Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

Ideological Purity Complaints Are Counter Productive

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It’s almost Halloween, and the GOP is haunting any chance to retake county wide seats next year.  The culprit is the same mistake we make over and over; complaints about a candidate’s ideological purity.  The 2016 Presidential election should have opened our eyes that ideologically pure candidates can’t win.  Sure, the county has some pockets where that’s not the case.  We are lucky to have representatives Swanson and Cain representing us in Austin.  However, their districts are not representative of the county.  Before addressing some specific examples of the current ideological purity complaints and how they will come back to do harm next year, let’s first take a look at the electorate in general.

Voter Orientation

Democracy Fund Voter Orientation Group has done some great work in voter orientation. Their work is national, not county wide, but the county makeup is similar.  This gives us a good working premise from where to begin analyzing the upcoming election.  A couple of points stand out insofar as why ideological purity requirements are detrimental to the overall health of the GOP.  They plotted voter’s ideology social on one axis and fiscal on the other and marked which Presidential candidate the voter chose in 2016.  Looking solely at the social orientation of the electorate it is 51.6% conservative and 48.4 liberal.  Looking solely at the fiscal orientation of the electorate it is 26.5% conservative and 73.5% liberal. Ouch.

Voters aren’t monolithic blocks.  Someone can be socially conservative and fiscally liberal or visa versa.  When both the scales are looked at together it shows that 44.6% of the voters are both socially and fiscally liberal.  This is going to be the traditional democrat voter. By comparison only 22.7% of the voters are both socially and fiscally conservative – the traditional Republican voter.  The democrats only need to hold on to their own and pick up 5.5% more votes in order to achieve a majority.  Realistically, the Republicans can’t hope to win over enough of the socially conservative fiscally liberal voters to achieve a majority.  We have to be able to peel away some of the more moderate voters in the social and fiscally liberal quadrant in order to win.

The second point that stands out is from more recent data.  When voters were asked what characteristics they wanted to see in President there was the expected party divide on most issues.  However, one issue stood out as desired by both parties – seek[s] compromise so that things get done.  The current combination of a electorate oriented towards the democrats and voters wanting to see compromise so that things get done ensure doom for the GOP with ideological purity testing demanded.

 

HD 148 Race

I’ve previously written about the need to stay gracious in victory and how Republicans are stronger when we adopt a big tent mentality.  The electorate orientation only reinforces how important welcoming all who want to be with us is.  Thankfully Speaker Bonnen is not going to be an issue going forward.  However, insofar as county politics are concerned the Mayoral race and HD 148 race are both areas where the ideological purity bell sounds and harm to the Republican brand follows.

The HD 148 race is particularly damaging.  The district is overwhelmingly democratic in orientation.  It’s highly unlikely that anyone who even seems that they may be right of center will be elected.  Two conservatives are running in the special election, Luis LaRotta and Chris Carmona.  However, Chris decided to run as an independent.  Chris has run for this seat before, and has run for Republican Party County Chair.  It’s difficult to say with a straight face he doesn’t hold Republican values.

When I reached out to him personally for a statement he said:

When we box ourselves in with ideological purity, we neglect people who should be aligned with us on so many principles. People living at or below the poverty line hear those in our movement spouting on about issues that do not matter in their lives, they just want opportunity. We have the chance to really connect with people on cultural and religious issues by talking about our charity toward others and our desire to address matters with compassion and humanity, but instead we get boxed in on issues where none of our goodness actually gets reflected or conveyed to the people that matter the most. 

That’s good insight into the electorate, especially in his district.  He said that the district composition is 64% Democrat, 28% swing/independent/undecided, and 8% republican.  Given the historical election results and general leftward shift of the county overall there’s no reason to doubt that assessment, and little reason to think that someone under the Republican label can even sniff at victory.

