Henson: Thanks, guys. That's great.

You know, I want to -- I think we might as well just push on that a little bit in terms of like what's going on in the party system. I mean you're talking about shifting water levels. I mean I think, for Democratic optimists, there's all this talk that this is, you know -- or at least talk of a desire for this to be kind of tectonic in a sense, and fundamental.

Do you guys see this as something structural? I mean you talked about sort of the 20-year swings. And, you know, there seems to be kind of a sense that change is in the air, you know, but I mean I think that's very much in the air. I mean I'm curious how fundamental you think this is and what the determinants of that are.

Mr. Kronberg: I think that -- I do believe the Republican coalition is in tatters right now. I had a lobbyist who probably has never voted for a Democrat in his life tell me several months ago that if Terri Schiavo oppositioned embryonic stem cell research and teaching -- what's it called -- intelligent design as science, for the cost of his tax cuts, the cost was too high.

And this is somebody who will -- probably his eyes will glaze before he can vote for a Democrat. But if it is -- if John McCain ends up having to pander to the social conservatives, I think that vote is lost.

And that's kind of the irony or the problem that John McCain is in right now -- and Republicans. Every time he goes out to persuade social conservatives that he's really okay, he's one of their guys and he'll appoint those kinds of judges, he may win the social conservative, but he may also end up losing one or two economic or libertarian conservatives who are looking for someplace else to go.

The fundamental thing, it seems to me, is that in 2000 and 2004, the country really was evenly divided. There was about 45 to 47 percent on both sides, Democrats and Republicans. And both sides realized there was no point trying to win those undecideds because there were too few of them. So they just improved their AGet out the Vote@ techniques.

Well, now, in 2008, the center has re-emerged. There's probably by most polling 20 or 25 percent of the population that, you know, votes Republican but can be persuaded this year to vote Democratic, or vice-versa. And that's the power of an Obama. That's the power of John McCain. I don't think anybody thinks that Hillary Clinton reaches out to independents, but she may end up proving to be more organized or more ruthless, or whatever it may be.

But ultimately, there is a center that is appearing once again that is up for grabs. And whether Democrats can truly take advantage of it remains to be seen, but it's theirs to take if they can.

Mr. Ramsey: It's really interesting. I think McCain and Obama in their ways have been crossover candidates and have been candidates that appeal to the middle. You know, even if you look at their politics, Obama's quite liberal, and McCain's quite conservative.

But there was a Texas Monthly Talks over at KLRU some time ago where John McCain was interviewed by Evan Smith. And my wife and I and a couple of other friends went to this thing. And it was interesting because -- it was a crowd you would expect at an Austin public television deal. It was a bunch of liberals. Right? And they were all on the elevator afterwards going, You know, I could vote for that guy. They really liked him.

They really liked that he was talking straight. They liked him in spite of what he said about the war, which is exactly what he's saying about the war now. He was appealing to both sides.

So I think -- if you get an Obama-McCain race, I think it's going to be very interesting what happens to people. And, you know, we all know people like this who will enter that race at least at the beginning and say, You know, I could go for either one of these guys. I think there's a jump-ball in the middle.

I think Harvey's right. I think if you get Hillary Clinton, that's more in the mold of a George Bush type of a candidate in the sense that it's an appeal to the base type of candidate.

Dr. Henson: Thinking inside the state, though, how far down does that drive? I mean is that being driven --

Mr. Kronberg: Well, you know --

Dr. Henson: Is that striking like shifts that are already going on, you know, or not? Because it seems to me that, you know, talking about even those -- even that middle ground, even that kind of shift -- I mean Texas feels to me like it's in a different cycle in terms of partisanship.

Mr. Ramsey: Uh-huh. We remain red. I mean it's still a red state, and it's still a conservative state, even when they vote Democratic. You know, when we were a Democratic state, they weren't voting for liberals. They were voting for people that would be Republicans in almost any other state.

So start there. But to the extent that people vote for party ID or identify or vote against party ID, you know, if this is a race where people come out steaming mad against the Republicans and we change the water level in that way, watch the Harris County Courthouse, like Harvey was saying. Watch the statewide judicial races in Texas.

And then in a couple of places, watch Texas -- you know, there's a House race here and a House race there. In a couple of those races that I was talking about, when the water level changes, people who wouldn't otherwise win will win.

And an example of an election like that was in 1994. Bill Clinton had a remarkably horrible mid-term election, and Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took over. And I have a friend who's a consultant based on Washington, and he said, You know, this would have been a really interesting election if we'd known we were going to win that many seats, because we could have put really good candidates in there.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Ramsey: And he was griping about -- they won seats where they had people -- they had placeholder candidates. Dallas County's Judge? I think if you go talk to most Democrats privately in Dallas County and say, AWhat do you think about the judge you elected two years ago,@ they'd go, We didn't even know his name until he was elected. And a lot of them aren't happy with him now. So you get candidates like that.

Mr. Kronberg: The Dallas Morning News -- by the way, nobody expected the Democrat to win the county judgeship in Dallas. The Dallas Morning News, I am told, did not have a single piece of paper on this guy whose name I can't remember at the moment. But -- so he wins that night, and they are furiously googling his name and going to whatever database they can come up with to try to come up with the story on somebody that came totally out of left field, did not campaign. All he did was put $750 down.

Mr. Ramsey: Yeah. Mr. Gump.

Mr. Kronberg: Yeah.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Kronberg: I think there is something significant going on, but it only -- it's incremental. In 2001, we did redistricting, and what -- and the Republicans controlled redistricting that time. Maybe it'll be divided next time. Who knows?

But if there is one party that's in charge, what they do, what their intention is, is to draw districts that are so Republican and so Democratic that the November election is irrelevant; the only election that counts is the March primary, when a Republican can only get beat by a more Republican Republican or a Democrat can only get beat by a more Democratic Democrat. And so that again pushes -- that polarizes congress.

And I -- by my calculations, we're probably looking at five or six House seats now that have so fundamentally changed, they are now legitimately transitional districts. When Tom DeLay came in and we did the -- we ended up redrawing the congressional maps, those districts were intended to be permanently Republican and permanently Democratic. By my count, we actually have potentially three competitive congressional elections this time, which is partially a function of redistricting. And partially, it's a function of population shifts.

