In Thursday night’s Republican debate, Mitt Romney stayed above the fray, returning often to his plan to create jobs. But Romney’s position as the frontrunner in the GOP contest is looking less secure. Texas Governor Rick Perry’s entry into the race could provide Romney with real competition. Texas has the best job creation record in the country, and its taxes are low. As our colleague Michael Barone has written, “Texas’ economy has diversified far beyond petroleum, with booming high-tech centers, major corporate headquarters and thriving small businesses. It has attracted hundreds of thousands of Americans and immigrants, high-skill as well as low-skill. Its wide-open spaces made for low housing costs, which protected it against the housing bubble and bust that has slowed growth in Phoenix and Las Vegas.”
Perry, age 61, has other advantages. He is the country’s longest-serving governor. He’s never lost an election. Fellow Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson looked like a good prospect to challenge Perry in 2006, but she opted not to run when confronted with Perry’s disciplined and aggressive campaign. Perry was an early Tea Party backer and has an instinctive sense of his party’s base. Gallup reported this week that Perry’s “Positive Intensity Score is the highest of any Republican tested, and significantly higher than that of presumptive GOP front-runner Mitt Romney.” Gallup noted that Perry has lower name recognition but stronger appeal to those who know him. Those two factors combined to propel Perry to second place in the Republican nomination contest in a new Gallup/USA Today poll. Stay tuned.
As Washington, D.C., prepares for a major snowstorm, we’re reminded that handling severe winter weather can be a big test for politicians. In 1969, 15 inches of snow fell in New York City, killing 42 people and injuring hundreds more. The city was unprepared, with the city’s chief environmental officer upstate and unreachable. According to Vin Cannato’s biography of New York City Mayor John Lindsay, 40 percent of the city’s snow plow equipment didn’t function. “For three days, the city was in a state of near paralysis,” provoking a municipal crisis that almost cost the dapper mayor his job. There were allegations that the poorer parts of the city were ignored as available equipment plowed wealthier parts of the city.