HD 148 is a district where engagement can start to move the needle in our direction.  However, rather than see the opportunity the ideological purists are out in force saying that Luis is the only “real republican” in the race.  If you were one of the 28% up for grabs, or one of the more moderate democrats in the district observing what’s going on would you even want to listen to what the Republican position is?  Or would you think that the Republicans are zealots who demand ideological purity?  The latter is more likely.  Rather than an opportunity to have two different candidates engage the electorate this has become a detriment to the party brand in a district where votes could be shifted.

Mayoral Election

As damaging as HD 148 race is to the Republican brand the mayoral race is an order of magnitude more damaging.  At least with HD 148 the scope of damage is limited.  The mayoral election is doing damage on a county wide scale.  The question of is Tony Buzbee a real conservative is a pronounced narrative, and it’s a narrative that is going to come back to do untold harm to the Republicans next year.

Bill King has some good points, but he is definitely not the individual to hold up as a bastion of conservative ideology.  And that’s okay; a hard core conservative isn’t going to win the race for mayor. However, to attack Buzbee as not a true conservative by comparison to King is laughable.  King has a book where he declares himself to be unapologetically moderate and he also says that prayer in public needs to be avoided.  The leftward tilt to his social stances is the exact opposite of what the data on electorate orientation tells us what is electable.

However, because he almost defeated Turner last time, and because he was seen as the “Republican” candidate in that nonpartisan race he is being hailed as the “true Republican” in this race.  This in turn is giving rise to attacks on Buzbee for his past entanglement with the Democrat party.  Ideological purity means Buzbee has to be attacked.  The average voter who hears attacks on Buzbee because he engages with both parties is going to be turned off to the Republican message.  The data tells us that voters want someone who will compromise so things get done.

What’s especially worrisome, though, is what happens come runoff time.  There’s a persistent rumor that King has said he will vote for Turner in a Turner/Buzbee runoff.  King’s camp denies that this was said; however, there’s text messages (see below with names/numbers redacted) in the near contemporaneous time frame to the event where the statement was allegedly made suggesting that King did make the statement.  This would be an easy issue to put to rest; King just has to come out and say he will endorse Buzbee if the runoff is Turner/Buzbee.  The lack of such a statement lends credibility to those saying that the statement was made.  If it does come to pass how is that going to make the Republican Party look?  Lots of possible answers come to mind, but none are helpful to the Republican brand.

 

Path Forward

With Trump on the ballot next year is a tough time to run as a Republican.  Absent the way this election cycle has played out there was reason for hope.  Some of the political undercurrents, such as the low bail settings, give reason to hope that some of the ticket splitting voters would vote Republican, at least for the criminal courts.  The District Attorney’s generally soft on crime actions only reinforce the need for republican judges who are going to be more law and order oriented.  Now, messaging, already difficult with Trump using most of the oxygen in the room, becomes exceptionally more difficult because of all the ideological purity party infighting that has occurred.  Until the infighting is resolved, and the ideological purity scourge abates, we are our own worst enemy regarding electability.

 

 

 

Harris County Republican primary results are interesting

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To say that the Harris County Republican primary results are interesting is to understate the confusion that I have regarding the results. It was certainly a mixed bag around the county, with the traditional slates doing quite well but losing in their attempt to replace the party chair. While we wait for the gurus to tell us what really happened, here are a few observations.

Sarah Davis kicks Greg Abbott’s ass

I said that I hoped for a blowout and sure enough, the voters in HD134 delivered. Sarah Davis creamed Greg Abbott and his hand picked opponent Susanna Dokupil by 13 points. In a way it’s a shame because Dokupil is not the caricature that she became due to Abbott’s thin-skinned personality and his lying attacks on Davis. But she chose to lie in bed with the governor, so she deserves whatever happened to her.

And for those of you saying this was Abbott’s attempt to push his conservative principles over Davis’ liberal tendencies, just stop. Does Greg Abbott have any core principles? Besides raising money and keeping the office? If he does, he surely hasn’t shown it. Make no mistake, the attacks on Sarah Davis, Lyle Larson and Wayne Faircloth were about their attempts to stop his shameless cronyism.