Williamson County. You were talking about that, once upon a time, we would look at the southern counties. Hidalgo County would be the biggest Democratic turnout county.

When Rick Perry first ran for governor in 2000, they just took the seven suburban counties: Fort Bend County, Williamson County, Hays County, Collin County -- the seven suburban counties. And they didn't even try and identify their voters. They just made the assumption that if they could get 70 percent turnout in those seven counties, 70 percent of that 70 percent would vote for whoever the Republican was.

And so they didn't even try and find their voters. They just tried to turn everybody out because they knew that three out of four would end up voting Republican.

Now the southern end of Williamson County is turning Democratic. The northern end of Hays County is beginning to transition Democratic. The counties that surround Houston are also beginning to show demographic shifts. In Houston, we have an Asian population that's not on anybody's map as to whether they're Democrats or Republicans.

So ultimately, for all of this to come to crystallize, you have to have a voice, a voice that brings it all together. And I don't know if there is that voice yet, but all the pieces are there for something significant to change.

Dr. Henson: And, Ross, you mentioned the 20-year cycle. And it strikes me that the Republican coalition plateauing is one thing. It seems like being able to identify -- you know, we know the cycle's almost certainly going to be shorter than it was if you look at Democratic dominance just in terms of pure party labels.

It's hard to know exactly how shortened the cycle is going to be, though, you know. And I don't know, you know, how you would really determine that going in. I think your hindsight thing is essentially right.

Mr. Ramsey: Well, you know, and there's -- an interesting thing going on inside the Democratic party is that the Clinton and Obama race in Texas was a sort of an undiscovered cohort fighting the old Democratic machine. I mean Clinton came in and tapped all the people that she has known since they ran the McGovern race here. And all those people showed up.

And, you know, you call this guy in the Valley, and you call this guy in El Paso, and you call her over in Dallas, and you call this one over in Houston, and, you know, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Right? You go down the line and check them off, you know, pull the triggers and go.

And all of a sudden, there's this thing, you know. They're twittering. What's Twitter? You know? The -- John Edwards was the first candidate I saw in this race who came to Austin and gave everybody the text code. Right? You know, just text this. And then they chased. You know, one of the interesting things -- you know, there's a technological difference here. I won't spend much time on this.

But if you send a text message to the Clinton campaign, they send you a note that says, AThank you,@ and they put you on a mailing list. But there's a way -- there's a technology for chasing people where you sort of -- you know, they send it to you, and you hook them, and now you send them all kinds of stuff.

The Clinton campaign doesn't use that hook. The Obama campaign uses that hook. And if you text the Clinton campaign, it's active on this level.

If you text the Obama campaign, it's active on this level. And they've got this whole cohort of people who've never voted, never played before. All of a sudden, they've got the ground game, which is why they won the caucuses even though or -- are winning the caucuses even though they lost the vote. I mean it's a very interesting thing just in the mechanics of elections in Texas inside the Democratic party.

Dr. Henson: Well, I think that, you know, what that sort of revealed to me was -- you know, there was all this talk about the regional difference between the two campaigns. And you could see that clearly in the results. But the overlay of that was that there was kind of a shadow Democratic party out there waiting to be activated --

Mr. Kronberg: Right.

Dr. Henson: -- you know, by the right candidate and the right technology.

Mr. Kronberg: Actually, what was fascinating was that the Obama campaign landed the day after Super Tuesday. I mean they literally landed in Houston Dallas, San Antonio and Austin.

Dr. Henson: Yeah.

Mr. Kronberg: And by that weekend, they were having classes, training field operatives to go out and organize. The Clinton people were still having conference calls with the old McGovern team, trying to figure out --

Mr. Ramsey: Right. Somebody get Gary Mauro on the phone.

Mr. Kronberg: Right.

Mr. Ramsey: Well, that's exactly what they did.

Mr. Kronberg: Yeah.

Dr. Henson: Well, you know, before, you characterized that fight, Ross, as the wave versus the machine.

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Dr. Henson: And it seems like the machine barely withheld. Right?

Mr. Ramsey: Well, you know, actually, the Obama campaign won early voting in Texas by three or three-and-a-half percentage points. The Clinton campaign finally won by three or three-and-a-half percentage points, which means that on election day, they had a six- or seven-percent margin.

And I think, you know, a couple of things happened in the Obama campaign. And a lot of it was an ad at the end. And, you know, the news in the last four or five days leading up to the election was all negative for Obama. And there were some things like that.

But if you just watched the way they turned out to vote in early voting and the way they turned out to vote at the precinct caucuses around the state, the ground game's clearly with the people who've never played before or with the people who've changed sides.

I mean I'm not saying everybody who voted for Obama has, you know, never been a Democrat before, but they've clearly got the ground game. They've clearly figured this out, and if they can just keep, you know, the news going their way to the extent that they do and, you know, keep the former preacher of Trinity Church off the TV, then I think they've got an edge there.

Mr. Kronberg: There has been a big argument, by the way, among the professionals as to whether the massive turnout that we had, which was actually just a few hundred-thousand votes shy of the general election two years previous -- 4.3 million for the general election; 4.1 million for the primary, which, I think is -- you know, we've never seen anything like that. There has been a big internal argument as to whether these are new Democratic voters of they're just November voters that became engaged in the primary for the first time.

And the statisticians are all arguing, and the exit polls do their thing, but, by and large, it seems to me that it's significant enough -- whatever the percentage was, it was a significant enough percentage of new voters to change the dynamic going into November.

Dr. Henson: And I want to talk a little bit more about that. I want to open it up for questions, though, because I know people have sporting events to go to, and things like this.

(General laughter.)

Dr. Henson: So questions from the gallery?

Male Voice: I heard someone in Washington say -- and this is, I guess, asking you to expand a little bit on your observation -- that Hillary Clinton ran a brilliant 1998 campaign --

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Male Voice: -- while Barack Obama ran a brilliant 2008 or even a 2010 campaign here. And I've always thought that had more than a grain of truth to it. In fact, I would go further. I would say she won in spite of her campaign in some ways.

You know, for instance, watching her California campaign -- this is apropos of the Hispanic community. The California campaign would go into L. A. and talk to Villaraigosa and lock him down, and then he would go out and speak to the Hispanic community and deliver votes. And I think their mentality in Texas was, We do the same thing. We go to those areas, and we find the local Hispanic leader, and we have this long relationship with him, and we talk to them.

