The (Almost) Departed: Sen. Hutchison Sells Va. Home To Move Back To Texas

If there are doubts that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) will really really really give up her Senate seat to challenge Texas Gov. Rick Perry in next year's GOP primary, it's understandable. She went through the same waltz in 2006, only to back down at the last minute.

But this time she looks like she's in the race to stay. The latest indication: she has sold her home in the DC suburb of McLean, Va. She and her husband, the former GOP activist Ray Hutchison, took a loss in selling their 4,300 square foot home for $1.4 million on Oct. 2. Jennifer Baker, her campaign spokesperson, said, "She's moving back to Texas to be the governor and she looks forward to living in the governor's mansion."

As for when Hutchison will resign her Senate seat to focus on the gov race fulltime -- which she has vowed to do -- that is not clear. We wrote in July that she was planning to vacate her seat in either October or November. Now there's talk she might not resign before the March 2 primary, if at all, as per the AP's Jay Root:

Now she says it depends on what's happening in Congress -- and held out the possibility that she may not step down before the March Republican primary showdown with Gov. Rick Perry.

"A lot of people are suggesting that," she told a radio show this week.

The uncertainty is fueling unrest among a cadre of candidates who are counting on Hutchison to quit, either so they can run for her seat or for some other political job left vacant by the Senate wannabes.

Her Senate seat doesn't come up until 2012.

With less than five months to go before their collision, the Perry-Hutchison primary may be one for the ages. The two don't like each other, and neither do their supporters. They also appeal to different segments of the party; Perry is strong with evangelical conservatives, Hutchison (even though she too is a conservative) with more of the moderates.

Her appeal at the ballot box is more impressive than Perry's. In her four general elections, starting with ther 1993 special in which she succeeded Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, she got 67%, 61%, 65% and 62% of the vote. In 2006, while she was getting 62 percent, Perry won a four-way re-election contest with just 39 percent of the vote. Perry, now the longest serving governor in Texas history, has suffered with the voters, as many governors do, because of all the unresolved problems, like decaying infrastructure, education funding, property taxes and budget shortfalls.

But he still may have the advantage. Her vote in favor of the financial-services rescue in the waning months of the Bush administration was not popular in Texas; at least the Perry campaign is trying to keep it alive as an issue. The governor's press secretary has referred to her as "Kay Bailout."

Neither candidate faces a shortfall of money.

The Democratic race for governor in this still-Republican state is still in its early stages; former state legislator Tom Schieffer and singer/2006 candidate Kinky Friedman have announced.

If Hutchison does resign her Senate seat, Perry will choose her successor. Among those Republicans high on the list include Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Attorney General Greg Abbott. Democrats lining up to run in the event of a vacancy include Houston Mayor Bill White and former state Comptroller John Sharp, both of whom are well financed. Democrats haven't won a Senate race here since 1988, when Bentsen was on the ballot twice, for senator and vice president. Two years later, Ann Richards was elected governor, and Democrats haven't won that office since then.

The record of appointed Texas senators seeking re-election is not great. When Sen. Lyndon Johnson (D) was elected vice president in 1960, the governor appointed William Blakley to fill his seat; Blakley then went on to lose the special runoff election to John Tower, who became the first Texas Republican senator since Reconstruction. And when former Rep. Bob Krueger (D) was appointed to succeed Bentsen in the Senate, in 1993, he got clobbered by Hutchison by more than two-to-one in the special.