Money can buy love but sometimes it can’t buy an election

In a way, the fact that Kathaleen Wall spent at least $6 million to buy a seat in Congress and then didn’t finish in the top two is a shame. It’s a shame because of the way her consultants fleeced her – I’m betting that each of her consultants made their entire yearly budgets off of their failures to run a good campaign. Clearly there was no ground game, as her campaign was solely based upon saturating broadcast radio and television, as well as sending a mailer a day. And those consultants get 10-15% of those media ad buys.

Is no one in her orbit capable of telling her the truth? She needs new friends, real friends that will speak honestly and are not there simply to make a buck or three.

37% of Harris County Republicans do not want to abolish abortion

That 37% is only 5 points higher than the statewide vote. Are corrupt groups like Texas Right to Life turning Republican voters away from the abortion issue? Are voters beginning to understand that for some anti-abortion groups, such as Texas Right to Life, money trumps the moral issue?

The blue wave didn’t happen?

I find it perplexing that Republicans around the state are saying that there was no “blue wave” in Texas. Perhaps they have given up on Harris County and are content to rely upon the rural vote? That would be short term thinking given the growing influence in the urban areas.

And if it is perplexing to me to see statewide candidates saying that, it is shocking that Harris County Republican officials are saying it. Do they not understand what happened?

November is a long ways away and perhaps things will change and Republican voters will outnumber Democratic voters as they normally do in gubernatorial cycles. But honestly, just between me, you and the fencepost, what energy are Republican candidates going to bring to the table?

At the top of the ticket, we have Sen. Ted Cruz. Admit it, Ted no longer has the outsider aura that he had when he first ran and nobody knew him. Now we know he is just another politician, albeit one that probably reflects the values of Texans more than his Democratic opponent. But is that exciting? Make you want to run to the polls? I can tell you anecdotally that Beto O’Rourke has a buzz surrounding his campaign and while it probably will not help him statewide, it will surely help him in Harris County – which means down ballot Republicans have a problem.

And then we have Greg Abbott. Whatever.

Next up is Dan Patrick. Excitement much? I don’t think so. While Dan did better in Harris County than he did around the state, he still had double the number of Republican voters vote against him than voted against Abbott.

Ken Paxton? Seriously?

Well, we always have Ed Emmett to fall back on, right? Perhaps there will be enough crossover voters to keep him at the helm of the county. But are those crossover voters going to vote for other Republicans? Stan Stanart? Chris Daniel?

The slates did their thing but what about November?

The Big 3 slates did okay for the people that paid them. We’ll take a deeper look at that later but for now it is probably enough to say that they weakened the party’s chances in November. Why?

For one thing, they were able to get lesser qualified judges over the finish line. On an individual level, that really doesn’t matter as judicial races in November aren’t about individual qualifications. Think Kevin Fine. The problem is at the macro level where Democrats are going to be able to message that Republicans nominated candidates that simply aren’t qualified. You really should read Judge Jay Karahan’s piece about this.

The irony is that the judges that did pay to help elect unqualified candidates put their own jobs in jeopardy with their decision to fund the slates. You are only as strong as your weakest link when you do that. And my oh my, there are some weak links that got nominated last Tuesday.

So Paul Simpson stays chair, now what?

You want to know who the luckiest guy is in this election? Chris Carmona. He probably doesn’t think that right now but then again, he isn’t the guy that has to be the front man for a group of dysfunctional Republicans. There are Republican nominees up and down the ballot that do not know how to raise money. And it is going to take a LOT of money if Republicans are going to be able to overcome the Democrat enthusiasm in November.

Obviously, I’m talking about the county wide races when I talk about the possibility of Republicans losing in November. The gerrymandered positions should be fine. For all of the bluster from the Democrats about beating John Culberson in November, it is notable that Republican turnout vs Democratic in CD7 was 53.8%-46.2%. And in Precinct 2, Republicans turned out 30,204 voters while Democrats had 27,176. Jack Morman will have a tough race but if he runs a good get out the vote campaign, he should be fine.

