The Governor's Wife Read Free

or fourth midlife crisis this term?"
    Jim Bob shook his head then tossed the newspaper on the desk and gestured at the headline:BET ON BODE .
    "You're a hard man to please, Bode Bonner. You just won the Republican primary with one hundred percent of the vote, and you're not happy?"
    "No one ran against me. Where's the thrill of victory in that?"
    The State of Texas had held the Republican and Democratic primaries the day before. But Republicans didn't fight each other in March, and Democrats didn't win in November. The Democrats hadn't won a statewide election in Texas in twenty years. They were that incompetent. That irrelevant. And outside of Austin and a few border counties, statistically insignificant, as the pollsters say. Texas glowed bright red from Amarillo to Brownsville, Texarkana to El Paso; Republicans controlled all three branches of state government. Consequently, the general election was a mere formality, Republican voters rubber-stamping the Republican primary winners. Bode Bonner was as good as reelected for another four-year term. He had been declared the Republican primary winner by eight the night before (the polls had closed at seven), given his victory speech by nine (the party was over by ten), had sex with Mandy by eleven (his wife had left for the airport after his speech), and fallen sound asleep by eleven-thirty. No contest. No agony of defeat for his opponent. No thrill of victory for Bode Bonner.
    "You want thrills, go ride a roller coaster. You won. That's all that matters. Like that guy said about football, 'Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing.' "
    "Lombardi."
    "Same rule applies to politics. And yesterday goes in the books as a win. A win-win because we saved our campaign funds for the general election."
    "Like that'll be much of a fight." Bode waved a hand at the newspaper. "Even the Austin paper figures me for a landslide. And who are the Democrats running against me? A Jewish ex-country-western singer who dresses like Johnny Cash and sings like Dolly Parton. A goddamn serial candidate. He's run for damn near every state office except dogcatcher. He's a political punch line." Bode threw his hands up. "Where do they get these people? For Christ's sake, Jim Bob, I'm up fourteen points in the polls."
    "Eighteen."
    Bode sat up.
    "You got the new poll numbers?"
    "Yep."
    "Did I make the nationals?"
    "Nope."
    Jim Bob pulled a thin black notebook from his briefcase—a notebook he guarded with the same paranoia as the army officer guarding the president's case containing the nuclear launch codes—and flipped open the cover.
    "But you're kicking ass in Texas. Fifty-nine percent favorable rating across all registered voters—that's your all-time high."
    "What's the breakdown?"
    Jim Bob turned the page. "Anglo males, seventy-one percent favorable. Anglo females, sixty-two percent. African-Americans, seven percent. Mexican-Americans, four percent." He looked up. "NASCAR dads and soccer moms, they love you. Not so much the blacks and Latinos." He chuckled. "Hell, just be glad the Democrats are running a Jew instead of a Latino. There's not but a dozen Jews in Texas, but there's ten million Latinos."
    "You don't figure they'll vote for him, do you?"
    He could hear the hint of worry in his own voice.
    "Not a chance."
    And that was the fear of every Republican politician in Texas: Would the Latinos vote? They never had before, but no Republican wanted to be the one who finally brought out the Latino vote—for his Democratic opponent.
    "They're waiting for their savior … and they'll still be waiting come election day," Jim Bob said. "They won't vote."
    "Thank God."
    Every Texas politician understood a simple electoral fact: Anglos occupied the Governor's Mansion by the leave of Latinos.
    "One day," Jim Bob said, his voice taking on that familiar professorial tone—
    James Robert Burnet held a Ph.D. and taught a class on politics at the LBJ School; consequently, he was known in Texas political