Prof Runs GOP Debate Focus Group on Campus

Since I’m a SMU grad and I’m very disappointed in these ratings. I expected students at my Alma mater to recognize true liberty… Debra Medina is the ONLY choice, and owned the other 2 in the debates! What’s going on since I left?

By Elisabeth Brubaker
ebrubake@smu.edu

SMU Professor Dr. Rita Kirk held a focus group in Umphrey Lee Friday night to study the Republican reaction to the Belo debate. Kirk recruited 30 Republicans- both first time and repeat voters to participate in the focus group during the GOP Debate.

Kirk has been doing research for over 20 years. CNN first hired Kirk for the debates during the presidential election primaries. This past weekend she brought her research back to the Hilltop only one day after going to Ohio to dial test the President’s State of the Union address.

The focus groups are used to “dial test” a particular speech or event. Each participant is given a dial to record their perceptions of the candidates (or the President) at any moment throughout the speech or debate.

Kirk loves analyzing the data afterwards. During the candidates’ closing statements Kirk was able to see who did the best overall. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison had the highest rating with 73 out of 100. Governor Rick Perry got a 67 and Debra Medina got a 63.

Some participants offered their opinions of the dial testing and candidates after the debate. Watch the videos for their reactions.

(Editor’s note: Elisabeth Brubaker is a student assistant for Dr. Kirk’s research study.)

One participant said this about the “jeopardy” portion of the debate:

Another participant discussed how she reads the candidates.

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In Texas, Relative Unknown Medina Shakes Up Race With Perry and Hutchison

DALLAS—An obscure candidate with backing from the “tea party” movement threatens to deny a decisive victory to either Texas Gov. Rick Perry or Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the battle for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Texas.

Little-known Debra Medina made a splash two weeks ago in a televised debate. She criticized the governor for “painting a rosy picture that doesn’t exist” about the Texas economy and said her rivals’ “squabbling isn’t getting us anywhere.”

Mrs. Medina “stole the show,” said Harvey Kronberg, longtime editor of the Quorum Report newsletter in Austin.

Associated Press

Debra Medina

On Friday night, Mrs. Medina will try to prove that her debate showing was no fluke.

A nurse and former Republican Party leader in Wharton County, in south Texas, Mrs. Medina is running on a platform of small government, states’ rights, and the elimination of property taxes and gun-registration laws.

While she appeals to many of the same primary voters as Mr. Perry, she has been trying to tap into Texans‘ anti-incumbent fervor. Mr. Perry has been governor since 2000 and is seeking a third full term; Ms. Hutchison has served in Washington since 1993.

The winner of the March 2 primary is likely to face Bill White, the Democratic former mayor of Houston, in November.

A Rasmussen Reports poll of 831 likely Republican voters, taken three days after the Jan. 14 debate, gave Mrs. Medina 12% support, a jump from the 4% or so she had in earlier surveys. She appeared to have drawn new backing from undecided voters as well as from the Perry and Hutchison camps.

To be sure, Mrs. Medina remained far below Mr. Perry’s 43% and Ms. Hutchison’s 33% voter backing.

And though she has raised $100,000 since the Jan. 14 debate, according to her staff, bringing her total to more than $360,000, the establishment candidates have raised millions of dollars and have already started funding ad campaigns.

They also outpace her on the endorsement front. Sarah Palin is slated to campaign for Mr. Perry in Houston on Feb. 7, and last week former President George H.W. Bush came out for Ms. Hutchison.

Mrs. Medina said her goal was to win the primary, and that victory wasn’t out of reach. “I believe we are fighting the very same battle the Founding Fathers fought,” she said.

View Full Image

Associated Press

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, left, and U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison last week

Her current level of support wouldn’t be enough to win her a place on the November ballot, but it could keep the other candidates from receiving the 51% of the vote needed to avoid an April runoff.

“As long as Medina is in double figures, you have to figure that a runoff is pretty imminent,” said James R. Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project, a program at the University of Texas in Austin that does nonpartisan polling and research.

Spokeswomen for the Perry and Hutchison campaigns predicted their candidates would win outright on March 2.

Mrs. Medina is critical of both Mr. Perry and Ms. Hutchison, calling them “two sides of the same coin.” But she has reserved some of her sharpest jabs for the governor, whom she described in an interview as the “jumpy, fidgety frat boy sitting on stage with me two weeks ago.”

In response to Mrs. Medina’s remark, Catherine Frazier, a spokesman for the governor, said: “Under Gov. Perry’s leadership, Texas is the strongest state in the nation. If that is what she thinks about where Texas is headed, that’s unfortunate.”

Dr. Henson of the Texas Politics Project was among the political mavens who thought Mr. Perry would prevail in a runoff, because he was most likely to capture Mrs. Medina’s voters.

But others thought Ms. Hutchison would benefit from the extra campaign time a runoff would afford and from Mrs. Medina’s attacks on the governor, which the senator encouraged during the first debate.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more fire coming in from Gov. Perry in the direction of Debra Medina,” said Ken Emanuelson, a leader of the tea-party movement in Dallas, which worked to ensure that she was included in both debates.