Well, that works in some places, but it doesn't work in other places. You go to San Antonio, and you say, you know, Well, Garcia has endorsed me. And half the city says, you know, I hate that guy; I like Lopez.

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Male Voice: And it struck me that -- I actually thought that going to south Texas and spending as much time there as she did was a mistake. I think she won in spite of it.

In other words, the growth in Hispanic populations in Harris and in suburban Bexar and in suburban Dallas is enormous. And I think she won because it was such a loud election, rather than that she actually reached out and touched those voters who are key to her coalition, you know. And I think Obama actually picked up a lot of those voters in those areas that she left on the table.

I did see some evidence that, you know -- well, first of all, the exit polls showed that she won 65/35 amongst voters who decided in the last three days. I think that's really what killed him. And whether that's because of the specific new cycle or whether he has a systematic trouble of closing the deal, I'm not sure. Right? But I thought that was very interesting.

There is some evidence that Bill Clinton's presence in east Texas was extremely valuable for her. And I -- that kind of --

Mr. Ramsey: That's because he wasn't in Houston or Dallas.

Male Voice: Maybe, yeah.

(General laughter.)

Male Voice: But they broke late and ended up going even more heavily for her. So I mean I hate attributing causation after the fact, but, you know -- so I guess it's just my way of saying I'm interested in your observations. If you have anything else to say about -- your story about the -- Obama's ability to trap that information with technology, I think, is brilliant.

Mr. Ramsey: Yeah. They were just thinking about it. I mean they were ahead of it. I think -- in the last days of the campaign, there were three things that, I think, the Obama campaign would probably like to take back.

He began -- if you guys will remember this, he began on the Wednesday before the Texas primary a sort of a light attack on John McCain. And the idea here, I think, was probably to try to position himself so that everybody thought of McCain and Obama as the two candidates, so, I'm going to position myself here and kind of close her out that way and elbow her out.

Well, what happened was McCain came back with exactly the same line of attack that Hillary was already using. And so Obama's now fighting a war on two fronts about his experience. Both of them are -- you know, they sounded remarkably alike.

Then you pile in with the A3:00 a.m.@ ad that has gotten famous and that has been on Saturday Night Live. So I guess everybody knows about it. And then if you combine those two things, between the ad that was on TV and the fight that was going on with McCain, all anybody in the chattering classes, like us, talked about on TV, in print and everywhere during the last five days of that campaign were, Obama's experience; Hillary has the upper hand; she's surging. And I think all of that combined to help her out on election day.

Male Voice: Yeah. Let me feed you guys a softball, I guess. Can you pick out a few House races that you think are going to be really interesting to watch heading into this cycle?

Mr. Ramsey: You're talking about the Texas House?

Male Voice: Texas House. And, actually, the U. S. House is fine, too, but Texas House in particular.

Mr. Ramsey: There's -- I kind of have two U. S. House races on my list. Harvey has three. And his -- actually, the third one's kind of interesting.

The Nick Lampson race is where Tom DeLay was the incumbent. Nick Lampson, I think, probably goes to mass every morning and prays that Shelley Sekula Gibbs is the candidate that he gets to run against.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Ramsey: If it's --

Mr. Kronberg: She's the one who Tom DeLay's staff said, We can't deal with this person.

Mr. Ramsey: Yeah. She went to Washington as a stump candidate and took the rest of Tom DeLay's term, and the whole staff quit. So, you know, that's the candidate that Lampson wants.

Pete Olson's a much better candidate. If he gets out of the Republican primary, that's going to be a very interesting race. And I think the San Antonio race between Ciro Rodriguez and former Bexar or -- I guess, current Bexar County Commissioner Lyle Larson is going to be a very interesting race.

And your third one was --

Mr. Kronberg: Well, actually, I guess we have four now that are viable.

Mr. Ramsey: Okay.

Mr. Kronberg: Mike McCaul versus Larry Doherty. McCaul has been slow off the gate. He's -- this is a district that was designed by Tom DeLay and his friends to represent nobody. It goes from northeast Austin to northwest Houston, with a big swathe of rural Texas in between.

And those districts have absolutely nothing -- I mean those -- the geography -- the east end and the west end have nothing in common. It was designed to be -- require massive amounts of money in order to be able to run in two major media markets. And he's being challenged by a guy named Larry Doherty, a television judge who apparently is resonating in a way that I am a little bit mystified about but seems to have legs and is certainly possible to get national money if McCaul continues to look weak.

The second one is far more interesting. It's a guy named John Culberson out of west Houston.

Culberson is a rock-ribbed, dyed-in-the-wool Republican in the model of Tom DeLay, and if you did a demographic profile or -- excuse me -- a political profile of that district, you would think he was a perfect match. His high-water mark was 80 percent. In the last election, he only got 59 percent against a high school debate coach with no money. There's an Asian migration and a Latino migration that's moving into that district.

Can Culberson be beat? Well, we've got an environmental engineer who can self-finance the campaign, who has already put $400,000 -- young, attractive, articulate. More importantly, though, there's a guy in Houston, who is Bill White, the mayor, and potential gubernatorial candidate's political director named Mustafa Tameez.

Mustafa, Pakistani-born, is kind of the perfect guy for Houston because what -- if you're from Houston, you know that it is a polyglot of cultures that is absolutely fascinating. And what Mustafa's specialty is is building cross-ethnic, cross-cultural coalitions to win elections. So he gets the Laotians on the same page as the Salvadorians on the same page as the Ethiopians and builds -- is able to guild this kind of coalition.

This is an untapped force, and -- but it is the face of the future of Texas. And if he is successful -- even if he gets close to beating Culberson, I think that creates part of the road map for Bill White to make the challenge against presumptively Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2010.

Dr. Henson: Do you guys want to do state House races at all real quick?

Mr. Ramsey: Sure.

Dr. Henson: A couple?

Mr. Ramsey: There aren't as many, you know. And when you get to the end of a cycle -- and by that, I mean that every ten years, we do redistricting -- the first election after redistricting is a blood bath because, you know, you've redrawn the maps and people are running with voters they've never seen before.

That's always a really messy election. And then they get increasingly less dramatic, I guess, by the time you get to the last couple of elections in a cycle. And so we're at the last couple of election in a cycle.