So who does Simpson turn to for help? The slate guys haven’t shown any willingness to work with him. Several of the consultants that we normally look to ran very poor campaigns for their clients and lost. Maybe, just maybe, it is time to ask people like Sarah Davis and Patricia Harless for their thoughts on winning in Harris County. And perhaps it is time to break the county into smaller units with different messaging to different segments of the county. But hey, what do I know?

Texas Right to Life supports Chris Carmona by claiming that Paul Simpson supports pro-abortion candidates

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I can’t even begin to describe how offensive this is to me:

texas right to life paul simpson

Forget the misspelling of the name of the county for which Chris Carmona is running to defeat the incumbent Paul Simpson. Focus on the fake grassroots pro-life group spending hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking incumbent Republicans around the state that Texas Right to Life themselves rated 100% pro-life.

If you don’t think that the Texas Right to Life political action committee is a fake grassroots organization, you need to read this, which was put out by the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops. Here is a snippet:

3.Texas Right to Life’s voter guide. Finally, Texas Right to Life publishes a scorecard that purports to show which Texas legislators are pro-life. We believe this publication is not based on a fair analysis of a legislator’s work, but rather upon whether the legislator has followed voting recommendations of Texas Right to Life. Unfortunately, a number of legislators who have consistently voted for pro-life and end of life legislation have been opposed by Texas Right to Life.

And if you somehow still believe that TRTL is a grassroots organization, consider that of the $1,930,810 the group has raised this election cycle, 93% of it came from 5 large donors. Read this article in the Dallas Morning News if you want to see how much money is pouring into three political action committees focused on reshaping the Republican Party of Texas.

I guess that this issue is personal to me so you can disregard whatever I say if you choose. My wife and I attended our first protest against the Supreme Court ruling in Rove v Wade in the early ’80’s. If we had been older, I have no doubt that we would have been on the streets in the ’70’s, after the illogical ruling by the Supreme Court. We first met Randall Terry on the streets of Houston in 1986 after the birth of our oldest child. Being against the atrocity of abortion is not a new thing to me.

And it certainly isn’t new to Paul Simpson. As I mentioned here, I first met Paul in 2007. Some of our first conversations were about the travesty of abortion. For anyone to say that Paul Simpson supports pro-abortion candidates is not only absurd but literally sickening, as I felt today when reading the fake grassroots group Texas Right to Life’s tweet. Saying that Simpson is a RINO as the Carmona shills are doing is one thing. Saying that he supports the atrocities of abortion is in another league altogether.

When will voters fight back about these types of lies?

Yes I’m passionate about this. Yes I did ask Chris Carmona if he would denounce this group’s slanderous comment about Paul Simpson. He has not. That speaks volumes to me.

Chris Carmona jumps the shark in the HCRP Chair race, Paul Simpson goes negative

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Well, it had to happen. There is no such thing as gentlemanliness in a Texas Republican primary. Candidates enter with the intention of winning and as it gets closer to election day, start hyperventilating about the result. And so it is no surprise that the rhetoric in the race between incumbent Paul Simpson and challenger Chris Carmona turned sour after the first couple of days of early voting.

Incredibly, Chris Carmona joined up with Dr. Steven Hotze in calling Paul Simpson a RINO (see picture above of screenshot from Hotze’s endorsement video). Folks, if Paul Simpson is a RINO, you might as well do away with the name Republican. Simpson has actively worked to push the Republican brand and Republican candidates since he was 13 years old. I’ve known him since 2007 and he has been one of the hardest working advocates for Republicans that I have ever known. There might be some that work as hard but none that I know that work harder. Also, Hotze is running this ad on social media (for free for the Carmona campaign):

In his first term, RINO Paul Simpson, supported by the RINO business establishment, led the Harris County Republican Party to a disastrous defeat to the Democrats in the 2016 General Elections, our worst defeat in 73 years.

