Bill White, A Snowball’s Chance
March 8, 2010
Bill White Democrat and former Houston mayor said after his win in the primary election, “Today Texans sent a message to the entrenched interests in Austin: Texans are ready for a new governor.” This I assume was just the positive response to his victory because White knows that it is not true. His opponent is incumbent Governor Rick Perry. Texans do not want a new governor, they just want to continue with the candidate that will curb their fears of change.
White will continue with his attempt to become Texas’ first Democratic governor since Ann Richards abdicated the throne 15 years ago to the now infamous George W. Bush. He will continue to fight pushing his agenda in hope of gaining votes while suffering defeat at the hands of an inferior man.
Bill White will campaign focusing on the issues of jobs and the economy, education, health care and energy.
White’s ideas caused Houston to gain more jobs than 34 states. Although Rick Perry claimed to create one million jobs during his time in office, a significant amount of these jobs were in Houston, Texas’ most economically sound city. Of course White was mayor.
Rick Perry claims responsibility for these jobs, but he also turned down $550 million in federal stimulus funding for unemployment aid.
White will force the issue of education which with Perry as governor has consistently been ranked among the worst in the country. White will improve Texas education by implementing similar programs to those he used in Houston that showed success. Perry will say that he has improved education while continuing to allow low rankings on a state wide level.
White will bring up the issue of health care reform. He will fight to help keep insurance premiums from increasing as they have under Perry who has allowed Texas to have some of the highest insurance rates.
White will also attempt to expand enrollment in the Childrens Health Insurance Program and medicaid so Texas can reap federal benefits that have been turned down by Perry who claims to be helping Texas’ need for affordable health care.
White will promote Texas as the international energy leader through traditional energy sources and energy sources for the future. Perry has attempted similar ideas without the success a veteran energy man such as White who has served as Deputy Secretary of Energy of the United States.
While Bill White in just about every aspect is more qualified and better proven as an executive, he has almost no hope of becoming governor. Even though Rick Perry is a semi-competent leader, at best, hand picked by a completely incompetent leader Bill White can only hope for extreme circumstances creating his victory.
The reason is simply that voting Texans are simply not the type of people who change their ideals. They were raised one way and only extreme circumstances will cause them to change such as when the Democrats ran the southern loathed McGovern when he caused the shift in southern voting trends from Democrat to Republican.
White’s only hope outside of Perry’s untimely death is that someone does like Carol Strayhorn did in 2006 taking a substantial amount of votes from Perry while no one does the same to the Democrats as in 2006. Since this would have to come out of left field it is not out of the realm of possibility, but it has as much chance as a snowball in hell. Which is about as much chance as White has.
