An Experiment in Politics: Can Television Advertising and Retail Politicking Undo a Negative Image of Texas Gov. Rick Perry

A Political Junkie’s Delight

When Texas Gov. Rick Perry entered the race for the Republican nomination for President in August, he immediately became the front runner.  Polls showed him leading the race among Republican primary voters.  Mr. Perry was expected to be the candidate that would unite religious conservatives with fiscal conservatives with pro-job economic conservatives. 

It didn’t happen that way.  The reason was that Mr. Perry was unprepared for the debates which happened immediately after his announcement.  Mr. Perry hass been a disaster in the debates, particularly compared with Mr. Romney, who had experience on his side.  Mr. Perry could not defend his immigration policy that allowed children of illegal immigrants who they themselves were illegal to attend Texas colleges as in state students.  This decent and humane policy is seen as an anathema to conservatives who want to jail and deport these young people.

Dan Balz, one of the very good political writers of the Washington Post documents what Mr. Perry and his team hope will be a more successful phase 2 of the campaign.  This will be retail politics where Mr. Perry will greet and meet voters, and television advertising both positive and negative supported by Mr. Perry’s campaign treasure chest and by “independent” groups who will run ads on behalf of Mr. Perry.

After Tuesday’s debate in Las Vegas, there will be a hiatus in candidate forums. Perry will then be free to get back to what his advisers believe he does best. He will have an opportunity to lay out his plans and show where he wants to take the country. He will have the chance to put his money into action through TV commercials that his advisers believe have always been the key to his success as a candidate.

The reason Mr. Perry’s advisers are optimistic (actually they don’t need a reason, every candidate and his or her advisers are always optimistic) is this.

Given the turbulence, Perry campaign officials have their talking points down pat: Romney hasn’t been able to expand his support; Perry excels at retail campaigning; GOP voters will eventually see him as the conservative alternative; nothing has happened yet to prevent Perry from winning. As Miner put it: “This race isn’t going to be decided by pundits in a television studio in Washington. It will be decided by people who live on Main Street
in the states.”

In Florida Mr. Perry has fallen to 3% in a recent poll.  While it may be possible for Mr. Perry to lose in Florida and still win the nomination, the idea that could lose with less than 10% of the vote and still be a viable candidate has no life.  All the life support systems in the world could not revive a candidacy that performed in that manner.

There is a great opportunity here.  Having been largely written off by the press, a Perry comeback will be big news, and that news will be self-reinforcing.  The more news about a Perry comeback, the stronger the comeback.  Furthermore Mr. Perry and his team have the right target, Herman Cain.  They expect Mr. Cain to falter under the scrutiny given to a leading candidate, and for Mr. Cain to start to faill Great Expectations (not the book) and they expect to pick up those voters.  So expect a refrain from attacking Mr. Cain, positive ads by Mr. Perry and very negative ads from his "independent" support groups.

From a purely academic point of view, this whole thing will be a controlled experiment in political campaigning.  Can a candidate who was in the lead, then fell significant to almost the bottom come back and take the lead based on TV advertising and hand-to-hand campaigning?  The conventional wisdom is no, but one reason why they have actual elections is because voters hate conventional wisdom.  For Mr. Perry it is a need to be competitive in Iowa and win in South Carolina and Florida.  Don’t bet the farm either way.