Dowd’s bid for lieutenant governor elevates race to national spotlight

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick may not be the worst of our statewide leaders. There’s some stiff competition for that spot.

Nor, perhaps, is the Baltimore native and former conservative talk radio host the most vulnerable incumbent seeking reelection next year. Attorney General Ken Paxton — who remains under indictment for securities fraud, is reportedly under investigation by the FBI and barely won re-election in 2018 — may be ranked on top, when it comes to that.

But it looks like Patrick is going to have a real fight on his hands in next year’s general election, which is surely good news for the state’s beleaguered Democrats.

That’s partly due to the fact that Matthew Dowd, a political consultant based in Wimberley and former ABC News commentator, announced last month that he is seeking the Democratic nomination to run against Patrick.

His decision to enter the race has caused some heartburn among Texas Democrats. For starters, he’s a former Republican who joined George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 2000 and served as the chief strategist for Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004.

Democrats already have a proven vote-getter vying to unseat Patrick — former accounting executive Mike Collier, who came within 5 percentage points of unseating Patrick in 2018. As the national media has focused on the candidacy of the betterknown and very quotable Dowd, Collier’s campaign has practically been ignored.

For Collier’s supporters, Dowd’s decision to jump in the race looks opportunistic.

Dowd, 60, disputes that. He explains that he entered the arena as a Democrat, working for former Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, before deciding to join Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign.

In 2007, he said in an interview that he had lost faith in Bush, then still the president — an admission that was covered on the front page of the New York Times. Dowd went on to spend some time in the political wilderness as an independent.

As late as 2017, Dowd was a critic of both parties, telling the

Austin American-Statesman that they were analogous to Yellow Cab and American Cab — “and the party solution is we’ll repaint the cab or we’ll put a stereo system in the cab, but people want Uber or Lyft.”

On Friday, he explained in a phone interview that his perspective has changed due to subsequent events, including the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by crowds that were egged on earlier by then-President Donald Trump — and the tepid response from Republican leaders. Some want Americans to forget that it took place, others think it was an appropriate form of political protest.

“Absent losing badly, they’re not going to change,” Dowd said of the GOP. “Until they feel accountability for the place they’ve gone, they’re not going to change. Changing them from within is not going to happen.”

In the wake of the insurrection, which left a Capitol Police officer and four others dead, Dowd says he felt that he had to do more than speak out against the GOP, so he became a volunteer deputy registrar in Hays County. Then he concluded he could do more than that and set his eyes on Patrick — the worst of the current bunch of far-right Texas leaders, he argues, in part because of his seeming influence over Gov. Greg Abbott.

“I would describe Abbott as more weak and Dan Patrick as more cruel and devious,” Dowd said.

“Over the course of the last four or five years,” Dowd continued, “I have come to the conclusion that the only vehicle right now to save our country is through the Democratic Party.”

He ran through his reasoning: In Texas, Republicans can rely on roughly 42 percent of the electorate — maybe 41 percent, these days. Perhaps 35 or 37 percent of voters will regularly turn out for the Democrats. That leaves an independent scrabbling over roughly 20 percent of the vote, in his estimation, and potentially serving as a spoiler, allowing the Republican to win re-election.

Others would dispute that. Bill King, the Houston businessman and onetime mayoral candidate who’s now serving as the founding chairman of a new party, the Save America Movement, points to the 2006 gubernatorial race. Republican Rick Perry won re-election that year with 39 percent of the vote, after two independent candidates, Kinky Friedman and Carole Keeton Strayhorn, combined to pull 30.5 percent of the vote — a hair more than the 29.8 percent of Texans who voted for Chris Bell, the Democrat.

It’s possible, of course, that an independent candidate — former House Speaker Joe Straus, for example, or outgoing state Rep. Lyle Larson — could still decide to jump in this race.

As it stands, though, Collier’s previous experience in recent statewide campaigns will likely serve him well in the primary.

Like Dowd, Collier, 60, of Kingwood, is a former Republican. He supported GOP candidates in the days when they focused on issues like job creation and economic development rather than the latest meanspirited, culture-war cause. But Collier has been working to support Texas Democrats for nearly a decade now — first as the party’s candidate for comptroller, in 2014, then as its finance co-chair, then as its nominee for lieutenant governor. He also was a senior adviser to Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in the state in 2020, when Biden came within 6 points of Trump. In other words, Collier has had time to build a base of support among Texas Democrats — and, he says, to learn how to talk to Texas voters and earn their confidence.

“It’s all about earning trust, and it takes a long, long time — and you don’t earn trust with TV commercials,” Collier told me Monday. “In order for them to trust you, they have to hear you, and they have to know you. You have to speak meaningfully to them, and show them, ‘Here’s what’s in it for you’ — like property taxes, like public education, like the grid, like water infrastructure.”

While Democratic voters prioritize their values, Collier added, he’s found that disaffected Republicans are only willing to cross over in pursuit of shared policy goals. In

2018, for example, there were plenty of pro-life educators who knew he had been endorsed by Planned Parenthood twice but were swayed by his fierce support for public education.

Both Collier and Dowd say they plan to support the eventual Democratic nominee against Patrick, whomever that may be.

In the meantime, both candidates intend to focus their attacks on Patrick, who has helped steer the state GOP to the fringeright. Remember when he said in 2020 that grandparents would be willing to sacrifice their lives rather than see the economy suffer as a result of the pandemic?

And to the extent that Dowd’s candidacy has elevated the profile of this particular race, that’s good news for Democrats. Patrick will bring a considerable war chest to the race, but like Ted Cruz in 2018, he will have to answer tough questions about his often extreme positions.