A Final Update on the Precinct Chair Filings

Well, the filing deadline for the Republican Primary has passed, and the campaign season is upon us. Soon I will be out on the campaign trail, but my focus for the last two weeks has been on our precinct chair predicament—we don’t have enough precinct chairs now, and not enough incumbent chairs were re-filing for their seats. As some of you may know, I’ve been posting updates about this issue on this website and on the Big Jolly Politics website.

When we started the year, we had about 450 precincts filled out of 874 precincts in the county. As of last night at 9:50 p.m., the HCRP posted that we had filings in about 454 precincts out of 885 precincts (11 new precincts were created last year). On the surface, one could say that we had not lost ground, but that really isn’t the whole story.

Through the remarkable efforts of many people and several organizations (especially those people connected with the local Tea Party movement), who recruited precinct chairs by focusing on filling vacant seats in order to expand the reach of the party, and who conducted training seminars for prospective chairs, 181 new people filed to become precinct chairs in Harris County. Again, this was a phenomenal effort and result. The net result meant that about 70 previously vacant precincts would now have GOP precinct chairs.

So what happened? Well, about 27% of the existing precinct chairs—more than 120—chose not to re-file. Therefore, many of our new recruits filed in occupied precincts just to maintain our presence in that precinct. The net result is that at least 60 occupied precincts will have new chairs, while 64 occupied precincts will become vacant.

That's such a shame--and a waste of a tremendous opportunity the HCRP had to expand its reach with all of this new energy. I know that Donna Boharich has worked very hard and deserves a lot of credit for getting the HCRP focused on the primary--this was not her problem to address, and the result is not her fault. Moreover, I have learned that an effort indeed was made in mid-December to finally contact the precinct chairs that had not already filed to find out what they were doing and to remind them to file, but that type of effort, just before the holidays, was too little too late.

I know that I seem like a broken record, but where was the incumbent Chair, our paid Executive Director, and the rest of the Richmond Avenue team on this issue all last year? Why weren't they canvassing the incumbents to determine who was going to run again, and then actively working to keep their seats filled? Why weren't they using their new-found attraction to the internet, and to Townhall audiences, to recruit precinct chairs? It isn't that hard. I was on the phone and using emails to make sure that a few of the precinct chairs who I knew had not re-filed were finding replacements, and that their replacements would file by the deadline yesterday--and that was just with a weekend's effort. Think of what could have been done with a concerted, focused effort by the current team over a period of months. While they were out performing to Townhall audiences and putting the incumbent's face on Voter Guides that were of no benefit to the party—and we were out recruiting new precinct chairs to fill the vacant seats—no one was minding the organization--and it failed once again. Another lost opportunity.

So why is any of this important? There are at least three reasons we should care about this predicament:

1. The precinct chairs are the "roots" of our grassroots organization. We can not grow the party without expanding our base into every neighborhood, and we will never permanently expand into every neighborhood unless we have a chair in every precinct where there are potential Republican voters. They form part of our farm team, and help find others to run for office in their communities to form the farm team; they help with ballot and election security; and they form the frontline that mobilizes our voters to vote and participate in our convention process.

2. The whole purpose of expanding the party is to elect Republicans, and there is a 7% average differential in turnout between those competitive precincts where we have a chair and those where we do not. Of the 64 currently-occupied precincts that we did not re-fill, we were competitive in all but a handful of them in the 2008 general election, and at least 27 of those precincts voted strongly Republican in that election. Of those 27 precincts, 11 had turnouts between 72% and 80%. A 7% drop in turnout in those precincts could spell disaster for our ticket this fall. It is clear that the presence of an effective precinct chair is key to our get-out-the-vote effort.

and

3. It is more difficult to recruit and approve precinct chairs outside the primary process. Because of the current Vacancy Committee process, coupled with the chronic failure to get a quorum of precinct chairs to attend the quarterly Executive Committee meetings, it is not unusual for a candidate to go a half year of more before he or she is approved to be a precinct chair. This drawn-out process is adding to our inability to put the "boots on the ground" we need to fight the Democrats.

I hope that the HCRP will place a priority on filling these 64 vacancies as soon as possible. To fill these chairs quickly, I propose that that the party immediately create a task force to focus on filling these seats as soon as possible, which must include creation of a “fast-track” process for expediting the candidates through the Vacancy Committee and approval process. We simply don't have the luxury to allow this process to drag-out for months, or even half a year or more, before these seats get filled.

In the meantime, I will continue working with the groups I have been working with to find precinct chair candidates for the remaining seats that the party historically has left vacant, and we will direct them to the Vacancy Committee.

To everyone who filed, and to everyone who worked so hard to bring new applicants into this process--thank you. Let's now get down to the hard work of rebuilding this party.

