Debra Medina talks at the State Sovereignty Symposium at a hotel in Houston in January. Medina's Texas-size momentum

A pistol-packing nurse and home-schooler with close ties to Ron Paul is emerging as a wild card who is reordering the dynamics of the March 2 Texas Republican primary for governor.

Powered by tea party support, Debra Medina’s rapid climb is raising the prospect that the three-way GOP primary that includes Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison will be decided by an April runoff.


Medina, who has crafted her grass-roots campaign around a sweeping plan to repeal property taxes and an expansion of gun rights, gained significant attention and traction after her colorful appearances alongside Perry and Hutchison in two recent televised debates.

The most recent public polling shows Medina drawing an eye-popping 24 percent, trailing the front-running Perry by 15 percentage points but tracking within just 4 percentage points of Hutchison. Among self-identified conservatives, she performs even better, outpolling Hutchison 25 percent to 23 percent.

“It’s been a year of ‘you can’t,’ and we continue to do. It’s a pretty exciting place to be. I think people are really ready for limited government,” Medina told POLITICO.

“The bulk of our support is from people who have not voted before in a primary. If they vote in this primary, we win this race,” she said.

Despite the momentum, many Republicans say that’s an unlikely prospect.

For one thing, Perry has held formidable polling leads in his quest for an unprecedented third term while carving out a contingent of the tea party movement for himself.

And while Medina boasts of reeling in more individual donations than Perry or Hutchison during the month of January, she reported having just $68,000 remaining to spend at month’s end. That cash-on-hand deficit will prohibit her from seriously competing in the television advertising wars, which are integral in the homestretch of a competitive campaign in a state as large as Texas.

“The candidates that are well-funded will be able to get their messages out through commercials and large get-out-the-vote activities. This will have a significant impact come Election Day,” said Texas Republican National Committeewoman Borah Van Dormolen.

Further, while few doubt Medina has surged into double digits as Hutchison’s numbers have slumped, some believe her support level in the latest survey is inflated.

“I don’t think that’s a sustainable number for Medina against two pretty well-known brand names,” said Bill Hillsman, a Minneapolis-based political operative who specializes in outsider campaigns and advised Jesse Ventura’s successful third-party run for governor of Minnesota. “I think Medina’s numbers are probably artificially high right now. It’s a protest vote more than anything else. I think she’s probably got low double-digit support.”

Austin, Texas, consultant and lobbyist Bill Miller said Medina is benefiting from Hutchison’s stalled campaign but finds it inconceivable that she’d be able to leapfrog the state’s senior senator, who until recently was thought of as the most popular politician in Texas.

“Remember, this is Texas, and they like character. It’s an asset, and Medina represents a plain-spoken, tough woman. She’s got a wind in her sails, and she’ll have a good showing. But I think her ultimate impact is someone we’ll start watching with a following,” said Miller.

“I think she’s between 15 [percent] and 20 percent. That’s what it feels like to me,” he added.

What’s less clear is whether Medina can carve out enough support to force a runoff or even become one of the two remaining candidates — both feats that would be widely seen as a personal victory not only for Medina but also for the scores of anti-establishment candidates running for office in Texas and elsewhere.

To push the March 2 primary to an April 13 runoff, Medina would have to hold Perry, the front-runner, under the magic 50 percent threshold.

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Mark McKinnon, who served as a strategist for then-Gov. George W. Bush, thinks she’s proving to be scrappy enough to pull it off but said she’ll likely hit a ceiling of support that will prevent her from toppling the incumbent

“Medina has certainly demonstrated she has real and growing support. At the end of the day, however, I suspect her numbers will dissipate as people don’t like to throw their votes away on someone they really don’t believe has a chance to win,” said McKinnon.

Polls also indicate that outside of tea party and libertarian circles, Medina remains an unknown. With the election less than three weeks away, 55 percent of Texas voters could not render an opinion of her, according to a recent Public Policy Polling survey.

It would be a mistake, however, to view her solely as the tea party candidate since many tea party factions have remained neutral.

Still, the Independent Texans, a group claiming to represent 5 million voters unaligned with any party, has endorsed Medina’s candidacy, and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is expected to hold a fundraiser for her in Houston this weekend. Another independent group has set up a website called “Medina Money Bomb” to infuse her campaign with fresh cash Feb. 15.

Asked if she’s more accurately described as a tea party or a Paul-oriented candidate, she replied, “I think both of those shoes fit equally well.”

Hillsman said Perry is benefiting from the confusion around Medina’s candidacy, which in many ways is more tailored to independents than to GOP primary voters.

Part of Medina’s appeal is that she’s undefined by public office and offers an attractive alternative to a swath of voters seeking candidates without any previous officeholding experience. Among GOP purists, that’s not necessarily a redeeming trait. National committeeman Bill Crocker said many of Medina’s comments are hard for lifelong Republicans to swallow.

“She alienated a huge part of the Republican vote when she indicated she wouldn’t vote for either Perry or Hutchison in the general election. That just doesn’t fly well,” said Crocker.

With the Massachusetts Senate special election in the rearview mirror, there’s little chance that sophisticated campaigns will continue to ignore a fast-moving underdog.

“What helps her avoid a blasting attack is that her supporters’ second-place preferences are evenly split,” said Thomas Marshall, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Arlington. “Very likely, within a week or two, we should see some hard-hitting ads to stop her momentum. Perhaps on the drug legalization issue or what her platform would mean for public funding of schools,” he said.

Some of the more controversial portions of Medina’s agenda include beginning a conversation about legalizing drugs, replacing the state’s property tax with a sales tax and removing most registration requirements to carry a handgun.

“We restrict alcohol in this country, but we don’t ask people to register all they purchase at the store,” she said.

Like Perry, Medina suggested secession from the union should be left as an option on the table and has advocated “nullification,” a highly charged Civil War-era reference that says states can disregard federal laws.

But taking Medina on directly also raises the risk of elevating her stature.

“Nobody’s going to attack her. That’d be stupid; that’d give her more ammunition,” Hillsman said.