Reflections on the last full week of this Campaign

What a week! As early voting has ended, I look back on this week with amazement.

Financially, we started the week at a draw with the incumbent with money raised since the last TEC report filing, and we ended the week with a draw when counting money received and pledged. That second draw was due to the infusion of cash from Bob Perry into both campaigns. Mr. Perry is a great benefactor of our party, whose money has and will allow both sides to take their message to Republican voters through Election Day—allowing the best message and messenger to prevail. My thanks and admiration go to Mr. Perry for his underwriting of the final stage of this race for our party’s future.

Turnout-wise, the turnout so far is surpassing most pundit's expectations. As I stood out at the early-voting poll in Kingwood on Friday, I was impressed by the steady stream of voters and of the education they had gone through to prepare for their votes. We will probably exceed 30,000 voters when the votes are counted on Tuesday night, and that is a great statement about the interest in our party and its future.

Politically, I have seen the breathless support and criticism from friend and “foe” (though we are all family) alike in this race as the week has proceeded, and with continuing questions raised about my history, my beliefs, my judgment, and my commitment to the Republican Party. One of the bright spots was when an old friend of high school not only found me on Facebook, but came to my defense and posted about my conservative activism even as a high school student--thanks, Jim, and good to hear from you after all these years.

In response to the criticism, let’s just say that I have never claimed to be perfect (nor my judgment to be infallible), but my commitment to this party, and to its unity and growth, is total. As I have reiterated often during this campaign, I will support the party if this race ends with the incumbent’s victory, and I have already started that process by committing to the RNC that I would help—win or lose—with the creation and implementation of a pilot program here in Harris County to grow the party into Latino, Asian-American and African-American neighborhoods and precincts, and to recruit Republicans to run for city and school board races.

I also hear and see the last-minute rallying around the incumbent, and the statements that I, and my supporters, are dividing the party at the wrong time, and are distorting the record of the incumbent. With that final criticism in mind, here is the question I pose to you as we enter this last weekend of the race: if everything that the current team at Richmond Avenue has done is so great, why am I essentially running even in fundraising with the incumbent since the last reporting period, and why do I have the support of so many party leaders, civic leaders, and conservative organizations in this race against a 4-term incumbent? This level of support for a challenger in a Republican primary is unprecedented—and it is unprecedented for a reason: the current team has been organizationally and financially floundering for years, and all the insiders know it, and all the activists can see it. The Obama Wave simply unearthed this truth for all to see.

Therefore, let me leave you with a paraphrase of Reagan’s immortal question: Are you Harris County Republicans better off now than you were in 2002?

If your answer is “No”, my candidacy has, at long last, given you a choice on April 13th for a different future.

Coffee with the Candidate

On Friday morning, from 9am-10am, I'd like to invite you to stop by for "Coffee with the Candidate". We will be meeting at Blue Planet Cafe at 1330 Wirt Rd at Westview (a little north of I-10), in the Bell Tower Center. Stop by before work for a cup of coffee, a latte, a juice or a breakfast treat, and we can talk a little politics while we're at it. After our visit, you can proceed one block up Wirt Road to the Trini Mendenhall Sosa Community Center where you can cast your ballot in the Republican runoff election.

Blue Planet Cafe is a real source of pride in our community. They are an independent cafe, on April 15th they will be celebrating their first year in business. Once a month, Blue Planet Cafe features a local organization doing good work in the community. A portion of the tips they collect for that month goes to the organization. But beyond just a monetary contribution, Blue Planet Cafe allows the featured organization to leave their literature for the cafe customers to peruse and possibly get involved. We are glad to have found a cafe, which by the way has very good food and drinks, that is putting principles we believe in to work by supporting a community and seeking people who help people, rather than government doing this work.

You can learn more about Blue Planet Cafe at www.BluePlanetCafe.biz.

A Greeting for Easter and Passover

Let me take a break from preparing for early voting next week to wish happiness to all this weekend who are celebrating either Easter or Passover. There is one word that has come to mind as I’ve thought about both holidays this year: Liberty.

For Passover is, at its core, the celebration of the liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land; while the Resurrection gives us the promise of liberation from sin and from the law of the Pharisees. As Paul tells us in Galatians:

For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled with one word, even in this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I know that those of us who cherish Liberty, and who support the Promised Land of Israel, feel like we have not had a lot to celebrate recently. We’ve witnessed our government usurp powers it was never intended to have, and recently it needlessly strained relations with our closest ally in the Holy Lands—Israel. But with all this, we must recognize that we are entering a new season of Liberty, and we must fight for it, and pray for it. Therefore, this weekend let’s together recite and remember the concluding words of the traditional Passover prayer: Next year in Jerusalem.