Matching the Message with the Messenger

At a recent meeting with concerned local Republicans, one person kept asking me how we can fix a widely-perceived problem with our party: the gap between the principles shared at the grassroots of our party, and the policies actually championed by Republican elected officials (primarily at the national level). This perceived gap lies at the heart of our party’s credibility problem with our own voters, and with independents, and we must address it if we are to win elections in the future.

What holds the Republican Party together is a set of shared principles about the role of the individual in society, and about the proper and limited role of government in our lives. However, the purpose of the Republican Party (like any other political party on the planet) is not to serve as a debating society or an advocacy group for these principles; it is to elect candidates to public office who will promote our principles in public policy. So, I think the first step in answering this question is to re-phrase it: how do we find, promote, and elect candidates who will promote our principles in public policy.

There is no silver-bullet answer to this question, but I believe we can begin a process, consistent with the strategic plan I’ve proposed, that will address this question. However, before I get to that point, I want to address the current approach that is being taken by the HCRP and why I don’t think it will solve this problem.

The current team at Richmond Avenue is taking a two-pronged approach: 1. they are allowing a group of precinct chairs and activists to use questionnaires, which are designed to identify specific platform planks people support, for the purpose of opposing candidates in our primary or excluding people from becoming precinct chairs; and 2. they are using the party email system, “rapid response” program, and social-networking sites to criticize fellow Republicans, including Republican elected officials. These approaches do nothing to build-up the party in the public’s mind. Narrowing our base and belittling our party’s elected officials is not going to help us win elections. Instead, this approach will only continue to agitate Republicans and drive many people away from the party over time.

The better approach is to first realize that the gap is caused by a systemic problem within the party, and then to address that problem focusing on communication, self-interest, competition, and culture.

First, we must begin to open a dialogue between our elected officials and our party leaders, activists and voters, in order to begin to harmonize the desires of our party with the issues faced by our elected officials on a daily basis in the process of administering their offices. The more we all understand each other, the easier it will be to help each other form and pursue policies consistent with our principles, and to support our officials as they face the daily challenges of their offices. If the only contact we ever have is a brief handshake during the months leading to an election, we can not hope to bridge the gap. This first step is so important to the future success of our party that I will elaborate on it in another post next week, in which I will outline specific ways the HCRP should facilitate this new process of communication.

Second, the HCRP must help create a positive atmosphere in which it will be in our elected officials’ self-interest to pursue our principles in public policy. By implementing the objectives of our proposed plan (including developing a supporting message, raising our own funds to finance our own operations to help get-out-the-vote efforts, and establishing permanent relationships and party infrastructure in every community and precinct), the party will create a broader base of like-minded supporters who will want our principles reflected in public policy. In turn, the need and desire to get the votes of this broader base should create incentives for our elected officials to pursue policies this broader base will support. If we believe incentives work in other aspects of our lives, let’s create incentives for our elected officials, too.

Third, just as we believe in incentives, we Republicans also believe in the positive consequences of competition. However, we distrust competition when it comes to our primary system. It’s time to embrace competitive primaries, by keeping the HCRP scrupulously neutral. That means opening the non-financial resources of the party to any candidate who qualifies to be on the GOP primary ballot, letting the campaign process determine the winner, and then embracing the supporters of the winner and the loser(s) into the party after the primary. If we think competition is good for our economy and our schools, we should use the threat of competition to improve the quality and effectiveness of our candidates and officeholders.

Finally, we need to address the culture of our party. Since the nomination of the famous explorer, John C. Fremont, as the first Republican presidential candidate in 1856, the pool of activists who sustain the party at the grassroots, the pool of activists who fundraise for the party, and the pool of people who run for office, have been drawn from separate and distinct groups, whose members rarely interact with each other. This is as true today in Harris County as it has ever been any where else in the country.

To change this culture, we need to break-down the walls that separate these groups. First, we need to expand our pool of activists: at the precinct level, by filling the hundreds of open precinct chair positions, and separately recruiting election judges and block captains; and, at the community level, by recruiting more people to run for the hundreds of local non-partisan offices at the municipal and school board level. Second, we need to create more interaction between this expanded grassroots base, our fundraisers, and those groups who have traditionally recruited our candidates. Once we’ve established a greater level of interaction, we then need to begin recruiting more candidates for higher office from the expanded grassroots base. This change in culture is a long-term project; but, if it is ever going to happen, we need to start the process now.

So, the answer to the gap is to start now to improve communication, to create incentives to fuel self-interest, to embrace competition, and to begin to change the culture of the party. This process will not fix the gap over night, but it will begin to narrow the gap quickly. As the process unfolds, we will then see the message match the messenger.