Texas Political Srategist Kelly Fero Talks to Nate Wilcox
Kelly Fero is a leading Texas Democratic political strategist, as well as an award-winning journalist and author. Fero has three decades of experience in developing political and public policy strategy at the state, national and international levels. The following interview was conducted with Nate Wilcox in the spring of 2007.
Wilcox: What was the thinking? How did Tony Sanchez become the Democratic nominee for Governor?
Fero: The thinking was, in 1998 John Sharp barely lost to Rick Perry in the Lt. Governor’s race by a little over 1%. The thinking was that Gary Mauro at the top of the ticket had been too weak and that George W. Bush had big coattails. Mauro lost by 19 points at the top of the ticket and the next race down was essentially a tie, showing that Perry wouldn’t have won without Bush’s big coattails. The thinking was in ‘02 who could we get at the top of the ticket who could fix that problem because Sharp wanted to run for Lt. Governor again. So after looking at demographics we thought how bout a well-funded Hispanic.
So we thought of Henry Cisneros. I’ll never forget that meeting. After the long pitch, Cisneros looked at Sharp and said, “Sharp, could I win?” and Sharp goes, “No, but I could” only partly tongue in cheek.
March of 2000, I first met with Tony Sanchez. I was in my office in Austin and I get a call from Sharp whose office was a block away, saying that he was coming up to my office with Tony Sanchez. So I go to the bathroom real quick before they get there, and I step into the hallway and I bump into Tony Sanchez who was wandering around looking for my office. Then Sharp shows up and we go in a conference room and Sharp goes “Kelly, I want you to tell Tony here why he’s going to be the next governor.” Totally out of the blue.
So I spent the next 15 or 20 minutes bullshitting, totally pulling it out of the air, about how Sanchez would be the next Governor. I knew enough from the Cisneros meeting and I knew Sharp’s thinking. The thinking was let’s get a well-funded Hispanic candidate at the top of the ticket to take advantage of this demographic wave — the “sleeping giant” of 900,000 registered but non-voting Hispanics in Texas. If we could just turn them on, we’d sweep in, including Sharp as Lt Governor.
Tony Sanchez just sort of looked at me like a deer in the headlights.
A week later I get another call from Sharp and he and Tony Sanchez came over again. And I told Sharp later, his eyes had gone from “Why me?” to “Why not me?” He was obviously talking to other people whom he thought were encouraging him including Nick Kralj, Ben Barnes and Jack Martin.
We talked about recruiting other people for the ticket including Ron Kirk for Senate, Kirk Watson for AG, etc. What were we smoking!?
All of this seemed for some reason entirely plausible to them. I never really thought about it because my head was in the Mexican presidential race. On paper this all seemed like a good idea.
On June 28, 2000 Sanchez called me and said, ok I’m going to do this thing but only if you leave PSI and come over and run this thing. In Feb 2001, I brought in Glenn Smith, a long-time political reporter who had run Ann Richards’ campaign in 1990 against me, I was running Jim Mattox’ campaign in the primary.
Glenn was brought in originally to run the database and technology side of the campaign. Not long after I was called home by Sharp to run his Lt. Governor’s campaign and left the Sanchez campaign.
The thinking was we’d appeal to all the various demographic groups in the state, with Sanchez appealing to Hispanics, Kirk appealing to African-Americans, Sharp with his appeal to the business community and rural voters. It all sounded very logical and plausible at the time. What we found out, of course, separate and apart from how well and how imperfectly all the campaigns were run. What we found was that Texans in 2002 were not all that prepared to vote for a Hispanic, or at least that Hispanic.
We also found out after the fact that Republican interests were pouring $5.5 million of illegal corporate money into the race. Yeah we got beat but the other side was cheating.
Wilcox: How much did 9/11 impact the campaign?
Fero: In the Sanchez campaign, I do remember that he was in New York during the attacks and couldn’t get back because the flights were grounded. He was stuck in NYC for six days. Later I realized that was symbolic, the campaign never got off the ground, it was just stuck in this post 9/11 limbo. All the best laid communications strategies of the campaign went out the window.
Wilcox: One of the strategic decisions the Sanchez campaign made was to attack Perry early, to hit him on Insurance rates and utility rates. And the campaign was basically ended as a competitive proposition early — in August — when Perry fired back with attacks linking Sanchez to drug dealing and money laundering.
Fero: That triggers another memory, when I was first talking to Tony, very early, still in 2000. Sanchez and I were at the Four Seasons and he told me he wanted to run the most negative campaign ever. It registered with me later, after he ran one of the most negative campaigns in history. You will recall that the last ad of the campaign was a positive ad. It was the best ad of the campaign, it was hopeful and aspirational and everything I had hoped the campaign would be. But it was too late and I guess Tony never really had any interest in running the kind of positive campaign that I had hoped we would.
And on the Perry side of the equation you have to remember that he had tried to run a negative campaign against Sharp in 1998 but Rove who was running Bush’s campaign would not allow it. In fact we got at least two ads that were never aired on purpose but were shipped to stations and we got a copy of them because Perry just had to take a shot.
I think the combination of Tony running a negative campaign from inclinations inside of him and Perry with the brakes taken off resulted in an amazingly negative campaign.