It's Only Just Begun

In case you missed the news this morning, Speaker Pelosi has issued marching orders to members of Congress leaving Washington for their two week recess. Among the many lowlights of Speaker Pelosi's directives is the following:

"With the passage of health insurance reform, this District Work Period is a critical time to go on offense.” Pelosi continued, "Convey the immediate benefits of health reform to your constituents (such as better prescription drug benefits for seniors, tax credits for small businesses and prohibiting insurance companies from canceling your policy if you get sick).”

The Hill reported: "Democrats are bracing for significant losses in the House and Senate this fall, but believe they can at least mitigate expected mid-term losses by aggressively touting the healthcare bill and moving to other issues, such as financial regulatory reform, that they believe put Republicans on the defensive.

Obama kicked into campaign mode Thursday, saying he welcomed a fight with Republicans over healthcare. If the GOP wants to repeal the bill, it should “go for it,” the president said."

In a memo to his members, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Friday stressed that Republicans would work not only to repeal the healthcare law, but to “replace it with solutions that will protect jobs and lower Americans’ health costs.”

Boehner said his party would “repeal ObamaCare’s job-destroying tax hikes and mandates and replace them with common-sense, market-based solutions that cover Americans with existing conditions.”

Fellow Republicans, I don't need to tell you that when the one side goes on offense, the other side can only respond by going on defense. So, my advice to our side: Let's go on offense, FIRST. Whether it's in conversations with friends or family members, opportunities to speak with your local, state or congressional representatives, or online in forums or your private email blasts, go on offense, be armed with facts and truth, and be civil in your efforts to promote he conservative cause.

Minority Leader Boehner has given us some pointers and some direction. Congressman Paul Ryan provided a great number of ideas and details in a New York Times column Friday. Byron York wrote a column this week detailing the lack of support nationally for the health care bill the democrats forced through Congress last Sunday. All of this points to the obvious: The democrats are coming home to sell us on something we didn't want in the first place, they're now in the position of having to tell us after the fact that we really did want it after all.

Armed with the truth, the facts and with history; Americans across the country, let's go to work for our cause.

A Response to Terry Lowry: We Republicans have a Choice for Unity, and a Choice against the taint of Pay-for-Play politics

For most of the 33 years since Ronald Reagan first proposed to build a New Republican Party with a coalition of traditional Republicans, economic conservatives and social conservatives, the great moral issues of our time have involved abortion and the institution of the traditional family. As serious as these issues are, they should not be used as a weapon at this hour in our history to destroy fellow Republicans.

We Republicans have struggled within our family over these issues because of the teachings of our respective faiths, and because of our commitment to the inalienable rights of life and liberty. Even when some in our party might disagree on where lines should be drawn in the political and legal arena, however, we generally have agreed that abortion is wrong, and that the traditional family should be protected. That consensus led virtually all Republicans to support the appointment or election of conservative judges and justices to state and federal courts, including Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Unfortunately, there continue to be those among us who would rather pick and fight a civil war against our friends and allies in this party over these issues, rather than try to find common ground to advance our shared principles. I believe this approach is the wrong, and that it is self-defeating in the end. In fact, Reagan noted that this tension would exist within the “new” party he was proposing when he said:

"I want the record to show that I do not view the new re vitalized Republican Party as one based on a principle of exclusion. After all, you do not get to be a majority party by searching for groups you won't associate or work with. If we truly believe in our principles, we should sit down and talk. Talk with anyone, anywhere, at any time if it means talking about the principles of the Republican Party. Conservatism is not a narrow ideology nor is it the exclusive property of conservative activists."

For the last 15 months, I talked to our friends in this party about our principles, and about revitalizing our party to elect Republicans and promote Reagan’s agenda--but, I also listened. I heard so much about what we agree coming from people who had labeled themselves, or who had been labeled by others, as inhabiting separate factions within this party, that it gave me hope that we could stop fighting each other and focus on fighting the Democrats. I built on what I heard to form a coalition of supporters from every faction in this party, to run for HCRP Chair, and to successfully make the run-off election. At the core of what we built was the recognition that to elect Republicans we must grow, but to grow, we must first unite.