Apparently Hotze decided to overlook the disastrous results in 2008 and 2012 for Republicans under his and Jared Woodfill’s leadership. I certainly never heard him call Jared a RINO after getting crushed because of a presidential campaign. Also, I guess business leaders are no longer welcome in Hotze’s Republican Party. Mind boggling.

Unfortunately, Chris Carmona decided to go even further than calling Simpson a RINO, now he is a fraud. These screenshots are from a video that Carmona produced:

After seeing that video, I called Carmona and asked him if he really believed that. He emphatically stated that he stands by the claims in the video and says that he did do more than Simpson did in 2014. He told me that he was coordinating teams of high school students across the county and that he was on the ballot running in a very liberal district, insisting again that he deserves more credit than Simpson for those victories.

I remember that election quite a bit differently. I remember that when Jared Woodfill handed over the keys to the party, it was in dire financial straits. I remember that for the five months that Simpson had leading up to the November election, he was able to raise enough money to solve the financial problems and leveraged his relationships with RPT Chair Steve Munisteri and Greg Abbott to flood Harris County with money and political interns. I would think that Chris would at least recognize some of the obstacles that Simpson faced and overcame and at least share some of the credit with Simpson for those historic victories. Calling Simpson a fraud for talking about the success the party had that year strikes me as a candidate flailing away, hoping something sticks, no matter how little credibility it has.

During our conversation, I told Chris that I would look back at the history of that liberal district he was running in and let him know what I found. Here is what I found:

Election Year Republican Candidate

# Votes

% of Vote
2002 none
2004 none
2006 none
2008 Howard H. Gano, Jr.

10,975

33.8%
2010 Fernando Herrera

9,790

41.3%
2012 * none
2014 Chris Carmona

9,356

39.7%
2016 none

*Note: The 148th HD’s boundaries were slightly changed during the redistricting in 2011/12 to move some Republicans out and move some Democrats in. 

When I sent that to Carmona, he said:

As I said earlier, not sure how that is germane to me working the entire county on behalf of all republicans, not just staying in 148.

You know what, I would normally agree that it wasn’t germane and I acknowledge that Carmona did work hard in a liberal district. I don’t know about the entire county but I’ll take his word for it. But if he is going to take credit for the victories and claim that Simpson did nothing to help, I think it is germane to point out that Republicans actually went backwards in the district in which he was a candidate. (note added after publication: Carmona thinks that the line “actually went backwards” is not accurate because of the changing district lines. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide.)

All of the above is why I put in the headline to this post that Carmona had jumped the shark.

Now on to the other candidate’s campaign. During my phone call with Chris, I told him that I had not received or seen a single negative campaign email or social media ad about him. He scoffed at that and said that Simpson’s campaign manager was on Facebook saying negative things about him. I poked around and did find some instances of Nathan Gordon basically trolling Carmona supporters, talking about the fact that Carmona has never won an election so how can he help the party to win again.

And then yesterday, I did get the first negative shot over the bow from the Simpson campaign.

 

paul simpson email header

David —

In less than four years, we’ve accomplished a lot in the Harris County Republican Party. When the pay-to-play slates ran the party, it was broke, shrinking, and ineffective. We flipped that control and have empowered our grassroots army. Now, the Harris County Republican Party is a thriving, financially secure, and state-of-the-art party operation.

The power brokers who run the pay-to-play voter guides are back again, putting all their weight behind a candidate who does not share our conservative values. My opponent panders to the liberal media elite, not Harris County Republicans.

The slates claim my opponent shares our values, but he openly defies the very principles they claim to have.

For instance, my opponent:

  • Openly opposed the Republican platform
  • Refused to support Donald Trump in 2016
  • Opposed our Republican Legislature’s ban on sanctuary cities
  • Promoted liberal Democrats over Republican candidates in 2016
  • Claims to have a “Plan to Win” after running and losing for three different offices

Read more about Chris “California” Carmona here.

