Tea Party Patriots Big Factor In Texas Race

Debra Medina was hardly the ideal candidate in Tuesday's Republican primary: She didn't raise much money and came under fire for suggesting the U.S. might have been involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Still, she won nearly one out of every five votes, harnessing some support in the nascent tea party movement.

The growing influence of the movement could be seen in the GOP primary, but Medina, who got 18.5 percent of the overall vote, wasn't the biggest winner. That was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who avoided a runoff with U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, winning 51 percent of the vote, in part because of his own push for tea party sympathizers.

"There's a growing movement afoot, but it's really more of an attitude at this point than it is an organized effort," Perry pollster Mike Baselice said Wednesday of tea party voters.

Baselice, who tracked GOP voters in the four weeks leading up to the primary, found that 61 percent of those who said they share all the views of the tea party movement voted for Perry, not Medina. Medina took 24 percent of those votes, and Hutchison had 15 percent.

That analysis was backed up Wednesday by tea party activists who weighed in on the race, which now shifts to the fall general election. Perry will run against the Democratic nominee, ex-Houston Mayor Bill White, who handily disposed of six opponents in his primary.

"A lot of people wanted to attribute Debra Medina's campaign to the tea party. On balance, I think most of them were leaning toward Perry. I think it's significant that he avoided the runoff," said Greg Holloway, a board member with Austin Tea Party Patriots.

He acknowledged that Medina — a gun-toting, libertarian-leaning businesswoman from Wharton — appealed to discontented Texans. Medina fought her way into the two televised debates with the better-known Perry and Hutchison and held her own, boosting her statewide following.

"People really liked her view that government in general had become too big and wasn't responsive to the people," Holloway said.

Here's more