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Ron Kirk's great chance

Ruben Navarrette Jr.

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DALLAS--My sources in Washington tell me that Democrats don't have a prayer of winning the U.S. Senate race in Texas.

Note to self: get better sources.

Within the Beltway, the conventional thinking is that the White House simply can't let this one get away--that political strategist Karl Rove will go to the mattresses to ensure a Republican triumph in Texas.

There is too much at stake. A Republican defeat in the Lone Star State would help keep the Senate in the Democratic column and make it even more difficult for President Bush to get through his legislative agenda. Moreover, it would bring the humiliation of handing Democrats a seat long occupied by no less a stalwart Republican than the retiring Phil Gramm.

It would also launch into the stratosphere the political career of a Democrat who could become, virtually overnight, Bush's No. 1 political foil. Share the stage, Tom Daschle. If elected, Ron Kirk would become the first African American senator from Texas and automatically one of the top African American officials in the country. That, together with the fact that Kirk hails from Bush's home state, is sure to make the former Dallas mayor among the most sought-after dinner guests in Washington's Democratic establishment.

In fact, the invitations have already gone out. Kirk's contributors include a half-dozen likely 2004 Democratic presidential contenders, and he was recently hosted at a series of Washington fund-raisers including one thrown by Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.

I'm not telling Karl Rove anything he doesn't know or hasn't been haunted by since April, when Kirk won the Democratic nomination and the right to lock horns with the Republican nominee, Texas Attorney General John Cornyn.

The bad news for the White House, and Texas Republicans, is that Kirk is not the type of Democrat they like to run against. He's not predictably liberal or predictably anything. Devoutly pro-business and only mildly supportive of protecting the environment, Kirk spent part of his legal career working as a lobbyist on behalf of companies like Dow Chemical and Philip Morris USA.

Remember how former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis tripped over that inappropriate debate question about whether he would reassess his opposition to the death penalty if his wife were raped and murdered?

Here's how Kirk answered a recent question from a reporter about whether he personally owned a gun: "I have a wife and two little girls. You figure it out."

And yet, Kirk is no black conservative. He backs affirmative action, speaks fondly of the civil rights movement and supports creating a national commission to study the effects of slavery and propose remedies.

He is careful, however, to say that those remedies should not include reparations to descendants of slaves. And yet, among the many contributors to his campaign are several prominent members of something called the Reparations Assessment Group. The organization, headed by Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree and famed trial attorney Johnnie Cochran, is preparing a class-action lawsuit aimed at winning reparations. When asked about that, Kirk aides told a reporter simply that their candidate had never discussed the issue with the group.

It is no wonder that an exasperated Cornyn exclaimed to the crowd at last month's state Republican convention that his opponent has "more moves than a speckled trout."

Actually, Mr. Cornyn, given that Democrats are pushing a diversity slate--an African American for the Senate, a Hispanic for governor and an Anglo for lieutenant governor--you better make that a rainbow trout.

Political strategists agree that the trout's best move is Kirk's unique version of the Texas two-step. Running as a Democrat in "Bush country," Kirk has to be nonpartisan enough to avoid clashing with the popular occupant of the Oval Office while being partisan enough to juice up minority voters who tend to vote Democratic. So far, he has done a pretty good job of striking that balance.

And how do the numbers look? A recent poll by an independent polling firm showed Cornyn with 46 percent of the vote and Kirk closing in at 44 percent, well within the poll's margin of error.

So, Karl Rove or not, can Ron Kirk win this thing? He has the money, the moves, and the mark of what his camp calls "destiny." You figure it out.

Ruben Navarrette's e-mail address is rnavarrette@dallasnews.com.