What happened to the Harris County Republican Party?

If you can answer the question of what happened to the Harris County Republican Party in the November 8 election, you’ll win a big prize. Like, a really, really big prize.

The guys over at Texas Conservative Review think that they know:

Harris County GOP Suffers Historic Wipeout Led By Chair Simpson’s Messageless Campaign

Who devised this “joke” joint campaign? Paul Simpson, County Chair, was in charge. When Paul Simpson challenged long-time social conservative chair Jared Woodfill in 2014, he criticized him for a weak showing in 2008 and 2012, and said “he had a plan” to get the party back on track.

Well in 2008 and 2012, we won many countywide races while Obama was sweeping the country. This year, Trump sweeps and we get nothing. Based on the Woodfill standard, Simpson’s utter and complete failure calls for his resignation so the party can bring in new visionary leadership that can begin to rebuild the decimated Republican Party in Harris County.

The fact is, the 2018 election starts today and waiting until the 2018 primary to oust Paul Simpson could be too late for our ticket, including our many great judges, in 2018.

This is not about ego! It is not about who is in charge. It’s about the survival of the GOP in Harris County.

I suppose that was written by former HCRP Chair Gary Polland, they aren’t real clear over there about who writes what.

Unless they are. Marc Cowart’s byline is on this one:

It’s the Message, Stupid.

And what was the Republican message this year? – “Harris County Works.” It doesn’t exactly have the aspirational ring of “Make America Great Again” or even Hillary’s “Stronger Together.” And it definitely does not tap into the desire for change sentiment resonating across the nation. It is very much a message of “everything is ok here, let’s maintain the status quo.” Those were my feelings going into the election, but I had to wonder if I was way off base, so I decided to get the opinions of voters in my area who aren’t in the political echo chamber. The results confirmed what I suspected – people were confused and uninspired by the slogan. Most thought that it had something to do with street repair and drainage ditches. Hmmm…no, I think that is “Public Works”, not “Harris County Works.” The next common response is that it referred to low unemployment in Harris County. Again, not the intended result of the message.

…

“Harris County Works” did not work now and will not work in the future. It’s the message, stupid, and we need a new one.

Well, I did warn you that if the Democrats swept Harris County, current HCRP Chair Paul Simpson would be on the firing line. As he should be of course.

But before we decide that Simpson is the problem, here are a couple of tables for you to think about. I promise we’ll get to the discussion about Simpson soon enough but there is plenty of time for that.

Obviously we all know that EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN on the ballot countywide in Harris County lost their election. And that is bad. Very, very bad. I’m told it’s been a very, very long time since that happened. There might be something in the numbers that each candidate secured to help us figure this out down the road.

Let’s sort those vote totals by turnout on Election Day since the HCRP’s strategy depended upon a strong ground game to GOTV and a much reduced emphasis on mail ballots from previous years.

There are some very interesting differences there but I’ll let you look for them for now. One thing is clear – Mike Sullivan out performed every Republican. And Sullivan won every single category – Mail In, Early Vote and Election Day. Donald Trump lost every single category. Think about that for a bit. We’ll come back to it in the future.

One more table to ponder. How was the party funded? This is of particular interest because one of the criticisms of year’s past is that the candidates had to fund the party because the social conservatives in charge couldn’t raise money from the business community. Here is a table of all contributions above

The average contribution was $7,472.51. The median contribution was $4,000.00. The total raised on state account #00025207 from 7/1/16 – 11/10/16 was $1,105,932.05.

I’ll let you review that list without comment for now. Those numbers are only on the state report and as noted are from July 1st through November 10th. There is a Federal account that we’ll have to look at in the future but this gives you a fairly good idea of what is happening. One thing you won’t see on the report are the hundreds of small donations that we’ve seen in the past, which is good in that it makes it easy to look through.

Okay, you have some homework to do. Before you toss Paul Simpson to the curb, read through the stuff above and come up with a few questions to ask. A few things to stimulate your thought:

• If Republicans hate women, why are 9 out of our 10 top vote getters women?
• How did Mike Sullivan out perform the field?
• Why did people stop giving small donations to the party?
• Are the businessmen at the top of the donor list setting policy for the HCRP?
• Would a qualified candidate for Railroad Commissioner have helped turnout?
• Why did Trump do so poorly in Harris County?