There's a couple in the state House that are interesting, though. There's an open seat near Austin where Robby Cook was the incumbent; Tim Kleinschmidt, who's the Republican, is running there. He came very close against Cook last time. It's an open seat now. Donnie Dipple from LaGrange is the Democrat. I think that's going to be like -- that's a tossup district. That's a good race to watch if you're sort of trying to figure out, AIs this a Republican year, or a Democratic year,@ because that could go either way.

The race the Republicans most think they're going to win is a race against Juan Garcia in Corpus Christi. He's a former navy pilot; he was a Harvard classmate of Obama's. He's a Democrat in starkly Republican country, and he beat a flawed candidate last time. A former state rep. who used to be a Democrat and is now a Republican is running against him, and the Republicans think they ought to take that race.

There's a couple of Austin races I don't think will change, but the Republicans always have them on their map. Donna Howard and Valinda Bolton are both Democrats who've won in what's marginally Republican country. If it's a big Republican year, those are seats that could go that way, but I don't expect them to change much.

There's another jump-ball up in Round Rock. Mike Krusee was a House member for, I think, 16 years, became very closely associated with the Trans-Texas Corridor, to his chagrin, and barely won his last election. He's not going to run for re-election, and that's an open seat. That's another one where if it's a big Democratic year -- it should be Republican territory, but the Democrat could win that seat.

And I'll give you one more and let Harvey finish off the list. There's a really interesting race in El Paso, where this phenomenon that Harvey was talking about of the primaries where you get a Republican who's more of a Republican than the existing Republican runs -- or more Democratic than a Democrat.

In this case, Pat Haggerty, who has been a House member for a long time, got beat by a guy named Dee Margo. Dee Margo should win this. It's a Republican seat. It's actually the district that I grew up in. It's a Republican area, and it includes part of Fort Bliss and El Paso. All these retired generals. They remain fairly conservative, believe it or not.

And on the other side, you've got this kid named Joe Moody, whose dad is Bill Moody -- he's an El Paso judge; he's well known. He was -- among the Democrats who ran statewide last time, he was the highest finisher. He had the high-water mark.

And, more specifically, in this Republican House district in El Paso, Texas, where the Republicans were averaging 59 or 60 percent, Bill Moody got 59 percent going the other way. His son's running against Dee Margo in that thing. So I think that's going to be a very interesting race.

Mr. Kronberg: One of the things that makes you think that this could be a historic year was, in the last two-year cycle, Democrats had the biggest gains in the Texas House they've had in this century. They gained a total of six seats, which was landmark. And it wasn't until the dust settled that we all kind of snapped to and said, Holy cow. It cut the Republican majority -- the spread in half.

Republicans think that there's two seats that they should take back. One is Juan Garcia, down in the Corpus Christi area, the rising star of Democratic politics. He's obviously Hispanic, but hardly looks Hispanic. He's, you know, fluent in Spanish. The question is whether --

Who is that?

Mr. Ramsey: Todd Hunter.

Mr. Kronberg: Todd Hunter is the guy that's running against him -- a former House member from that part of the world and, also, a very attractive -- he's going to have a lot of institutional support. That probably is their best shot at taking a seat back.

Up in the metroplex, there's Allen Vaught versus Bill Keffer. Allen Vaught, a war hero from Iraq, the Democrat, running against Bill Keffer, a very ideological Republican. And they're very confident they can take that back. I actually think they won't take it back, but -- particularly if Obama's on the ticket.

Ross mentioned the Kleinschmidt-Dipple race.

God, that has a sound to it, doesn't it?

Dr. Henson: It does, yeah.

Mr. Ramsey: Ah, I remember the Kleinschmidt-Dipple race.

Mr. Kronberg: Ah, yeah. We sat around the cooler talking about the Kleinschmidt-Dipple race.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Kronberg: What is fascinating about that district and a number of them in the metroplex is that there's a significant African-American population that has now been lit up. And Dipple, the Democrat -- we have to do this with a straight face.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Kronberg: Dipple, the Democrat -- the thing they were most excited about in their election -- when they won their election was that they won Bastrop, which is where most of the African-American population is. And they're pretty convinced that they can get those people to turn back out.

When you look at a rural district like that, you think, in a competitive election, you should default for the Republican. and probably that is the way it'll work out, but, once again, we have a group of voters that have not participated at the level historically that they participated this time, and that could cause a sea change.

The same thing faces a guy named Bill Zedler, who originally won his election up in the metroplex because he opposed a Hooter's opening in the neighborhood.

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Mr. Kronberg: And intellectually, he has pretty well stayed within those parameters.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Kronberg: And I don't know why I'm drawing blanks on challengers today.

Mr. Ramsey: Chris Turner.

Mr. Kronberg: Thank you.

I -- Chris Turner got, I think --

Mr. Ramsey: I'll just hold up cards.

Mr. Kronberg: Thank you.

Chris Turner got twice as many votes in his primary as Zedler got in his primary. It is one of those transitional districts. And it's -- in a sense, the whole metroplex is going through this transformative thing, but that race, the Zedler-Turner race, may prove to be kind of the paradigm or the metaphor for, once again, middle-class African-American neighborhoods that didn't exist ten years ago when they redistricted and do now exist in that district.

And particularly if Obama's on the ticket, perhaps Zedler can pull a rabbit out of the hat. I had other ones that I was going to say, but I backed off.

But that is a fascinating race. And again, Texas, if -- certainly, in our public schools, we're a majority/minority state. Sometime within the next few election cycles, we will be a majority/minority state. The question is whether those constituencies can be activated and whether they hold to their historic Democratic voting patterns.

Mr. Ramsey: Yeah. There's two more I want to throw in.

Mr. Kronberg: Okay.

Mr. Ramsey: The Republicans think they should take two seats back. One is in Fort Worth. They lost the special election.

Mr. Kronberg: Oh, yeah.

Mr. Ramsey: The current holder now is a guy named Dan Barrett. He won a special election for the seat held by Anna Mowery. And he's running against a pretty popular doctor, Mark Shelton. So I think the Republicans probably will flip that seat back. It'll be contested pretty heavily on both sides.

And then there's one that stuck in their craw. There was -- the son of a former mayor of Grand Prairie won narrowly a race last time.

Mr. Kronberg: Oh, yeah.