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CAMPAIGN 2010

AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry is far from having the Republican gubernatorial nomination sewn up, but a new poll indicates U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is in danger of having the bottom fall out of her campaign.

The political newsletter Rasmussen Reports released a survey of likely Republican primary voters showing Perry leading 44 percent to Hutchison’s 29 percent, with activist Debra Medina following at 16 percent.

Medina’s support has grown from the 12 percent she held in January, and the

publication said most of her gain appeared to be coming from Hutchison. Both of Medina’s gains in the polls occurred shortly after her participation in debates with Perry and Hutchison.

“Now that the people of Texas are watching and listening, we expect to accelerate drastically this next month in the polls,” Medina campaign manager Penny Langford Freeman said in a statement.

But without financial resources to keep her campaign on television with paid advertising, Medina is likely to fade between now and the March 2 election. A Texas Ethics Commission report filed this week showed Medina had just $68,483 available on Jan. 21.

War chests nearly equal

Perry and Hutchison had enough cash on hand to spend about $2 million a week. Perry pulled slightly ahead of Hutchison for the first time, reporting $10.4 million in the bank to her $10 million.

In the Rasmussen survey, Perry led among conservative Republicans by 18 percentage points, and Hutchison led by 11 percentage points among party moderates. Conservatives tend to dominate party primaries. Rasmussen said for Hutchison to win with current voter attitudes, half the primary voters would have to be moderates.

Both Perry and Hutchison’s spokespeople said the only poll they rely on is the one conducted on Election Day.

“The governor is going to continue traveling the state talking about his conservative record and his vision of the future,” said Perry spokesman Mark Miner.

Hutchison spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said Hutchison will continue to promote a “positive vision” for the state, but she said the poll also had bad news for Perry.

“It should be very troubling to a nine-year incumbent that he can’t get over 44 percent,” Baker said.

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Everyone should understand that this isn’t another Interstate Highway. It not just a jumbo-sized highway. This Corridor project is a very wide, very flat, extremely limited access, mostly toll, highway-rail-utility corridor. To cross the Corridor at any point will require a quarter-mile long overpass.

“If there is no access to the small towns, it will change the face of the state.”
— Will Lowrance, Hillsboro Mayor MORE>>

It will connect to Interstate and other major highways. However, by design it will not provide easy, if any, access to the communities it passes by. It will not spur commercial development along its frontage like our Interstate Highways. There will be no frontage. There will be no opportunity for the owners of property it abuts to develop new or expanded businesses with access to the Corridor. Moreover, it has provisions in the plan and the law to place all possible traveler services on the corridor itself.

Every mile of Corridor will consume 146 acres of land. That’s property that will become state owned land – removed from county and school district tax rolls everywhere it extends.

“If it is done the way it’s proposed, it will hurt us eventually …”
— Carlos Vigil, Cooke County Community Development Director MORE>>

Communities with travel and tourism based economies will lose access to those travelers. If the Corridor is successful in attracting traffic away from existing highways communities will suffer significant economic loses.

“With a right-of-way approximately 1,200-feet-wide, the proposed corridor
could change the face of agriculture in Texas forever as it
swallows up thousands of production acres of farmland.”
— Juliet Briskin, Country World News (November 4, 2004) [link]

Where will they build the Corridor?

“The Trans Texas Corridor is a state of mind, not an alignment on a map.”
— Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson
(March 25, 2003) [citation] [full text]

The plan adopted by the Texas Transportation Commission outlines 4,000 miles of Corridor to crisscross the entire state. Four of those Corridors have been identified by the Texas Department of Transportation as Priority Corridors to be constructed first (shown below in orange). No effort has been made by the state to identify the specific placement of the Corridors. There are however some known constraints. The Corridors do not directly connect large cities. In fact they go around major urban areas for three prime reasons: one, to keep traffic away from existing urban congestion; two, to keep vehicle air pollution out of urban areas; and three, to provide new routes for the transportation of hazardous materials. Topography will also be very important because of the high-speed rail component of the Corridor. It will be necessary that the Corridor be as straight and level as possible (no uphill or downhill grades or sharp turns).

Note: The Priority Routes alone total 4,000 miles;
the complete TTC Plan totals 8,000 miles.

How did the Trans-Texas Corridor get started?

