Gov. Rick Perry recently waded into a crowded room at Rao's Bakery, full of conservatives and Tea Party members, and delivered his pitch with a sunny twang: Texas has one of the strongest U.S. economies right now, and his small-government, low-tax policies are the reason. Then he told the crowd that the federal government was 'assaulting every liberty we have got right now' and that he was 'proud to get to know and get to participate with the Tea Party people across the state.' He decried President Barack Obama's health care overhaul as too expensive and warned that federal spending to stimulate the economy would bankrupt the country. Perry's message, though, did not include a single mention of his opponent, Bill White, a Democrat and the former mayor of Houston. With a week to go, polls suggest that White has been unable to close in on the governor. As a result, Perry appears poised to win a fourth term -- unprecedented for a Texas governor -- barring some game-changing development, several pollsters and political strategists said. This week, the campaign's tone grew more acrimonious, as the candidates traded barbs over immigration. Perry released an attack ad suggesting that White was partly to blame for the 2006 slaying of a Houston police officer by an illegal immigrant. White said the governor was 'exploiting shamelessly the grief of a widow' and claimed that Perry had removed convicted sex offenders from the state's public database once they were deported. For the most part, however, Perry has followed the classic strategy of front-runners, with a few twists. He has avoided debates with White and limited his negative attacks on his opponent. He has also harnessed the anti-incumbent sentiment this year, allying himself early on with the Tea Party and riding the wave of anger at deficit spending in Washington. And he has been able to run on the state's economy, taking credit for its relatively good record of creating jobs. White has tried to attack Perry, portraying him as a machine politician who has enriched his friends, former staff members and campaign contributors with state largesse. White has gotten a lift from the Democratic Governors Association, which has pumped more than $2 million into the race and had underwritten two negative ads. A Houston trial lawyer, Steven Mostyn, has also spent millions attacking the governor on the air. White is the most viable Democratic candidate for Texas governor in the past two decades, pollsters say. Yet he has never pulled ahead in any poll, and two recent polls, which came out just before the latest pay-to-play allegations, showed him behind by at least 7 percentage points and perhaps as much as 14. 