The Color Purple
Great gobs of political money are going to disappear
down the hungry maw of Texas media in 2020. The media markets in Texas make it hard for a candidate without the cash incumbency brings or support from a national party to be competitive.
To visualize it, the legendary story of how Southwest Airlines took flight from Herb Kelleher’s cocktail napkin in a San Antonio bar is useful. It’s said that he drew a triangle on the napkin and labeled the points San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas. The idea was to make commuting among the three Texas business nodes cheap and easy. Austin was smaller in those days, but it got added in because a lot of corporate legal and political work has to happen in the capital.
There were lots of other tricks involved, but the idea from the customer’s point of view was that a lawyer from Dallas could fly to Austin early in the morning for a hearing, get his business done, and be back in Dallas for lunch. Without owning his own aircraft.
Each of those three business nodes is a monster media market where it is necessary for a statewide candidate to play and very expensive. Since Austin became first the hub of outlaw country music and then silicon valley on the Third Coast, it has joined in to become a fourth high dollar venue for campaign bucks.