“What started out as a campaign promise is now in the fast lane.”
— Rudy Koski, KVUE News, Austin (March 16, 2004)

In 2002 Governor Perry announced his Corridor vision and instructed TxDOT to prepare an action plan to build the Trans-Texas Corridor. Within six-months TxDOT had completed the plan and presented it to the Transportation Commission. Without any substantive discussion or debate and without public comment the Commission approved the plan as presented on June 27, 2002. [the plan]

“Once the Governor decided that this is where we needed to head,
he wanted to remove it from the political flow of the state,
he wanted it to become policy as opposed to politics,
and that was one of the reasons he asked us to move so fast,
and we’ve done an admirable job….”
— Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson
(June 27, 2002) [full text]

“If this is the governor’s plan,
I’d like to have the governor come down and explain it to us.”
— Ed Janecka, Fayette County Judge MORE>>

“The Trans-Texas Corridor plan is not the product of transportation professionals, urban planners, sociologists and environmentalists hammering out affordable infrastructure to meet our 21st Century needs. Rather, it was hatched in a smoke-filled room where nobody worried about the needs of ordinary Texans.”
— Dick Kallerman, Transportation Issue Coordinator, Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter [more]

Since the plan was developed a series of state laws have been put into place drastically changing the highway construction and financing rules — giving the Texas Transportation Commission unprecedented authority and power. The most significant of these new laws is known as House Bill 3588. [HB-3588]

The Legislature “threw the door wide open . . . and we intend to use it.”
— Transportation Commissioner Robert L. Nichols
(Texas Good Roads Annual Meeting: June 30, 2003)

“It [HB-3588] gives us all of the authority and all of the power we need on a state level to move forward on the Trans-Texas Corridor, plus some.”
— Phillip Russell, Director, Texas Turnpike Authority Division
(August 20, 2003) [citation] [full text]

The Commission may acquire, in the name of the state, public or private real property as they determine to be necessary or convenient for the construction, enlargement or operation of the Trans Texas Corridor.

The Commission can lease or sell part of the property, for any purpose, including placing on the adjoining right-of-way a gas station, garage, store, hotel, restaurant, parking facility, railroad track, or billboard under terms they set. They can even lease it back to the original owner or any other public or private entity for unrelated commercial or industrial purposes.

“The Governor, the Texas Transportation Commission, the TxDOT, the administration — our staff — we are all committed to implementing this plan. We believe it is real.” — Commissioner Robert Nichols, Texas Transportation Commission (August 20, 2003) [citation] [full text]

If you’re thinking that this won’t happen for several years into the  future, you’re kidding yourself. The draft agenda for the Transportation Commission’s December 2004 meeting includes as item number 11, “Turnpike Project / Various Counties – Approve the selection of the best value proposal for the planning, development, acquisition, design, construction, financing, maintenance, and operation of the Oklahoma-Mexico priority element of the Trans-Texas Corridor system generally paralleling IH 35 (TTC-35); and authorize the department to execute a comprehensive development agreement with the chosen developer.” [link]

“. . . we are very aggressive, we’re very serious about it,
and we are going to move forward on it.”
— Phillip Russell, Director, Texas Turnpike Authority Division
(August 20, 2003) [citation] [full text]

It has been their plan for more than a year . . .

“Our goal is to award — our plan is to award and execute the CDA by late 2004. We stand committed to that schedule, and we’re going to work very hard to try to maintain that schedule.” — Edward Pensock, Director of Corridor Planning & Development, Texas Turnpike Authority Division (August 20, 2003) [citation] [full text]

“That’s our commitment to you, and that’s our promise.” — Edward Pensock, Director of Corridor Planning & Development, Texas Turnpike Authority Division (August 20, 2003) [citation] [full text]

“. . . I think you see that trend of a Governor and of a Commission and of a Department that’s going to be very aggressive moving forward. We don’t want any grass to grow under our feet, and so we will be moving very, very aggressively forward on this project. You know, the goal here really is, from the Governor and the Commission on down, is they want a contract executed — a developer selected and a contract executed next year. And they want to get down to the business of this as soon as possible.” — Phillip Russell, Director, Texas Turnpike Authority Division (August 20, 2003) [citation] [full text]

The official Trans-Texas Corridor Plan reads,

“. . . acquiring property for all components must begin as soon as possible.” [plan page 44]

“The truth is this is a 50-year plan with an emphasis on the first ten years to get moving
and to focus on the primary corridors as quickly as possible to relieve congestion and
move hazardous material out of our current urbanized areas.”
— Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson
(June 27, 2002) [full text]

“. . . we are very aggressive, we’re very serious about it, and we are going to move forward on it.” — Phillip Russell, Director, Texas Turnpike Authority
(August 20, 2003) [citation] [full text]

“You can’t say the idea is a joke when you’ve got three international companies proposing
multibillion-dollar investments in the first piece.”
— Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson
(July 4, 2004) [link]

If you take comfort in the lengthy environmental process and public hearings for a highway project of this massive size, you’re in for a rude awakening.  The Federal Highway Administration announced on March 16, 2004, that the first segment of the Trans Texas Corridor (Hillsboro to San Antonio) has been granted ‘experimental project’ status and construction can begin before the environmental study is complete. MORE>>

“Under the streamlined process, public hearings  would still be conducted,
but they would not have to be completed before work started.”
— Fort Worth Star-Telegram (March 16, 2004) MORE>>

“I think definitely the Trans-Texas Corridor project as a whole, and even any one corridor … potentially has enormous environmental impacts.”
— Ken Kramer, Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter MORE>>

There are hundreds of flaws in the plan that one journalist has called, “Perry’s Imperial Corridor.” There are so many problems its hard to know where to start.

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