Hance and Bush, 1978.

Numerous political figures in 1978 who had been significant in the South were not staying for another term. One of them was the Appropriations Committee chairman George Mahon of Texas. He had survived the challenge to his authority in 1975, but by 1978 he was 78 years old and although still vibrant, he had been in office for over forty years and in his last reelection bid his Republican opponent had come within ten points of defeating him despite his plum position in Congress and having a conservative reputation. His district was moving more and more Republican in its presidential voting behavior (the last Democrat its voters pulled the lever for was LBJ) and Republicans thought they had a good chance of flipping the district with George W. Bush, son of the at-the-time CIA director George H.W. Bush. The man in the Democrats’ corner was State Senator Kent Hance (1942- ).

Bush campaigned against President Carter’s price controls on gas and against the federal bureaucracy and was certainly more conservative than Hance, but Hance was more politically experienced and had a few angles to attack Bush. In many places, such as his place of birth of New Haven, Connecticut, Bush’s Ivy League education would be a political benefit to him, but he was running in West Texas, and this made him vulnerable to charges that he was a rather dreaded class…an outsider. As Hance, who by contrast graduated from Texas Tech said, “In the Panhandle, if it’s Texas Tech versus Yale, Tech will beat Yale every time. That’s not even a close game” (Hart). Hance used Bush’s Yale education against him, and claimed that, despite the fact that he had grown up in and attended school in Midland, that he wasn’t a “real Texan”. There was also a lot of talk going on about his father’s and his father’s friends’ connection to the Trilateral Commission, a group that was and remains viewed with a lot of suspicion in numerous conservative quarters as an outlet for plotting world government, and it dogged him throughout the campaign to the point he lost his cool with conservative radio personality Mel Turner when he brought the subject up. Bush would have a lot of trouble shaking off this image as an outsider. Matters were not helped when Bush in his first TV ad was jogging, an exercise that was not commonplace in West Texas in 1978 (Romano and Lardner). Perhaps all this could have been overcome, except the Hance campaign had one more blow to deal.

The Hance campaign in the final days mailed thousands of letters addressed “Dear Fellow Christians” and pointed to an ad the Bush campaign had run in University Daily (a Texas Tech student newspaper) offering free beer at one of his campaign rallies (Hart). Bush disavowed any knowledge of this ad, but Hance’s campaign was able to portray him among some religious voters as corrupting the youth. Hurting Bush as well was that he declined to point out that Hance had ownership of property near Texas Tech that he leased to a bar, telling his staff, “Kent lives here. If I win, he has to come back to live. I’m not going to ruin the guy in his home town. He’s not a bad person” (Romano and Lardner). In doing so, he could have pointed to Hance as a hypocrite and potentially neutralized this attack. Hance contrasted himself to Bush in a debate 10 days before the election, that his “daddy and grandad were farmers. They didn’t have anything to do with the mess we’re in right now, and Bush’s father has been in politics his whole life” (Romano and Lardner).

The outcome of the election I already spoiled, but on Election Day, Hance prevailed 53-47%. Although Bush had done well in Midland, the voters wanted someone they saw as more authentically Texan. Bush blamed his loss on “provincialism” but learned a number of key lessons in this election (Romano and Lardner). First, know your audience, second, don’t cross Christian fundamentalists, and third, when your opponent attacks…strike back! He followed these lessons to the letter in his future campaigns, and that Congressional race was the last time he ever lost an election.

Although Hance was a win for Texas Democrats, he didn’t turn out to be much of one for the national Democrats. He proved similar to Mahon in his time in office, forming a moderately conservative record, and in 1981 he collaborated with Republican Barber Conable (R-N.Y.), the GOP’s chief man on the Ways and Means Committee, on tax reduction legislation championed by President Reagan. For national Democrats, Hance was simply the best option they had. Hance’s win only delayed Republican takeover of the district by six years as in 1984 he opted not to run for reelection to run for the Senate (he lost the primary to Lloyd Doggett, who is currently a representative) and his seat was won by Republican Larry Combest, an aide to Senator John Tower. The seat has been in Republican hands since. Given that neither of them got personal in the 1978 campaign, Hance himself would befriend Bush and switch to the GOP after his departure from the House. He would try twice to win the GOP primary for governor, in 1986 and 1990, but lost, serving instead as Texas Railroad Commissioner from 1987 to 1991. Hance would also donate to the Bush campaign for governor in 1994. From 2006 to 2014, he served as Chancellor of the Texas Tech University System. Honestly, it is interesting to ponder that if Bush had won a seat in Congress in 1978 if he would still have ended up becoming president.

References

Hance, Kent Ronald. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/14633/kent-ronald-hance

Hart, P. (1999). Not So Great in ’78. Texas Monthly.

Retrieved from

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/not-so-great-in-78/

Romano, L. & Lardner, G. (1999, July 29). Young Bush, a Political Natural, Revs Up. The Washington Post.

Retrieved from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072999.htm