Ron Kirk wants the Senate seat that Republican Phil Gramm warmed for 18 years. So does the Democratic Party. And so do four other Democrats. To win the chance to go up against Republican John Cornyn, Kirk will have to be the last man standing in the hotly contested Democratic primary, which takes place March 12.
In the fight with Kirk are Ken Bentsen of Houston, a congressman and scion of the South Texas ranching family, and Victor Morales of Crandall, the truck-driving teacher who won the party’s nomination in 1996. To do well in this field—in a way that conserves financial resources and preserves political wiggle room for the general election—requires more behind-the-scenes strategy than on-the-stump savvy. Like many political observers in Dallas, we were curious why Kirk thought he could win such a competitive Democratic primary, much less a general election against a well-known Republican. Kirk spoke to D Magazine as he headed into the primary homestretch. Here’s why he thinks he can win this month—and later this year.
Rule One: Go to Your Friends
Before he was mayor of Dallas, Ron Kirk was Texas secretary of state. In that post, he befriended a lot of Democratic leaders. He officially declared his candidacy for Senate only after he had spent a lot of time talking to those leaders on the telephone. He nailed down the big names in September—former governors Ann Richards, Mark White, and Preston Smith; Texas House Speaker Pete Laney; and congressional leaders such as Martin Frost and Eddie Bernice Johnson. He then went to Washington to convince national Democratic leaders that he is the consensus choice of the state leadership. The national party doesn’t endorse candidates in a primary, but Kirk wanted to start a buzz among the Washington lobbyists and association executives who direct the big PAC dollars to Senate races.
With that accomplished, he started in on local leaders, particularly in places where his name was hardly known—which basically means everywhere outside of Dallas, parts of East Texas, and Austin. “Take 90 days, 254 counties, and 21 million people, and you just can’t get there,” Kirk says. “There are not enough hours in the day to reach out and touch that many people.” Instead he focused on small group meetings to recruit others to do the touching for him. In the early days of his campaign, he crisscrossed the state, introducing himself to local leaders and convincing them he could win. “Being mayor is extraordinarily retail,” Kirk says of the difference between running for Senate and running for mayor. “You get used to speaking to large groups of people. A statewide race is almost the opposite, almost entirely wholesale.” His focus has been selling the political middlemen on Ron Kirk. By December he had secured support of two-thirds of the Democrats in the state Senate and more than half in the state House. With these endorsements also came their donors.
There’s an added advantage to this strategy of trickle-down politics: he can say less about specific issues. By securing the support of local elected leaders, those folks can tailor the “Vote Kirk” mantra to their various constituencies. With this in mind, his first stop was the Rio Grande Valley.
Rule Two: Be Competitive in South Tejas
The largest group of Democratic primary voters is young Hispanics. The Kirk campaign believed from the start that ever-more-Hispanic South Texas was up for grabs, even for a black guy in an election with two candidates—initially—named Morales. He campaigned hard and early in the booming rural areas of South Texas, kicking off his bid for the Senate with a pre-Thanksgiving trip to sign up local leaders in McAllen, Edinburgh, and Laredo.
For Kirk, who says he knows just enough Spanish to embarrass himself, it wasn’t about convincing the Hispanic masses that he could speak their language. “What a lot of my Spanish-speaking friends have told me,” he says, “is that it’s a little bit condescending that, come election time, everybody comes out and says, ’Buenas dias. Yo quiero su vota.’” Instead, with his other endorsements in hand, he stressed his electability. He signed on the likes of Laredo Mayor Betty Flores, State Rep. Miguel Wise, and San Juan Mayor Roberto Laredo. Suddenly, from Brownsville to El Paso, he had more than 50 (mostly Hispanic) elected leaders, from precinct chairs to state senators, telling their constituents and financial supporters that Kirk is their man. This helped him win further support among Hispanic leaders in other, less up-for-grabs areas, such as Houston.
South Texas was supposed to be Dan Morales territory. But the former attorney general from San Antonio shocked the Democratic Party when, on Jan. 2, instead of declaring his candidacy for the Senate, he registered to run for governor. Either Morales was playing possum in the gubernatorial poker game, or Kirk had raised the ante in South Texas so much that Morales couldn’t afford to match him.
