Texas Politics’ Strange Frozen Parody
What do you do when your political career is flailing and the election is only weeks away? For Texas's Lieutanant Governor David Dewhurst, you have your campaign release a parody of the song "Let It Go" from the movie Frozen with your opponent looking like a 10-year-old JibJab animation.
David Dewhurst is in his third term as Lieutenant Governor of Texas but is considered a significant underdog in his re-election bid against Dan Patrick, a Texas state senator who previously made his name in Houston talk radio. Patrick has been hammering conservative Dewhurst from the right as a Tea Party candidate and finished well ahead in the initial Republican primary election in March. However, Patrick didn't win the majority necessary to avoid a runoff and the tough race between the two has lingered on for the past two months with Patrick heavily favored. With little to lose, Dewhurst has gone increasingly negative and waged a scorched earth campaign.
In his newest ad, he has Patrick singing a parody of "Let It Go" that focuses the state senator's change of his last name from Goeb to Patrick. Dewhurst's campaign has claimed that the name change was an effort to cover up a bankruptcy. However, it really occured because Patrick needed a stage name when he entered broadcasting as his first boss found Goeb to be unsuitable.
This is likely to be Dewhurst's second go-around losing a GOP primary in the past two years. In 2012, he was annointed to be Kay Bailey Hutchison's successor in the U.S. Senate with only obstacle in his way, a relatively unknown conservative lawyer named Ted Cruz. While Dewhurst ran ahead of Cruz in the first round of the primary, he ended up losing handily to Cruz in a runoff.
While Dewhurst does have other potential lines of attack, he's likely to be far better candidate in a competitive general election against state senator Leticia Van De Putte than Patrick, who has been ranked one of the worst lawmakers in the state by Texas Monthly (according to that publication, Patrick is both a "bully and an ideologue"), those aren't likely to fly in a Texas Republican primary runoff where the voters who turn out tend to be the most ideologically conservative. Instead, Dewhurst simply has to hope channeling Idina Menzel somehow leads him to victory.
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