Rick Perry, Governor by Default

The 2006 election came and went with a bang, not a literal one, that would have been loud and pointless...more of the silent metaphorical type of bang.

It is a sad thing that there is no runoff in the Texas Governors race. The voters of Texas made it clear that the majority of Texans are opposed to Rick Perry...so much so that 60% of Texans were willing to vote for a slogan wielding grandma, a singing Jewish cowboy, or...*gasp*...a democrat instead. However, untimately those voices meant nothing because not enough people could settle on a candidate that they liked best...and this is a shame.

In many elections, a runoff election is held between the top two vote getters when no candidate recieves more than 50% of the vote. Perry got 39%...Democrat Chris Bell got a suprising 30% statewide. It is clear that the voters were asking for the chance to choose between the two without Kinky Friedman or Carol Keeton Strayhorn complicating the menu of candidates. In a democratically correct election, the unpopular Perry would have to face the increasingly notable Bell in a head to head contest...a contest that more than likely would prove tough to win for Perry even a heavily republican leaning state. It's easy to assume that many of those that voted for Kinky or Strayhorn were repulsed by the job that Perry has done during the six long years of his governorship. How he has managed to do so many awful things with so little power is mind boggling. The latest...an attempt to fast track the approval for construction of 17 not-very needed and heavily polluting coal power plants across Central Texas. This in addition to his incredibly irresponsible planning for a Trans Texas Corridor highway system that is really several new corridor highways...many of which are parallel to interstates without much traffic in the first place (a.k.a...ones that aren't labeled with the number 35). These are just two examples of the many reasons why our Republican governor is so unpopular, even among a heavily republican voting base.