Collier looks to former GOP voters
Patrick’s challenger hopes moderates swing across aisle
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick stumped for 17 minutes last week to a fired-up Kingwood Tea Party crowd, warning of energized Democrats and Sen. Ted Cruz’s Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke. Yet he barely acknowledged he is running for re-election himself.
“Ted’s gonna win if you vote.
(Gov. Greg) Abbott will win, I will win, if you vote,” Patrick said. “But it’s just not about us at the top of the pyramid. It’s about everyone down. I don’t want to give the Democrats one win.”
Mike Collier, Patrick’s Democratic opponent and a Kingwood resident, is an admitted long shot, a moderate who was once a Republican himself, now hoping that enough GOP voters are turned off by Patrick’s hardline conservatism to swing the election.
“People know Dan Patrick,” Collier, 57, said over coffee last week at a Sugar Land Starbucks. “And then when they look at me, they see their neighbor. And maybe if they look further, they see that I can solve property taxes and public education.”
In the March primary election, Patrick crushed his moderate Republican challenger, Scott Milder. But Collier was encouraged to see that Milder, despite low fundraising, received 24 percent of the vote, about 14 points more than Abbott’s challengers.
Collier’s campaign coordinator, Spencer Wise, calls Collier a “gateway Democrat” for Republicans “who want some-
one they can hold their nose for.” His campaign is focused on the state’s dwindling share of public education funding and a corresponding rise in property taxes, issues that work on both sides of the aisle.
Collier takes nuanced approaches to more divisive political issues, such as immigration, guns and abortion.
He says Texas should secure the border, but do so “intelligently and humanely,” and request federal reimbursement for the $800 million allocated by the Legislature last year to border security measures. Collier calls himself “pro-Second Amendment,” saying there is room for expanded background checks for gun purchases. He also advocates so-called red flag laws that enable authorities to seize guns from individuals found by a judge to pose a threat, which he says is consistent with the Constitution. He is pro-choice but believes the state should pursue services — contraception, sex education — that reduce the need for abortion.
For many Republicans, these stances alone make Collier unpalatable. If anything, this race may settle whether an incumbent Texas Republican can become so conservative that enough independents and moderates actually break rank.
‘Can’t rely on a rock star’
Republicans are skeptical that Collier’s campaign is catching on to the extent that he can overcome Patrick’s advantage.
Patrick led Collier by 6 points in a September poll by CBS 11/ Dixie Strategies, though a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll released Friday pegged Patrick’s lead at three times that.
“There is zero concern among high-ranking Republicans about the lieutenant governor’s re-election. Quite literally zero,” said Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak. “He has done everything he needs to do to put himself in a position to be re-elected.”
Without much campaign cash, Collier believes his odds rely not just on O’Rourke, but on the performance of several first-time Democratic congressional candidates who are outraising their Republican foes.
“The state is so large that you can’t just rely on a rock star. Beto is our rock star this time,” Collier said. “You can’t just depend on a rock star, because politics is local.”
Even Patrick, 68, acknowledges that this election is different than those in previous years. Publicly, however, he has ignored Collier and refused to debate him. Instead, Patrick is thinking in bigger terms, urging people every chance he gets to cast straight-ticket Republican ballots and shut out the Democrats.
“There are no competitive statewide races in Texas,” Allen Blakemore, Patrick’s strategist, said in an email. “The blue wave is a hoax, and everyone from Beto O’Rourke on down knows it. Real polls, conducted among likely voters, consistently support that assertion.”
Texans have seen this script before: Former state Sen. Wendy Davis lost in a landslide gubernatorial election four years ago, despite robust fundraising and media enthusiasm not unlike the waves O’Rourke is making. Republicans shredded their statewide opponents across the board that year, with Collier losing his bid for comptroller to Glenn Hegar by about 20 points.
Collier stayed on the campaign trail after the election, traveling the state to figure out what Democrats did wrong. He came back to the state party with two pointers: Focus on topics relevant to people’s daily lives with less emphasis on social issues, and recruit “highquality down-ballot candidates.”
That first piece of advice has driven Collier’s second attempt at statewide office. He has assailed Patrick for rising property taxes under the lieutenant governor’s tenure despite Patrick’s pledges to cut them if elected in 2014.
“I think the Republican shtick is wearing out a little bit,” Collier said. “They’ve been playing the same play for a long, long time. And so people are waking up and saying, ‘Well look, I don’t like what’s happening with my schools. And property taxes are just completely out of control.’ ”
Collier says he quit the Republican Party in 2013 as he considered a run for Houston controller, the city’s chief financial officer.
During a routine meeting with two Houston GOP consultants, Collier — a former Exxon accountant, PricewaterhouseCoopers partner and oil executive — made clear he would not back what he called the party’s “hair-on-fire social issues.” The consultants told Collier he would need to support those issues to get fundraising help, even though the office pertains specifically to city finances.
Collier stormed out of the meeting, and that was that.
‘They’re looking for me’
He said that as “moderate Republicans find out about me, they see themselves in me.” But he is not targeting those voters on the campaign trail.
“I’m not campaigning towards them because they’re too hard to find. You can waste an enormous amount of time and energy looking for them,” Collier said. “But what we are doing is campaigning as noisily as we can . ... I’m not looking for them; they’re looking for me.”
With a total fundraising haul of $706,000, Collier doesn’t have the money for a single statewide ad buy. (Patrick spent $7.5 million from July 1 to Sept. 27.) Yet he has drawn support from some intended Republican targets: Milder, the public education advocate who lost to Patrick in the primary, has endorsed Collier. Republican Harris County Judge Ed Emmett told the Houston Chronicle editorial board he plans to vote for Collier.
Collier said many Republican county judges and commissioners have said privately they plan to vote for him over the issue of state education funding.
Instead of TV, he is reaching out to voters with help from two 19-year-olds, Ali Zaidi and Jared Hrebenar, who are using the Democratic National Committee’s massive voter file to target voters who “need a nudge,” as Collier puts it — not those who are already voting for or against Collier.
Mackowiak, the Republican consultant, is not worried.
“Sure, if it was a 5-point race and if teachers voted 80 or 85 percent or 90 percent with Collier, could that be meaningful? Yes,” Mackowiak said. “But that’s a sentence that had the word ‘if ’ in it twice.”
Early voting, which began last Monday, ends Friday. Election Day is Nov. 6.