One year ago, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison had a commanding lead over incumbent Rick Perry in the race to become GOP nominee for Texas governor.  Public Policy Polling found Hutchison 25 points ahead of Perry among likely GOP primary voters, with 56 percent support.

One year later, as Republicans go to the polls to select their gubernatorial nominee, the latest PPP survey shows Perry at 40 percent, Hutchison at 31 percent and a third grassroots conservative candidate who was a complete unknown until a few months ago — Debra Medina — at 20 percent.

There are two competing political narratives behind these dramatically shifting numbers.  The first concerns Hutchison’s campaign strategy, which proved ultimately to be flawed.  Under pressure from the national GOP leadership, the senator decided to postpone resigning her seat, which would have enabled her to work full time on the governor‘s race.  In the aftermath of the 2006 and 2008 elections, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and others feared a special election to replace Hutchison might give Democrats a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority.

Those fears were likely overblown, given the fact that Republicans have won every statewide race in the Lone Star State since 1994.  In the event, Democrats achieved their 60-vote majority over the summer with the certification of Al Franken as the victor in the Minnesota senate race.

Still, there was a logic to Hutchison staying in the Senate.  A senator is more formidable on the campaign trail than a resigned officeholder.  And Hutchison framed her decision to stay in Washington in heroic terms:  She was forgoing the opportunity to campaign full-time in order to fight a government takeover of the health care industry, the cap and trade bill and other monstrous legislation of the Pelosi-Reid Congress.

In any normal year, that would have been a solid plan of action.  But 2009 was anything but a normal political year.  As Democrats overreached and the tea party movement took off, anything associated with an extremely unpopular Congress became disliked by independents and loathed by conservatives.

Perry, a skilled campaigner with a great sense for politics, capitalized on the groundswell.  He made the primary race a referendum on Washington, where the senator had spent 17 years.  Kay “Bailout” Hutchison, as Perry’s campaign began to refer to her, was part of the problem on Capitol Hill.

Perry’s strategy has been extremely effective, reversing Hutchison’s advantage and giving Perry a comfortable lead in the polls.  Still, why would the conservative governor of a red state have to battle back from a 25-point deficit in his own party’s primary?  And why with the Texas economy doing far better than the national average through the economic downturn has Perry been unable to crack 50 percent support among Republicans in any major poll?

The second political narrative is that many Texas conservatives who have known and liked Perry since his first run for statewide office back in 1990 have become disenchanted with him.  In 2007, Perry vetoed a strong property rights bill crafted by the GOP-led Texas Legislature in response to the Kelo decision.  A key provision of the bill conflicted with Perry’s wildly unpopular plan for the Trans Texas Corridor, which would have required the state to exercise eminent domain to obtain as much as 600,000 acres of private property.

Perry ultimately gave up on the corridor.  But that didn’t stop the Legislature from snubbing him during the 2009 session, bypassing any potential veto by putting a property rights amendment directly on the November ballot.  It passed with 81 percent support.

Perry also angered parental rights advocates and stretched the authority of his office when he signed an executive order in 2007 — subsequently overridden by the Texas Legislature — that would have required all sixth grade girls in Texas to receive the Gardasil vaccine.  The vaccine is for a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

If Perry has alienated some Texas conservatives, Debra Medina has charmed them.  The small business owner and former nurse who home-schooled her children had never before run for public office.  A Ron Paul constitutionalist, she talks the language of the tea parties.  For conservative voters fed up with the status quo, she offers a compelling alternative to two career politicians.

Or she did.  Medina, who began her campaign with no money, surged in the polls after she acquitted herself well in two GOP gubernatorial debates in January. By the beginning of February, Public Policy Polling data showed her with 24 percent support of likely Republican primary voters, Hutchison at 28 percent and Perry at 39 percent.  Embarrassingly for Hutchison, that put the novice Medina within the poll’s margin of error of overtaking the senator.

That survey was completed prior to Medina’s appearance on the Glenn Beck radio show on February 11, when she suggested the U.S. government might have had a role in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  The latest PPP survey, cited above, shows her support falling to 20 percent, largely to the benefit of Hutchison.  Medina’s support fell four points, while the senator gained three points and Perry picked up one point.

Under Texas election law, if no candidate secures a majority in the primary, a runoff election is held between the two candidates receiving the most primary votes.  That still looks like the probable outcome Tuesday, with Perry remaining under 50 percent.

The question then becomes whether Perry can seal the deal with conservatives in an April 13 runoff election against Hutchison or — with another surge of support — Medina. If the anti-Washington narrative prevails, Perry will win a historic third full term as governor of Texas.  And in the eyes of political analysts such as Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka, it will position him for a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. 

If Hutchison and Medina voters coalesce around the narrative of conservative disenchantment with Perry, a new name will appear in the GOP gubernatorial slot on the November ballot.  That eventuality is a long shot.  But with turnout in runoff elections historically very low, it is certainly not out of reason for a candidate who can motivate her base.