Mr. Ramsey: His name is Kirk England. He won a narrow race last time as a Republican, kind of saw what was going on up here, talked to some people, looked at his demographics and said, AI think I'm a Democrat,@ and changed parties. And now the Republicans want to take a crack at him. My hunch is that they got the wrong Republican here but that it's doable.

But that's another race where, if it's a Republican year, you know, he could rue his choice. So -- but that'll be a heavily contested race just because there are a bunch of Republicans who are sort of institutionally ticked off about that and don't want anybody to get the idea that changing parties is a good idea.

Mr. Kronberg: I want to do just one quick illustration on this and the former Anna Mowery seat. This was a special election that was held in November and had a runoff in December. This was a 62- to 64-percent Republican district.

Nobody believed there was any way that the Democrat could win, including the Democrat's consultant. And the Democrat's consultant spent the two weeks before the special election -- the runoff saying, AIf we break 45 percent@ -- he was lobbying me -- AI'm going to declare this as a victory for Democrats, because there's no way we should get 45 percent.@ Well, on the special -- it turned out there were some dirty tricks during the first round of voting.

Mr. Ramsey: Shocking.

Mr. Kronberg: (Laughing.) And they were tied. They went back to Speaker Craddick and/or at least were loosely affiliated with Speaker Craddick. And thousands of Republicans didn't show up on the runoff.

But because he has been lobbying me for two weeks, I go up to this consultant's office. And I take a bottle of scotch and say, Okay, I'm ready to be spun; let's just watch the returns together. When the early vote comes in, the Democrat is 500 votes again and never -- that margin never shrinks through the evening. And finally, the biggest, baddest, gnarliest Republican district comes in, and the margin doesn't change.

The consultant is about -- I'd kind of describe him as a six-foot-two, 300-pound guy. You've never seen one of these characters with a glass of scotch doing a Snoopy dance in front of a computer screen.

Mr. Ramsey: You don't even have to lie.

Dr. Henson: Nor do you want to.

(General laughter.)

Dr. Henson: So you got a Snoopy dance and the Hooter's vote into that segment. Very nice.

Mr. Ramsey: You've got to love Texas politics.

I think we have a question in the back from Kathy.

(Pause.)

Dr. Henson: No?

Norma?

Norma: Hi, Harvey.

Mr. Kronberg: Hello, Norma.

Mr. Ramsey: Hey.

Norma: I'm a student today. In El Paso, Moody'll carry it, I predict. Okay? Twice as many voters voted Democratic, and the Republican voters for Haggerty are going to cross over for Moody for sure or -- not cross over, but vote for Moody. And I'm sure Haggerty will probably campaign on that. So I think it'll go --

Mr. Ramsey: For Moody?

Norma: Yeah.

Mr. Ramsey: Uh-huh.

Norma: I think it'll be Dee. You'll see that El Paso's more moderate Republican, like Haggerty was. And you'll see them come in, you know, heavily for Moody. That's my prediction.

Mr. Kronberg: Well, you know, one of the problems that they've always had -- and I'm curious about what you think about this. But one of the problems that they've always had running Republicans in that district from Austin is you can't win that district with a Texas Republican.

Norma: No.

Mr. Kronberg: You have to win with a particular kind of Republican that's a Jack Vowell or Pat Haggerty or somebody like that.

Norma: Right. And Margo is definitely not Jack Vowell or Pat Haggerty.

Mr. Kronberg: Right.

Mr. Ramsey: Ouch.

Norma: So that -- and the other thing I've just -- you know, I've been working on the Obama campaign.

Mr. Ramsey: And you guys did get rid of Joe Moody's Facebook page. Right?

Norma: What now?

Mr. Ramsey: You guys did get rid of Joe Moody's Facebook page?

Norma: His You Tube thing?

Mr. Ramsey: Yeah. This was -- yeah.

Norma: I don't think they know --

Mr. Ramsey: Great moments in politics was that -- you know, this is going to happen more -- he had a Facebook page.

Norma: Yeah.

Mr. Ramsey: And he's 26. So he had all the stuff on a Facebook page that your friends have on Facebook pages. And that doesn't work really well in politics.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Ramsey: And it actually had one of the -- one of my favorite quotes in politics this year was that he was -- he finally got into a corner explaining this to the El Paso Times reporter Brandi Grissom. And he said that the -- his only defense that was left was that the photograph of the toilet full of vomit on the page was not his vomit.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Ramsey: So that's a great moment in politics.

Norma: Yeah. I told him to say that it wasn't vomit at all and it was just a carton of milk and eggs and everything mixed up. But --

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Norma: And the only other thing. I've been working on the Obama campaign. And I wonder what you all thought on the strategies. Clinton went to El Paso -- Hillary, Bill and Chelsea. He also went to -- Bill Clinton went to Abilene, Lubbock and, you know, west Texas. And Obama didn't go anywhere west than Dallas or Austin, not anywhere west.

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Norma: And I know that the Clinton people have -- you know, they were targeting the big delegate votes and everything. But the Clinton people, you know, were targeting the twos, and they were accumulating them.

And, you know, we all saw the map that came out in the Austin Statesman. I mean that was a huge amount of votes just because there was no presence.

I mean what do you think, as political guys, the impact would have been had they gone to El Paso or someplace in west Texas in the middle somewhere -- in Sierra Blanca, I guess, you know? Where --

Mr. Ramsey: Well, El Paso has got this funny thing about -- you know, 99 percent is just showing up. I mean, you know, El Paso has always been solidly Democratic, but George Bush went out there four or five times and carried El Paso. And he, you know, waved the flag, and that carried El Paso.

Well, the subtext of that was that Ann Richards didn't go out there but once, I think, in that election and George Bush went out there four times or five times. Laura was out there even more times than that.

The Obama strategy was to work the triangle, the Dallas-San Antonio-Houston triangle, which includes Austin. And if you go back and look at the map just as counties, there's 254 counties in Texas. And I think Obama won 24 of them. So it's, you know, little spots around the map, but they were very populous counties. And they almost took the state. And I think -- if they hadn't blown up that last weekend like they did, I think they would have won the overall vote.

But, you know, looking in the rearview mirror, if you had just gone to El Paso once and you had gone to McAllen once and you had gone to --

Dr. Henson: Brownsville.