The Houston Young Republicans recently put a spotlight on the discredited and deceptive practices of the so-called “Big Three” slates. They wrote in the Houston Chronicle:

“The Big Three conceal their motivations, place their own interests over qualifications and betray the Republican cause for profit. Their hypocrisy deserves to be brought out into the open.”

As a life-long grassroots Republican, I am devoted to furthering conservative principles and electing Republicans. That’s why I’ve received the support and endorsement from more than 300 elected officials, grassroots activists and conservative leaders. We cannot turn back to the time when the slates ran the party. I know we can defeat them now, as we did in 2014 and 2016.

The email was titled “They would endorse Obama to beat me”. From reading the email, the “they” would be Steve Hotze, Terry Lowry and Gary Polland. Yeah, I get a sense that they would endorse Obama over Simpson. Clearly they do not like the guy.

As you can see, the Simpson campaign set up an “informational” website listing some of what they perceive as Carmona’s faults. For some reason I wasn’t aware that Carmona supports full legalization of marijuana, not just for medicinal purposes. Hey, I’m right there with him on that. I know that Dr. Hotze and the little fella are very much opposed to legalization in any form but it’d be hard to find someone that they agreed with on everything. I’m glad that Carmona is out there talking about full legalization. See RAMP’s website for explanations of why I agree with  him.

As for the other stuff, I said a while back that I was sure we would see some of Carmona’s thoughts from that e-magazine he produced. I didn’t know that they would find something he wrote here to object to but they did. Good thing I’m not running for chair, I’ve said all kinds of stuff they could pick apart.

I do find it odd that Carmona opposes the Sanctuary City law so adamantly and promoted HPD Chief Art Acevedo, whose idea of police work is getting on Twitter and denouncing Republicans. When that bill was passed, I recall saying that it virtually guaranteed that Greg Abbott would be reelected and I’ll stick to that. My guess is that Carmona was writing that for his intended audience, much like the claim that Christopher Columbus brought pillage and slaughter to the native peoples, along with fear, hate and desolation to some of the greatest empires. I think that Carmona is right about that from an historical basis but in today’s atmosphere in Republican politics, a lot of folks are going to be offended by that. Yes, we do have our share of snowflakes.

As I said from the beginning of this campaign, I’m not going to take sides and the above is my attempt at balance. Some people do not think I’m being balanced and constantly accuse me of supporting one or the other candidate. With that in mind, I’ll end this now very long post with a couple of emails I received via the Contact Page. I’ll let you decide if I’ve been fair to both.

In HCRP Chair race, why is it necessary for Paul Simpson to raise money?

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After publishing a press release from the Paul Simpson campaign touting his fundraising ability, I received a message from a Republican campaign worker saying the people giving to his campaign were literally wasting their money.

People are giving money to Paul for what?

Literally wasting it

I thought that was an interesting comment from someone that makes their living off of campaign contributions. But perhaps other people are wondering why Simpson is raising large amounts of money for his campaign and for the party, so I thought I’d take a moment to explain.

Obviously, it’s easy to explain why he must raise money for the party. It is a large county and Simpson’s strategy is much different than the days when Jared Woodfill and Gary Polland ran the party on the backs of elected officials and candidates. Simpson has set up a series of satellite offices around the county and has a professional staff to pay for and he prefers not forcing candidates and elected officials to pay for that. I remember when the doors to the party were locked by the landlord because the party had no money to pay the rent at the old location on Richmond. And the employees went unpaid for months at a time and then had their salaries cut before eventually being laid off. I don’t think that Simpson wants to see that happen again.

Believe it or not, it’s even easier to explain why Simpson raises so much for his own campaign. Actually, I don’t have to explain it, I’ll show you an email that explains it for you:

From: “Dr. Hotze Public SFH” <XXX>
To: “XXX” <XXX>
Subject: The Battle for the Republican Party is on Again!
February 12, 2018

Dear XXX,

Greetings my friend!

