In preparation for the November elections, the Harris County Republican Party held a Town Hall/Strategy Session Tuesday evening at Bear Creek Community Center. If the standing room only crowd that packed into room to hear Sen. Dan Patrick and Party Chair Jared Woodfill is any indication, Harris County Republicans are fired up and can’t wait to vote! That is a great sign for our down ballot candidates IF we can get people to vote straight ticket.
The meeting started a bit late and people keep streaming in for about thirty minutes because of the traffic on I10 and flooded roads on the Eldridge Parkway side. It took me a full two hours to get into the building – apparently that side of the park is designed to flood but I was unaware of it.
Sen. Patrick arrived about 6:40 and immediately jumped on the stage and started his presentation of the potential costs of Obamacare if it is not repealed.
As you know, I’ve been a frequent critic of Dan but he excelled in this format. He used an imaginary pie chart to depict Texas’ budget, starting with a circle that contained $91 billion. He then drew an imaginary line for education, which is about $50 billion. Another line for health care, which is about $30 billion. Then a small line for public safety, about $10 billion. Uh-oh, already out of money!. He told the crowd that if Obamacare stays in place and we accept the added Medicaid enrollees (Gov. Perry has said that we will not), we need to add another 2.1 million people to the rolls and how are we going to pay for it? He warned of a very large tax increase.
Jared arrived near the end of Dan’s presentation and started his portion of the meeting with the pledges to the flags.
He then went through a presentation outlining the party’s strategy to get out the vote for November. I won’t reveal the super secret details but they hark back to the plans that were supposed to be used in 2010 but weren’t for whatever reason. It is a solid, back to basics plan that centers around precinct chairs. Which of course begs the question: why haven’t there been more efforts to recruit and retain precinct chairs? But I don’t want to sound negative because it is a solid plan and will work if there is follow through and if precinct chairs feel like they are true partners, not just in name only.
Overall, it was a great start for the HCRP. They will be holding these Town Hall/Strategy sessions in each of the State Senate districts around the county. I would encourage you to attend and support their efforts, to the extent that you see follow through on their part. I know more than most that some of the people in the power structure of the HCRP do not want any input but it is still our responsibility as Republicans to support Jared’s efforts – he continues to be elected by the majority of voters and elections matter.