MOVEMENTS

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Despite Defeat --
Upstart Texan Offers Lessons for Insurgent Candidates

By Carlos Hamann

Date: 11-08-96

The most important thing Texans will remember about last week's unusual senate race is how an upstart Texas school teacher poked his finger in the eye of the political establishment and almost got away with it. Would-be insurgents, especially Hispanics, are pouring over the lessons of Victor Morales' campaign. PNS correspondent Carlos Hamann is a freelance reporter based in El Paso.

EL PASO -- When career politician Senator Phil Gramm beat charismatic school teacher Victor Morales in Texas' senate race last week, no one was surprised. This is, after all, a political era when money triumphs over fresh faces and new ideas.

So how come the 46-year-old upstart candidate, who campaigned from his pickup truck, got close enough to give the powerful senator a good scare? Would-be insurgents, particularly Hispanics, are pouring over the details of Morales' campaign to see what lessons can be learned.

*Morales remained an outsider even within his own party. Starting out with $5000 from his own savings, Morales won the Democratic nomination by appealing to voters who consistently favored Hispanic candidates. But until the very end, he ran his campaign alone from his kitchen. Even after he won the Democratic nomination, Texas Democratic party leaders offered little money and little help. Nor did Morales ask for it.

*Morales' core strategy was to personally meet as many voters as possible. His message: "I'm as frustrated with conventional politics as you are. Trust me and I'll change that." This strategy worked well in the primaries, where there was a smaller pool of voters to meet, and he was making news with his unconventional campaign style.

Despite his extraordinary energy, the same strategy failed in the senate race.

"Morales unfortunately lives in the biggest state in the continental United States," says political scientist Gregory Rocha from the University of Texas at El Paso. "He just couldn't reach enough voters by driving around."

This same tactic, however, might have worked in a smaller state or a smaller race, Rocha believes.

*Morales relied on enthusiastic volunteers and a staff of amateurs to get his message out. This kept his campaign expenses down but it also kept the campaign running as a mom-and-pop operation when it should have become a sophisticated machine. Communication with the news media was lousy, incoming phone calls were lost by clumsy operators, and rallies were often poorly planned and poorly attended.

*From the start Morales took no money from political action committees, to show his commitment to campaign reform. This gave him tremendous moral authority, especially when contrasted with his wealthy rival. Morales received letters of support from around the country, often with checks for small amounts of money. According to Morales campaign coordinator Greg Weiner, 80 percent of all contributions were of $100 or less.

Ultimately Morales' $600,000 insurgency was no match for Gramm's $5 million, by-the-books operation. Morales desperately needed money for television ads to reach out to voters across the state -- he didn't air his first ads until the last two weeks of the campaign. What's amazing is that Morales got so far with so little.

It's impossible to tell if Morales could have defeated Gramm if he had accepted PAC money. "I'm not in the pockets of the union people or anyone else," Morales often said on the campaign trail. "If I lose, I lose honestly. I can't respect myself if I (take PAC money and) behave like Phil Gramm."

*Morales was counting on a high turnout rate among Hispanic voters. Galvanized by immigrant bashing and politicians slashing benefits to the poor, nearly one million of them came out to vote in Texas -- 75 percent of the community's registered voters. Eighty-one percent of them favored Morales over Gramm, according to Lydia Camarillo, director of the Southwest Voter Registration Project in San Antonio.

Yet to win Morales also needed at least a third of the Anglo vote. This didn't materialize -- perhaps because the state just isn't ready yet for a minority senator. "He's a Mexican-American who ran in a pretty conservative state," Rocha points out. "He had to fight that perception (of being unqualified) as well."

Morales was also on the wrong side of history this year. Texas was one of the states that went for Bob Dole over Bill Clinton in the presidential election. Any Democrat running for senate would have had a rough time.

Yet observers also note that Gramm whipped two conventional Democratic candidates with much more money than Morales by even wider margins in his two previous elections to the senate.

What people will remember about Morales is this: an upstart Texas school teacher poked his finger in the eye of the political establishment and almost got away with it.