I believe that we need to restore our nation to its Godly heritage. We are in a life and death struggle for our culture, for our Constitutional rights and for the Biblical principles upon which they were founded. We must redouble our efforts! We need to elect candidates who believe in Ronald Reagan’s conservative philosophy and defeat the RINOs.

The Republican Primary election season begins with early voting next Tuesday, February 20. The sample ballots from Conservative Republicans of Texas(CRT) and Conservative Republicans of Harris County (CRHC) need to be printed and mailed this week. We have already mailed over 300,000 Early Applications for Ballot Mail in Harris County and in targeted races across the state.

Attached is the Conservative Republicans of Harris County sample ballot for your perusal. CRHC and CRT have been distributing this type of sample ballot in Harris County since 1992. These organizations have an 86% won/loss record.

It is critical that we nominate conservative candidates during the upcoming Republican primary to face the Democrats in the November General Election.

It is also imperative that we replace the current Harris County Republican Party (HCRP) Chairman, Paul Simpson, whose failed leadership led to the disastrous defeat to the Democrats of all countywide Republican candidates during the 2016 elections. Simpson went 0 for 43. Hillary Clinton carried Harris County by 162,000 votes. Simpson and his RINO supporters ran away from the conservative moral issues and the conservative Republican base of support. Chris Carmona will take advantage of our positions on the conservative moral issues to draw the minority churches and communities into the Republican party.

Chris Carmona is our candidate for the chairmanship of the HCRP. He is a conservative leader who was the past co-chairman of the National Young Republicans and who is the current executive director of the Texas Young Republicans. Chris Carmona has been the head of minority voter outreach for the HCRP both under Jared Woodfill, when he was chairman, and under the current chairman. Chris Carmona will bring together a team of winners who can activate our conservative Republican base. If we keep doing what we did in 2016, then we will inevitably get the same results.

The Democrats want to turn Texas blue. To do this they have to sweep Harris County in the November General elections. The Soros funded groups are pouring money into Harris County to accomplish this. The Democrats want to turn Houston into another Chicago. All the major metropolitan areas of Texas are controlled by the Democrats with the exception of Harris County. The Democrats have been working like fiends through their socialist Marxist organization,Battleground Texas, to turn out the minority and millennial vote to put Texas in the Democrat camp. If we lose Harris County, then we lose Texas and there will never be another Republican elected to the White House.

The Democrats are running RINOs, who are really Democrats, in the Republican primaries. The teachers’ union is encouraging their members to vote in the Republican primary.

We simply must turn out our conservative voters in the Republican Primary.

The cost of printing and mailing 450,000 sample ballots to everyone in our targeted districts, who voted in the 2016 Republican Primary, with follow up phone calls, is 250,000. This will pay for the printing and mailing. Additionally, we are using social media, targeted to Republican Primary Voters, to post our sample ballots. We have already spent 250,000 on EABMs, robo phone calls and video endorsements for social media.

I would like you to consider investing 5,000, 10,000. 15,000 or more in this effort to keep Harris County and Texas in the Republican column.

We have an opportunity to nominate and elect solid conservative legislator and judicial candidates to oppose the Democrats in the General Election and to make the Texas House a conservative body. The Texas House has been controlled by RINOs, Speaker Joe Straus and Rep. Byron Cook, until now. They both came under tremendous political pressure during the last session which caused them to decide not to run for reelection. Straus’ supporters are still pouring money into the Texas Senate and Representative races to maintain their control.

Straus, Cook and their lieutenants blocked Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s and the Texas Senate’s conservative legislation last session. We have an opportunity to elect solid conservatives to Straus’, Cook’s and their lieutenants’ seats and recapture the Texas House for the conservative Republicans.

Please let me know that you will continue to support these efforts by investing 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 or more in this effort.

Time is of the essence!

