On the cover of its current issue, Texas Monthly asks: “When will Texas elect its first Hispanic governor?”

Paul Burka, the magazine’s senior editor, and one of this state’s more astute political observers, predicts that magic year will be 2018, and says it will be in the mold of a current youngish Latino state representative from Dallas that I’ve never heard of. That sounds good, 2018, which is only 10 years from today, but it sounds a bit ambitious to me.

Here’s some basic reasons behind that view. One, despite the fact Texas is trending Hispanic in its demographics, that portion of the state’s electorate is still small when compared to overall vote totals. The lowest voter turnout numbers, in percentage to total registered voters, are in border counties, plain and simple.

Second, and quite bluntly, a good many white voters still find it difficult to vote for a candidate who happens to be Hispanic or African-American. That dynamic makes it difficult for candidates of color in any high-profile political race. This narrative is being played out in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. In this view, Obama has run a campaign of dignity and balance, and one that is decidely broad in appeal, and non-racial in its composition.

And yet for all that Obama has done to run such a race, nagging doubts remain as to whether America is ready to elect a president who is African-American. A recent national poll shows that 94 percent of Americans say they are ready to vote for a presidential candidate who is African-American. That percentage slips to 71 percent when respondents are asked if their family members and friends are ready for such a candidacy. Only 54 percent believe that an African-American candidate will actually be elected president in 2008.

In other words, Americans are telling pollsters that they individually are ready to vote for a major presidential candidate who is black, but they believe a good many of the people they know will not, and even fewer of their fellow Americans are willing to do so.

Then there’s the political players at play. It has been widely thought Republicans would be the biggest impediments to the rising political fortunes of Hispanics and African-Americans. It is much harder to make that argument after watching the Clintons in action in South Carolina last week. The Billary presidential campaign, (that would be co-candidates Bill and Hillary Clinton), was quite shameful last week in its efforts to marginalize Obama as a “black” candidate in a number of different ways.

Big Dog Bill inferred last week that, yea, of course Obama was likely to win South Carolina since about half of the state’s Democratic voters are black. And then on his way out of the state on Saturday, Bill compared Obama’s impending South Carolina win to the 1984 and 1988 primary victories of Jesse Jackson in S.C., saying, in effect, that Barack’s blackness would be the only reason for the big win ahead.

The Clinton Machine’s bad behavior of recent weeks in playing the race card against Obama demonstrates vividly what entrenched political interests will do to dissuade the rise of a major candidate of color when such an ascension threatens their ambitions and plans. That such a strategy would come from Bill Clinton, of all people, who was formerly referred to as “first black president” for his supposed affinity for African-Americans, is especially appaling.

All of this comes back to our great state of Texas in imagining what sort of candidate who happens to be Hispanic could make a leap to the governor’s mansion. Speculation in recent years is that it would be a Tony Garza type, with this particular Tony being a Brownsville native who is a former Texas railroad commissioner, a Republican and good buddy of George W. Bush, and the current U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Political chisme had Tony coming back to Texas and running for guv or senator. Garza, however, married the richest woman in Mexico a few years back, and ask yourself this question: If you were married to a gazillionare would you bother to run for statewide office, or even work another day in your life?

Logic would say that such a breakthrough candidate would need to go the route of being the mayor of a large Texas city, or leap from being an attorney general or another notable statewide office. It’s hard to see such a candidate making such a big leap from the drudgery of the state legislature where politicians can be so badly blooded. A good part of Obama’s appeal is that he’s seen as being fresh and new. When’s the last time anyone saw a major figure from the Texas Legislature in such a way?

Of course, there was such a political figure about 20 years ago. His name is Henry Cisneros, the former mayor of San Antonio, and he was every bit the political star before his insecurities and marital problems took him out of play. If a Hispanic is going to be elected governor of Texas in 2018, as Burka predicts, it almost surely will have to be a Republican, and if Tony G isn’t available, who will that person be?

I don’t see such a person on the horizon in the next 10 years, meaning Burka’s pick is likely about 10-to-20 years away from political reality. The first Hispanic governor in Texas will have to wait until the state becomes more Hispanic and more of them actually vote, along with Texas becoming more of a two-party state where white voters are more willing to consider a candidate of color for high statewide office.

Burka says it’ll be 2018. I’d go more with 2028 when some current middle schooler or high school student with a multi-racial background, (a la Obama), will rise from a prominent position in politics or business to make a breakthrough that will be long in coming.

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