Norma: Yeah. Because --

Mr. Ramsey: Yeah, Brownsville.

Norma: The El Paso organizers were -- their territory was from El Paso, west Texas, Lubbock, Amarillo, because -- one of the organizers said, Well, I'm going to drive up to Amarillo, and I'll be back tonight. And I said, AWell, when you get here from Austin@ -- because he was at that strategy meeting.

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Norma: -- AI'll give you a little geography test on Texas@ --

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Norma: -- and, AThere's no way you're going to drive from El Paso to Amarillo and be back@ --

Mr. Ramsey: Let's see. I'm in Amarillo. You want to have lunch?

Norma: Yeah. This is not California, you know.

Dr. Henson: He was probably from New Hampshire.

Norma: And then the other thing. I'm an unpledged Democrat, former Craddick D. Right? But my thing is -- do you think if there's 73 Democrats, it's going to be a Democratic speaker? If the net gain --

Mr. Ramsey: If there's 73?

Mr. Kronberg: If there's 73 Democrats?

Norma: Yeah.

Mr. Kronberg: No. It has to be a majority. But I do think that if you get 73 Democrats, the current Craddick Ds start to fade away.

Norma: Yeah. But I think that the 73 -- I don't know how a D goes home and explains not voting for a D speaker.

Mr. Ramsey: I think the Republicans can very easily coalesce around a non-controversial Republican. You could -- and that's why I was saying that the next speaker may be an interim speaker.

If you get an election where, you know, just -- let's make up numbers here. If you get an election where the Democrats get 73 and the Republicans get 77 and you get that done in such a way that Craddick can't repeat, then the Republicans will walk in with somebody who can get all the Republican votes.

Norma: Yeah. But you never -- you're going to have Tommy Merritt and some others -- Guerra -- that are, you know, clearly ready for a big change. And I don't think that the conservative Rs that want to do extreme agendas are going to find a moderate enough for them. I really don't.

Mr. Ramsey: Oh, no. I don't think the caucuses are going to rule. I think that there's 40 Republican, maybe 35 Republicans, that are sold Craddick Republicans and then there's 35 that are up for grabs. The 35 that are Craddick Republicans have to have a very conservative person to vote for. Jim Johnson's not going to vote for a moderate. But you've got 35 Republicans, and you've got 60 or 70 --

Mr. Ramsey: The only time I've ever seen an American legislature elect a speaker from the opposite party was when they had some shenanigans in California and Willie Brown pulled it off. And he's a special case because he's really good at that stuff. And it only lasted for about four months.

I just don't think a minority party can elect the speaker from their own party. I think they can elect a speaker, but it'll just --

Mr. Kronberg: Remember, we go back to primary politics. And most of these Republican districts, even if they are transitioning, the primary -- the Republican primary is only -- in a normal Republican primary, it's only 600,000 people. And you've got billionaires who are prepared to make a House primary race, a $700,000 or $1 million race.

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Mr. Kronberg: And even the stoutest Republican doesn't want to confront that if they don't have to. And finding a moderate, centrist Republican gives them cover.

Dr. Henson: So -- I'm sorry.

Mr. Kronberg: Well, it's just easier for Democrats to go back and explain. I -- you know, anybody would be, from their perspective, an improvement over Speaker Craddick. And --

Mr. Ramsey: Yeah. They'll say, We won.

Mr. Kronberg: Yeah.

Mr. Ramsey: Everybody can -- you know, in that situation, everybody'll say, We won. And they'll be able to sell that.

Mr. Kronberg: By the way, one last thing. Ron Kirk --

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but --

Mr. Ramsey: Just be quiet, Jim.

Dr. Henson: I can just leave.

Mr. Kronberg: Yeah.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Kronberg: Ron Kirk, former mayor of Dallas, African-American, the senate candidate that lost to John Cornyn in that first run, agrees that they just -- the Obama campaign seeded the field. And it wasn't for lack of resources, it wasn't for lack of volunteers, and it wasn't -- they just thought that the -- they obviously didn't understand Texas. But they -- and they also did not believe that Clinton could turn out the border and rural Texas as effectively as she was able to.

And in retrospect, they came in -- she came in disorganized. They came in over-confident on their strategy. And that created an opportunity, plus some Republican cross-over vote, to help Hillary.

What was it, a 91,000-vote margin and a 4.1-million turnout?

Dr. Henson: I don't know that anyone has really settled on what that number is, actually.

Mr. Kronberg: Yeah.

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Dr. Henson: I want to move on and take one more question from the audience, and I just want to confirm something I'm hearing from both you guys. It seems to me the consensus is that Obama on the national ticket is definitely better for Democrats down ballot.

Mr. Ramsey: I think that's right. And it depends, but it's situational. I mean there's Democrats in conservative areas who are like, You know, if I'm -- I mean I'll just be blunt. If I'm an east Texas Democrat and I'm a white -- they call them WD40s: White Democrat over 40 -- and I've got a tough race and they've got a Black guy on the top of my ballot, some of those guys think that's tough local politics and think that that's just -- you know?

Now, the same thing is, if you're in a district that's like that, if there really is a district that's, you know, as like that as they say there is, does it improve your chances much to have a woman at the top of the ticket?

One of the lines that chased around Ann Richards in 1990 when we were traveling in east Texas with her was -- people would say, AI just don't know if we're ready to have a petticoat governor,@ whatever that means exactly. But they were -- it was their reluctance to vote for a female.

So if you're one of those people and you're in a district like that, I think you're nervous about the prospects, anyway. I think they're a little more nervous about Obama.

Mr. Kronberg: And I think they --

Mr. Ramsey: But generally, I think you're right.

Mr. Kronberg: Yeah. I think that the WD40s -- most of them don't have very competitive races at this stage. I think Mark -- Chuck Thompson is probably the most --

Mr. Ramsey: Donnie Dipple does. He does. I mean that's that race. That's --

Dr. Henson: Yeah, right.

Mr. Kronberg: Fair enough. But the anti-Clinton vote is pretty well locked down. And every pollster will tell you that she is a massive anchor dragging down-ballot candidates. But I think, if you go to enough Rotary Club meetings and eat enough rubber chickens and do constituent service and take care of your people, most of these rural folks can survive.