Committed to our success, I remain, as always,

Sincerely yours,

Steven F. Hotze, M.D.

Founder Conservative Republicans of Harris County
Conservative Republicans of Texas

(bold highlights added)

I think that Dr. Hotze’s email makes it very clear why Paul Simpson has to raise money if he wants to continue to be party chair. I like the way Hotze said “Carmona is our candidate for party chair” because the old guard of the party is combining their efforts in an attempt to regain control of the party. A quarter-million being spent against Simpson by just one of the “Big 3” slates? After reading that, I’m not sure that anyone can say that Simpson is raising too much money.  I’ve been very clear that I’m neutral in this race but I have to point that out.

I was talking about Dr. Hotze’s letter with a friend, a former SREC member and we were talking about how Carmona could fund the party if he can’t raise large amounts of money (campaign finance reports show that he has raised a total of $1,485). Clearly, the three slates that are pushing Carmona’s campaign (for free?) have little to no history of donating to the party. Dr. Hotze puts a lot of his own money into his slate card but the other two guys profit from candidates.  I brought up the doors being locked by the landlord when those guys ran the party and my friend (a Carmona supporter) says “Oh, don’t worry about that. Texas Right to Life or Empower Texans will step in and pay the rent.”

That possibility had not entered my mind. Can you imagine the purification that will happen in the HCRP if those groups gain control?

Maybe, just maybe, those people that are donating to Simpson’s campaign already had that thought and don’t consider it to be literally wasting their money.

I hope that Carmona addresses fundraising in a more complete way that what is on his website:

Fund the Party with a Realistic Vision for Growth

  • Re-launch the Grassroots Fundraising Club
  • Invest in your party and put skin in the game
  • Provide value-added benefits so people want to invest

And while I’m hoping for things, I hope that both candidates will address the problem that we have in Precinct 1 and what they think can be done to close that gap. If that gap isn’t closed, Harris County Republicans are in deep trouble.

Related:

Harris County Republican Party: The curse of the slate mailers

 

Chris Carmona: To Win Again in Harris County, Technology is a Must

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Press release from the Chris Carmona campaign:

chris carmona campaign header

Fellow Patriot,
When we Republicans in Harris County lost every countywide race in November 2016, the HCRP was in fact out-maneuvered by the local Democrats. As your next Chairman of the HCRP, I plan to put a stop to this. Over the last several weeks I have been sharing my plan with you for the future of the HCRP. Among those planks to win again is to improve the use of technology in the operation of our party.

We can start by making better use of free, far-reaching tools. But we can also invest in an App that our grassroots activists, candidates, and officeholders can use. This is about providing tools for those people that make up our party, to engage, to inform and to turn out our vote in each election.

This of course would all be connected to a voter database so that it actually means something to our end-users. If you are a precinct chair, you know the headaches involved with working through the mazes of that HCRP database in 2016. I have received plenty of negative feedback to know that the system needs to be built correctly. When our precinct leaders are not equipped with basic tools, leadership has failed.

I plan to run an HCRP operation that will utilize aggressive data sets to target voters based on voting propensity, not just voter history. This is a huge gap that the HCRP is leaving on the table, and we are losing elections at the same time.

The Republican National Committee has this raw data, and my plan is to use it correctly for a change. Anyone who knows anything about Big Data knows that all the data in the world is useless unless you make the data ask the right questions.

The GOTV efforts of the HCRP failed us all in 2016. My plan will make GOTV more effective and will deliver at a lower cost than the expensive and ineffective GOTV effort we saw in 2016. Technology and GOTV means more than just having a Facebook page.

This is just one part of the plan to help us win again in Harris County.

It is time to win again!

Thank you,

Chris Carmona
Candidate, Chairman of the HCRP

Related:

Press Release: A Media Strategy to Win Again in Harris County

Paul Simpson releases 30 day fundraising totals

More on the endorsement slates in Harris County: The endorsement slates that accept payment for their endorsements would love for voters in Harris County to forget their history.