Richland Chronicle

Issue date: 3/2/10 Section: News

Stefani Carter (left) leads Geoff Bailey (right) in the District 102 Texas House GOP primary.

Stefani Carter won 74 percent of the 6,643 votes cast to defeat Geoff Bailey in the Republican primary for Texas House District 102, which includes Richland College.

Carter, a former Collin County prosecutor and Harvard Law School graduate, took 5,112 votes to Bailey's 1,831.

Carter will face Rep. Carol Kent, who was unopposed in the primary, in the November general election. Kent previously taught Humanities at Richland College.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Winners: Texas Gov. Rick Perry and "tea party" anger. Losers: Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and anybody else tied to Washington.

Take note, House and Senate members up for re-election or running for governor this fall: Your connections to the nation's gridlocked capital - and particularly your votes for the Wall Street bailout - could be debilitating.

Tuesday's GOP primary in the Texas governor's race showed as much.

Texas Republicans sent these messages, Perry said: "Stop messin' with Texas!" and "Quit spending all the money!"

The race pitted the public's fury at Washington against its anti-incumbent fervor. And it turned out that Republican primary voters hated Washington more than they did incumbency. They nixed Hutchison, an indisputable capital insider after 16 Senate years, in favor of keeping Perry - even though he's Texas' longest-serving governor, in his 10th year at the helm.

Perry, who became governor when George W. Bush left office, is seeking an unprecedented third four-year term. He will face Democrat Bill White, the former Houston mayor, this fall in a race that Democrats and Republicans alike expect to be competitive.

Underscoring its belief that White can win, the Democratic Governors Association already has given him $500,000. More is expected to follow as Democrats portray White "as an outsider who can bring people together," according to a DGA memo, and use Perry's long tenure against him.

That strategy failed for Hutchison.

The GOP matchup had been expected to be a suspenseful clash of Texas titans.

But it was hardly that in the final weeks. Perry successfully painted Hutchison as the epitome of everything that's wrong with Washington and effectively played to animosity fueling the "tea party" coalition over excessive federal spending. It didn't help Hutchison that their images played into his message: He's down-home Texas, with a swashbuckling style. She's every bit Washington, from her polished appearance to her Senate-tinged vernacular.

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