What's exciting about Obama purely from a political perspective is that you've got half-a-dozen districts on the Republican side that would not typically be in play --

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Mr. Kronberg: -- and that suddenly become in play because you've lit up a constituency that hasn't participated in the kind of numbers that they are likely to participate if Obama's at the top.

Dr. Henson: And it's pretty amazing when you step back in a historical perspective that you would even -- that you could come to the point where you could say, you know, there really is an argument that an African-American at the top of the ticket may actually help this party.

Mr. Ramsey: In Texas, right.

Dr. Henson: In Texas. It's pretty amazing.

Mr. Kronberg: I heard Frank Rich, the New York Times columnist, had a statistic that he printed, I guess, a month ago that has -- just still overwhelms me. 40 percent of all children born in the United States since 1982 are either African-American, Latino, Asian or the children of mixed marriages. So -- and in Texas, it has got to be bigger than that, for obvious reasons.

So there is a demographic tidal wave coming. And what is significant about Obama is, of course, he's -- it seems that he has activated that constituency in a major way. And that is the grassroots for the 2010, the 2012 and the 2014 election, and that demographic only gets bigger. What's 40 percent today will be 60 percent in 15 years. And that is just a stunning statistic.

(Pause.)

Female Voice: I'm going back to the Obama analysis that you guys went through on the various factors that affected the outcome in the primary in Texas.

And you joked, I think, Ross, about the -- Saturday Night Live had done the A3:00 a.m.@ ad. And I've watched a lot more news lately because of the race and been interested in the coverage and the way it's done. And, you know, Saturday Night Live also covered the fact that Obama was the darling of the media.

And as representatives of the media, how much do you think the media coverage is affecting political outcomes in various ways?

Mr. Ramsey: You know, I always start with the position that we don't have any effect at all. But then I say, Nah; we're powerful; we have a lot of effect. And then, you know, I go back and forth.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Ramsey: I don't know. I mean, you know, I think if you're really paying attention to these things, you can find stuff out. But I think, at any given moment, we tend to cover these things as, you know, it's mud wrestling, and, you know, That one's on top; that one's on top; that one's on top.

And if you have a sustained period where one is winning for, say, the four days leading up to the Texas primary, then the other one's going to scream that, Not only was -- did she have the upper hand; you guys were announcing she had the upper hand, increasing, you know, the amplitude of it. And I think there's some truth to that. I think that happens from time to time.

Whenever you have a new candidate running against somebody -- Hillary Clinton's a special version of this, but, you know, candidates that you know and who have high negatives -- whenever you talk about them, you tend to bring up those negatives.

And one of the things that you'll notice in this race is that whenever Bill Clinton comes to the forefront in this race, her numbers go down. So that's -- he's like the personification of her negatives, and -- which was one of the reasons why it was a good idea to send him to east Texas instead of to Dallas and Houston, like I was joking a minute ago.

If a candidate like that is getting pressed on that stuff and it's, you know, AYou remember the Clintons; you remember the Clintons; you remember the Clintons,@ and they push back hard enough and get you to concentrate on the other candidate, then not only are you turning sort of, AThe dragon's head goes to Obama,@ and, you know, ALet's talk about Trinity Church in Chicago.@ It's not on Hillary any more. And that helps. I mean it lets up here.

On a moment-to-moment basis, I think, the media has a great impact. On a -- over the course of a race over time, it tends to level out, I think. I hope it does.

Mr. Kronberg: Over time. But I don't think there's any question Obama got a great ride in the first part of this election.

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Mr. Kronberg: You know, there's a wonderful episode or -- issue of the New York Times that I think really makes the case. There was a 4,000-word story that started on page 1 on Obama. It was a gushing story talking about his ability to bring Republicans and Democrats together in the Illinois legislature --

Mr. Ramsey: Oh, right.

Mr. Kronberg: -- and the -- and how well he was regarded, as a super-star, in the United States Senate. And then there was a 1,000-word story about John McCain's cancer. And I thought, Well, that's probing.

Mr. Ramsey: Rising star; dying.

Mr. Kronberg: And dying star. Right.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Kronberg: When it became evident -- I mean it seems to me that, well, it's one of those wonderful ironies.

Maureen Dowd had a column the other day where she says there is statistically no way that you can make an argument that Clinton can get there right now -- she's losing -- I mean she has lost enough delegates; she's losing super-delegates -- but the power of the Clintons is that you're wondering, and you're sitting there biting your nails and saying, How's she going to do it. The presumption is she's still going to do it.

Mr. Ramsey: There are very, very few people ever who could play this hand. And, you know, she's actually playing this hand in a way that, you know, you can squint at this thing and win it for her. I mean she could actually win this thing. It's like she keeps coming back, you know. It's Halloween VII, you know.

Mr. Kronberg: But the good news is that --

Mr. Ramsey: It's just over and over and over.

Mr. Kronberg: Yeah.

Mr. Ramsey: She's just -- she's dead. She's over. She's cooked. The hand comes out of the dirt again.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Ramsey: It's just amazing.

Mr. Kronberg: But the good news is that this fight -- I mean if he does survive this fight -- we all knew that if Obama came out of -- I mean he's still relatively untested with the press. And we were going to turn on him. I mean not Ross and I, but the press as a group.

Mr. Ramsey: Yeah. We have a meeting every Monday morning.

Mr. Kronberg: Right.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Kronberg: It's just -- there's a story arc, you know, and it goes up and down. And he has had incredibly favorable coverage, and then I can promise you this summer that they're going to pound the crap out of him.

The Jeremiah Wright thing is a really wonderful thing that's happening right now. I mean it's a terrible thing, but it's a wonderful thing because to -- winning the presidency is about adaptability and adjustment and money. And he hasn't really had to do major adjustments or adaptations or -- through the course of this campaign.

This was a real test. And his initial polling that came out after the endless loop and the -- forever on Fox News really looked like he had lost the independents.

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Mr. Kronberg: And he -- the numbers are coming back up with independents. And I always quote from Conan: AThat which doesn't kill you makes you strong.@ And I think that if he is the nominee, one of the best things that happened was the press turned on him and the pounding he took over Jeremiah Wright, because --

Dr. Henson: Conan, the German philosopher.

Mr. Ramsey: That's exactly right.

Mr. Kronberg: And Hooter's and the Snoopy dances. I've got all the popular culture here.

Dr. Henson: Okay.

