Texas Almanac, 1994-1995 Page: 404
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404 Texas Almanac 1994-1995
'92 POLITICOLYMPICS
.IGH JUMP JAVELIN CATCH DISTANCE RUN
Democrats Lose Texas, Elect PresidentHistory was made in Texas politics in 1992.
For the first time since Texas entered the union,
the nation elected a Democratic president, and
the candidate did not carry Texas.
Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton trailed incumbent
Republican George Bush by three percentage
points. 37.3 to 40.3, in the state, while third-
party candidate Ross Perot got 22 percent of the
vote.
Texas was the adopted state of President
Bush, who spent several years in the oil business
in West Texas before moving to Houston. He also
was instrumental in bringing the third major
political convention to the state when the
national Republican Party convention was held
in Houston in August. 1992.
Clinton ran well in the urban and rural areas
of Texas, but the mid-sized counties like Smith,
Potter, Tom Green, Taylor and others gave Bush
substantial margins.
Texas politics were in more confusion than
usual as the election season opened in 1992.
Democrats challenged a redistricting plan drawn
by three Republican federal judges. They claimed
that up to six Democratic state senators were put
in needless Jeopardy by the plan. Atty. Gen. Dan
Morales also took the senate redistricting scheme
to the U.S. Supreme Court claiming a Republican
legislator helped a judge draw up the plan. The
court declined to intervene and the primaries
were held as scheduled on March 10.
President George Bush also had a rocky start.
The unemployment rate nudged 7 percent in
early 1992. His performance rating dropped from
a high of 81 percent after the Persian Gulf War in
1991 to 52 percent in early February 1992. The11 was conducted by the Public Policy Resource
boratory of Texas A&M University. Forty-
seven percent of those polled said they would
vote for President Bush while 34 percent said
they would vote Democratic. Another 11 percent
were tentative Democrats depending on the pres-
idential candidate and a final eight percent had
no opinion. Some observers saw Bush's drop in
the polls as a vulnerability. But Republicans
argued that Bush would still beat any candidate
the Democrats nominated.
Bush was challenged in the Republican pri-
mary by Patrick Buchanan. a conservative com-
mentator, and David Duke. a former Ku Klux
Klan official in Louisiana. Duke did not et on
the ballot in several primaries. Though an
embarrassment to party officials, Duke found
enthusiastic support among some party faithful.
He ran a surprisingly strong race for governor i
Louisiana in the fall of 1991, losing in a runoff to
the Democrat.
Democrats had their usual fight in the prima-
ries with five candidates battling for the nomina-
tion. Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas was the early
leader in Texas. Trailing were two U. S. Senators.
Bob Kerry of Nebraska and Tom Harkin of Iowa,
a former senator, Paul Tsongas of Massachu-
setts, and former California governor Jerry
Brown. Gov. Clinton's high-flying campaign was
damaged by allegations that he had an extra-
marital affair with a Little Rock woman. Forty-
two percent of Texas' Democratic voters were
undecided about their choice in early February.
In the year's first primary in mid-February
Buchanan finished a strong second against Pres-
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Kingston, Mike. Texas Almanac, 1994-1995, book, 1993; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth162513/m1/404/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.