Rule Three: Get Carol Reed on Your Team
Dallas political consultant Carol Reed has been called “the flip side of Ron Kirk’s coin.” The woman who engineered victorious campaigns for Kirk in his two Dallas mayoral races has served as his consultant and confidant since before his Senate campaign began. She joined in a more official capacity after completing her work on Tom Dunning’s mayoral campaign.
“She’s smart, she knows how to win, and she’ll stretch the dollars,” says Austin political strategist Bill Miller. “She also knows you don’t want the candidate running the campaign.” And while Kirk’s Democratic supporters are working to win him the primary, Reed’s eye is more focused on winning a general election, which is why her being a Republican helps even more. “It sends the subtle message that if he has the support of someone like her,” Miller adds, “other Republicans might vote for him, too.” And that adds to the electability theme.
Rule Four: Drum the Message “I Can Win, I Can Win.”
“Electability” isn’t even a real word. But it’s the phrase that matters to Kirk more than any other. “With three candidates all from the middle to moderate wing of the Democratic Party,” Kirk says, “the issue of electability may be the defining issue of the primary.” Electability. Electability. In speeches and interviews, it seldom takes him more than two minutes to use the term.
This political Jedi mind trick—helping himself win by simply telling voters repeatedly that he can win—should appeal even to liberals who fret over the way Kirk often looks and talks like a Republican. “Democratic voters are obsessed with the opportunity to beat the Republicans in this race in a way we haven’t seen since Lloyd [Bentsen] and Ann [Richards],” says Washington political strategist Paul Begala. “It’s been a long dry spell, and even the hardcore left are willing to accept someone they agree with only 50 or 75 percent of the time if they believe he can win in the general election.” Being the candidate Democrats subconsciously link to a November victory could be what gets him there.
Rule Five: Focus on the Runoff
The magic number for Kirk and his primary competitors is 51 percent, and nobody is likely to get it. In a primary this tight, being the definitive second choice may be what it takes to come out on top. The pundits and candidates alike are assuming that Victor Morales, if for no other reason than he has a Hispanic name and has run before, will be the kind of wild card that will throw the race into a runoff. “We are positioning ourselves so that we’ll not only be in a runoff,” Kirk says, “but we’ll also be the leading candidate going into the runoff.”
For Kirk, that means being at the center among centrists—not a particularly difficult task for a self-described “raging moderate” whose campaign stresses general themes, such as electability, rather than specific issues. If the runoff is Morales vs. Kirk, the former mayor will be able to stress his business acumen to get the Bentsen votes. If it’s a Bentsen vs. Kirk runoff, Kirk is confident that his heavy campaigning in South Texas will get the second go-round of votes from the large contingent of Hispanic voters that would have likely voted for Morales.
His Not-so-secret Weapon: The Black Vote
Curiously, in his strategic discussions, Ron Kirk never mentions the obvious: he’s African-American. Black turnout has been increasing statewide as it has nationwide. In the Bush vs. Gore election, black turnout hit 10 percent of total turnout nationally and 15 percent in Texas (up from 10 percent in 1996). If elected, Kirk will be the only African-American in the Senate, and that alone should drive black turnout through the roof. Of course, Kirk’s operatives in South Dallas, East Texas, and Houston’s Fifth Ward will be working to get out every voter.
But some observers think Kirk’s color could also work against him, especially in the general election in white East Texas and other pockets of the state. But strategist Miller disagrees. “There are pockets, and East Texas has more than a few, where color is not an advantage,” he says. “Historically these belonged to the yellow-dog Democrats. But that was before we saw people of color on top of the ballot. This election will really test that definition.”
According to this brand of conventional wisdom, Kirk doesn’t need to advertise his color. In every campaign photo and television ad, his blackness speaks for itself. And to the hardest of the hardcore Democratic base, it doesn’t just speak loudly and clearly, it blares like a trumpet call. Whether Democrats will rally to the sound is what primaries are all about.
Dan Michalski is a frequent contributor to D Magazine.