Yes. Last question.

Male Voice: I know that you all talked about, if Obama and McCain are on the ticket, it could definitely change some of the water levels here in Texas. Do you see any significant effect of the water levels shifting based on who is in the vice president seat?

Mr. Ramsey: Yeah. I mean, you know, the first thing you do when you pick a vice president is -- you don't want to make a mistake. You don't want Thomas Eagleton. You don't want Dan Quayle. You want --

Mr. Kronberg: You might want to explain about Thomas Eagleton.

Mr. Ramsey: Huh?

Mr. Kronberg: You might want to explain about Thomas Eagleton.

Mr. Ramsey: Yeah.

Thomas Eagleton was a vice presidential candidate who -- after he was on the ballot and after they had gotten out of the convention, they found out that he had undergone psychiatric treatment. And --

Mr. Kronberg: Including shock therapy.

Mr. Ramsey: Including shock therapy. And, you know, it was bad.

So the first thing you want to do is not make a mistake. And then you have the specific things that you have to offset. You know, it used to be that you had to offset geography. So John Kennedy has to get somebody from a big state, and preferably in the south. I'll get Johnson. These guys tend to be more national candidates now, and I think the geography matters a little bit less in choosing somebody.

So then there was a moment when you had to go for constituencies, when you had to say, I've run so far to the right that I have to get somebody moderate on the ticket. So I'm Ronald Reagan. And even though he has been cussing at me this whole primary, I'm going to put George Bush on the ticket to get the moderate Republicans back in.

And then there's the model of, I need somebody to be better than. You know, I'm sort of -- people think I'm a pushover or something. So I'm going to get a candidate who looks even weaker than I am. And that explains -- that's my explanation for Dan Quayle.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Ramsey: You know, then you had this almost co-presidency in >92. So there's all these different things that you come to it with. If you're a McCain, you've got to have somebody young enough, because everybody looks at you and says, I like this guy; I hope he lives all four years; who's Number 2.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Ramsey: And I think that's going to be a real question. It was something of a question with Reagan.

Mr. Kronberg: Yeah.

Mr. Ramsey: And I think, actually, when we get -- as we go through this race -- it sounds funny now, but as we go through this race and it's September, we're going to be talking about how old John McCain is. I mean everybody's going to be saying, Well, what if we really did, you know, pull the lever for him; what would happen. So I think his vice president's going to play in to that.

If it's Obama or Clinton, you know, you've got some offsets there. Is it somebody -- if it's Obama, does anybody know -- anybody around here know what's on the other side of the globe? You know? I mean do we have a world candidate here? Do we have somebody who knows foreign policy or any of that kind of stuff?

If it's -- I mean there's a million questions to answer, and you try to do that with a vice presidential candidate. If you goof, it's going to affect the water levels and it's -- because it's going to affect your ticket. If you -- you know, I mean, mostly, you're just trying not to make a mistake.

Mr. Kronberg: Ironically, Ross, I think you nailed it in kind of a backwards way -- well, that sounds terrible.

Mr. Ramsey: Well, that sounds good enough. I can take it.

Dr. Henson: Thank you?

Mr. Ramsey: Thank you, Harvey. I'm hurt.

(General laughter.)

Mr. Kronberg: Ross said that the candidates typically run so hard to the right that they have to get somebody to, you know, kind of validate them back in the center.

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Mr. Kronberg: McCain, ironically, has run so hard to the center that he has got to get somebody to validate him to the right.

Dr. Henson: To the right, yeah.

Mr. Ramsey: That's what I meant.

(General laughter.)

Dr. Henson: That's a really -- the math on that is really tricky, though, because, I think, everybody McCain jogs to the right, he --

Mr. Kronberg: He loses --

Dr. Henson: He loses.

Mr. Kronberg: -- independents.

Dr. Henson: He hurts himself a little bit, you know.

Mr. Ramsey: Right.

Mr. Kronberg: Right. And --

Dr. Henson: I think the age factor is huge. I think that, you know, a lot of these vice presidential choices have actually not -- I don't think have mattered very much in the last several cycles, you know.

Mr. Kronberg: Right. And it's hard to --

Dr. Henson: But the age thing is going to be huge, I think, this time in ways that -- it's just beginning. You're just beginning to hear echos of it.

Mr. Kronberg: Right. Especially if it's a battle over the independents.

Dr. Henson: Right.

Mr. Kronberg: And if it's Obama versus McCain, then --

Dr. Henson: Right. And if he does go Wright as a vice presidential candidate, then that's problematic.

Mr. Ramsey: Yeah. If Obama wins -- and I'm not -- you know, I wouldn't call that race right now. You know, I think that at some point or another, I predicted every single Republican who ran would be the presidential nominee. So I'm not going to pick in the Democratic race.

Mr. Kronberg: It's going to be Thompson. It's surely going to be Giuliani. You know? No.

Mr. Ramsey: No.

Mr. Kronberg: Huckabee.

Mr. Ramsey: Huckabee. That's right.

If it's Obama, you've clearly got this youth contrast. And I think that makes it an even harder issue for McCain, and I think his vice presidential candidate is going to be all on that.

Mr. Kronberg: Obama has a trap, though, in the sense that he is -- it has only been 32 months since he has been in the Illinois legislature -- or something like that, 32 or 34 months since he has been a state legislator.

We -- it's widely believed -- whether true or not, history will judge, but it's widely believed that Dick Chaney hijacked the Bush presidency. And when you have somebody -- that's one of the tightropes, if Obama's the nominee, that he has to walk to have somebody that's strong, but not so strong that anybody thinks that he could be Chaney-ized.

Dr. Henson: Yeah.

Mr. Kronberg: And it's -- but he does need somebody with more experience, some military view that helps the dynamic. I'm not sure that there's anybody one way -- again, Hillary Clinton is such a well known commodity -- one way or the other, opinions are already formed -- I'm not sure what a vice presidential candidate does for her.

Dr. Henson: One could argue it's kind of balance versus, you know, appearance of team. You know, it seems to me the appearance of team is the momentum in some ways.

Mr. Kronberg: Yeah.

Dr. Henson: I think with that, we're going to thank our panelists.

(Applause.)

Dr. Henson: Harvey Kronberg, Ross Ramsey, thank you all for coming. Have a good afternoon.

(End of presentation.)