The political force of Texas's exploding Mexican-American population - much more likely to be Democratic - rises to the top when the Democrats nominate oilman and banker Tony Sanchez for governor, the first Latino to run for governor on a major party ticket. For one thing, Texas itself is on the cusp of a sweeping demographic change that threatens to unsettle the state and nation's political landscape. No one is lining up for what seems a sure sacrifice in a "safe" GOP district.īut Last Man Standing meticulously delves beneath the surface - the filmmakers shot 200 hours of footage over five months - and stereotypes of Texas politics fall by the wayside. It isn't difficult for the youthful Rose to get the Democratic nomination. So Green is more than a little confident - and more than a little contemptuous - when Patrick Rose comes home from Princeton and declares against him as a Democrat. To top off the picture of Republican dominance, the district he represented in the State House of Representatives included Lyndon Johnson's old hometown.
A charismatic Christian conservative, Green was young - just 31 years old - and a proven politician and gifted campaigner. In 2002, Rick Green epitomized the Republican ascendancy in Texas. Patrick Rose (left) and Rick Green (right), vying for the Texas House of Representatives. Some of Texas's leading political lights, whose very names demonstrate the pull of the state's politics on the nation - Bush strategist Karl Rove, former Governor Ann Richards, Clinton appointees Henry Cisneros and Paul Begala, and writer Molly Ivins - help decode the state's electoral dynamics, illuminating national politics in the process. But as dramatically captured in Last Man Standing: Politics - Texas Style, Patrick Rose's challenge of Rick Green was proof that nothing stands still for long in American politics. So a challenge to an incumbent Republican Texas legislator by an upstart 24-year-old Democrat with a Princeton education should have resulted in a predictable defeat. And the Texas brand of Republicanism he brought to Washington has come to dominate the national stage. Bush, is the third Texan - after his father and Lyndon Johnson - to serve as President since 1963. Not a single statewide office is currently held by a Democrat. Only a generation ago the heart of Texas was "Johnson Country" - solidly Democratic. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that Texas's role in national politics today is as big as the Lone Star state.
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