Wilcox: It strikes me that the fundamental strategic paradox that destroyed the Sanchez campaign was that in order to win they had to “wake the sleeping giant” and inspire Hispanics who don’t normally vote to get involved and yet they ran a campaign that was almost systematically designed to dampen turnout — a very negative broadcast media campaign.
One other thing, Dan Morales, the former Attorney General, who was already under a cloud of federal investigation, filed at the last minute, at 5 minutes to 5 on the day of the filing deadline. Then Sanchez and Morales debated each other in Spanish.
Fero: The decision to debate Morales in Spanish was one of the worst decisions of the campaign because it sent a message to white voters that this was a primary campaign that was taking place outside the realm of white voters in a language they didn’t understand.
One other aspect of the Morales campaign that’s become clear since then was that Perry’s people pretty much convinced Morales to get into the race. They insinuated that if he curried favor with them by damaging Sanchez then they would arrange for lighter treatment for him in his legal issues. Morales ended up endorsing Perry after the primaries and serving on some sort of law enforcement commission. Somehow it was not hypocritical of Perry to appoint a guy to a special law enforcement committee that was under a shadow of indictment for breaking the law.
There was only one night of debates in the campaign, with all the candidates, Governor, Senate, Lt. Gov, AG debating in Dallas the night before the OU/UT game. I was walking down a hallway backstage and Rick Perry and Anita Perry and their bodyguards came around a corner and I had to greet them, the hallway was too small to ignore them. And who was with them? Dan Morales, desperately sucking up and trying to curry favor.
Wilcox: Glenn Smith took over the campaign promising to run the first aggressive, modern field campaign in Texas political history, palm pilots, databases, etc An endeavor that had basically been abandoned with Ralph Yarborough’s loss in 1970.
Fero: Early on, Sanchez, who had a background in high-tech as an investor was talking about using technology to impact the campaign. He was talking very early on about command and control centers and computer banks and people blockwalking with palm pilots and HQ using the technology to get early reports and reallocate resources. etc. It was all very exciting and promising but from what I could tell none of it was every really implemented.
I was no longer with the campaign but because I had been involved early on people would vent to me.
I got the impression that his vision had not been implemented. I got a call from Hidalgo county in the final days before the election saying that the field program that we were hearing about for months amounted to kids standing in medians holding up Sanchez signs. Another person working for the Sanchez campaign told me that the day after the election he tried to return $80,000 in cash to the campaign and they wouldn’t take it. So he bought a new car.
In the end the NASA like command and control center turned out to be a typical street money in south Texas operation. We could’ve run a campaign like that for slightly less than $87 million.
Wilcox: You mentioned the $87 million figure but earlier you were saying that the $5 million in illegal corporate money made a huge impact. How come the Republicans money made such a bigger impact.
Fero: I think you’re right in your assessment that 9/11 was a wet blanket in the 2002 elections. So it’s an excellent question, but I think it’s apples and oranges. The money wasn’t going head to head. The $5.5 million was going into state rep races to pull out republican voters in close races where the $87 million was just being pissed into the wind.
Wilcox: When did it become apparent that DeLay and the GOP were going to use their ill-bought majority in the Texas legislature to re-draw the congressional districts? He had installed his friend Tom Craddick as speaker of the house…
Fero: The very day after the election in 2002, where Craddick announced he had the votes to be speaker. The media advisory that went to the press about that conference was sent out on TRMPAC stationary. That was the first time many of us who had been involved in other races became aware of TRMPAC. The day after the election was the first day I heard some rumor about possible redistricting.
A couple months after the election, Perry was asked and denied there would be redistricting. Lt Gov Dewhurst said he was against it. Called it a bad idea.
In March I began picking up whispers that there was redistricting afoot and that DeLay was behind it. Everyone I think was slow to adapt to the new roles and rules that people had to play in that first session under GOP leadership. There was a lot of adjustment that session, the adjustments are still going on.
DeLay had redistricting in mind this whole time we now know. Then in May, of course, Ardmore happened. I was aware that weekend that it was afoot but I was sceptical that it would actually happen. But it did. Amazing. 50 state legislators organizing themselves to secretly get to Oklahoma.
Wilcox: Around that time you and I started putting together plans to put together a web site to oppose the redistricting.
Fero: It was obviously a good idea and it was something that was not being done. This effort to steamroller redistricting was happening in a vacuum. We were slow to adjust to the opposition role. The other side, Craddick, DeLay, Perry had been working on this strategy for months and we were caught flat footed. It was you and a handful of others who tried to kickstart the opposition to this redistricting into gear.
It was outside the ability of the Democratic officials to imagine that this was really going to happen and number two it was impossible to imagine that there was anything they could do to stop it.
A few people came together to do something about it — Chris Bell’s office, Martin Frost’s office, Dem minority leader Jim Dunnam, George Shipley, Alfred Stanley, Chris Feldman.
There was a huge rally at the capitol. 22,000 people had signed the petition to oppose redistricting online. Then there was a big rally to show support for the quorum breakers. All the pieces of the Democratic machine came together — Frost and the unions sent buses around the state to bring in volunteers, Glen Maxey and the Dean campaign put their organization muscle into the rally, south Texas came through. We put on an enormous rally….and the steamroller kept coming and redistricting happened anyway.