Unfortunately, earlier today, I saw the first salvo in this run-off election from those who would rather exclude fellow Republicans whom they have labeled as being in a different camp within this party—it was ugly, and it was a lie. It came through a Facebook post by Terry Lowry, a precinct chair, supporter of Jared Woodfill, radio host, and proprietor of the LinkLetter. I first met Terry in early 2008, and through discussions with him I know we agree on much: we support the platform of the Republican Party of Texas; we are pro-life; and we want to protect the traditional family from the political and legal assault promoted by Democratic-aligned interests groups. He knows that I am not an ally of pro-abortion politics or the “homosexual” political and legal agenda. And yet, he smears me by smearing some Republicans who have supported me—who want to unite all of the factions of the party like I do—because some of our friends in this party draw lines on these issues differently than I do, or Terry does. This politics of lies, smears, innuendos, and exclusion is beneath not only the Christianity that Terry and I share, but it also is beneath the principles of the party Reagan tried to build. To Terry, I simply ask: Have you no shame? To Jared, I simply ask: Do you condone this divisive conduct?

Why is Terry doing this? I don’t know, but maybe it has to do with the fact that last Thursday I dared to criticize his use of the LinkLetter (and similar mailers promoted by a few other individuals), to act as a self-anointed gatekeeper to the local Republican nominations. I dared to criticize his simultaneous promotion of endorsements and the sale of advertising in the same races, which has created the appearance to many that prospective candidates in our party have to pay Terry (and others) in order to have a chance of winning a local Republican primary. I dared to state that the whiff of Pay-for-Play should not exist in our party.

Ultimately, it is for you the Republican voter to choose which path to follow—Terry’s path of perpetual war with our friends and allies in this party, or the path I am offering. If you want to unite and grow around our shared principles and win elections, you have a choice to make between the politics of lies, smears, innuendos and exclusion that have divided us for too long, and the politics of unity against a common foe. If you want to rid our party of the whiff of Pay-for-Play tactics, and of self-anointed gatekeepers, and take your party back and make it the inclusive, welcoming majority party built on timeless conservative principles that Reagan dreamed of, you have a choice to make.

First Radio Commercial Released

Endorsements or Spin? You be the judge.

You can tell that we are getting closer to the start of early voting—endorsements are flying, as is the political spin that surrounds every campaign. Ever since the C Club of Houston (now joined by United Republicans of Harris County) announced its endorsement of me, the fur has been flying at Richmond Avenue. Now, Gary Polland has weighed in—as is his right. Welcome to the debate, Gary.

As endorsements go, the incumbent and I are now even as to the former Harris County Party Chairs who built the modern Republican majority in this county: I have Betsy Lake, under whose leadership the county first went Republican; and Jared now has Gary, who built a strong operation upon the foundation of Betsy’s success. I am sure that Jared would concur that we are both proud and appreciative of these respective endorsements.

What is odd about some of the recent endorsements Jared has received, including the most recent one from Gary Polland, is that they are not really typical endorsements. Instead, they appear to be nothing more than vehicles to create or support talking points for his campaign. First, they contain short accolades of Jared’s ability to talk about public-policy issues, and of his service to the party, without much discussion of his overall management of the party, which has allowed the organization Betsy and Gary built to wither over the last 8 years. Then, these accolades are coupled with criticisms of the rest of us who are running. These criticisms are then immediately seized by Bill Kneer and Richard Dillon—two men who are supposed to be working for the party, not Jared’s campaign—who then use them as the basis to spin more criticisms on their Facebook pages.

Do Jared’s supporters really think that their approach helps the party in the long run? Although I find the issue that was raised about me by Gary to be fair game to debate, I have addressed my experience for this job—both politically and organizationally—for months, in public meetings, in emails, and on my website. I will let the voters decide whether the party’s problems can be fixed from inside the current HCRP “cocoon” with the same group that has run it into the ground, or whether it needs fresh thinking and action. Obviously, members of the C Club, United Republicans, and many leaders of our affiliated clubs and organizations agree with me that the party can’t be fixed using the current approach.

But regardless of the arguments made against me, let's all remember that this race is not about the 1990s, it’s about the future.

If you check the endorsements that I have posted, you will not see criticism of the incumbent (or anyone else)—only a list of people making a statement of positive support for me. That is how it should be.