Convention Debrief—Rules and Priorities

This is Part II of my debriefing of the Republican Party of Texas Convention, which ran Monday through Saturday of last week, June 13-18. (Part I here) I’ll deal briefly with floor debate and final outcomes for the party Rules and Legislative Priorities, and then it looks like it will take an additional post, so I can spend more time on the Platform, from my inside view as editor.

Rules

The Rules Committee is a special breed, dealing with arcane things that would take me quite a steep learning curve to fully understand. These are the rules the Republican Party of Texas and its sub-entities (local county and district bodies) will follow during the next biennium. I’m not sure of their process—how the ideas for change get from the grassroots to them. There were a few changes submitted as resolutions to the Platform Committee, and we passed them along to Rules a day or two into convention week. They must also have their own submission process, but I don’t know what it is. So I’m picking up the narrative at the point of floor debate. You can view their Permanent Rules Committee discussion here, and their floor debate from Friday here, and from Saturday here. 

The Rules Committee Report discussion was supposed to be completed during the General Session on Friday, and we did do some business then. But, as I mentioned, the printed copies of the reports had not been delivered. They had been posted on the RPT website, but in that convention hall of some 10,000 people, most of us just got an error message. So we could only read what was on the big screen; we couldn’t look through the document to make comparisons or get a larger context.

The main discussion that day was about removing references to the TEC (Texas Election Code) from the document. This doesn’t mean RPT won’t abide by election law; it simply declares the RPT to be its own sovereign entity. This means the Texas Legislature, including its Democrat members, cannot determine rules for the RPT. There was a floor amendment trying to put the TEC language back in, but it failed.

Mark Ramsey speaks against an amendment
during Friday's floor discussion on Rules.
I snapped the photo from my seat a few rows away.

This change proposed by the Rules Committee was explained to me by Mark Ramsey as the most important decision we would be making at Convention. Among other things, like how we elect our Party Chair, it makes it possible for the Party to decide to have a closed primary. That means people would choose their party affiliation when they register to vote, and that will be the party whose primary they can vote in. Currently Texas is an open primary state; you declare your party on the day you vote in the primary. It allows for shenanigans, such as purposely voting in the opponent’s primary to affect who you want your opposing candidates to be.

When Mark Ramsey spoke from the floor during the limited debate, he didn’t mention that detail. I asked him later if there was some strategic reason for that. No, he told me; he just didn’t think of it while speaking extemporaneously in front of all those people. But he did convince the body of delegates, along with other testimony, to accept the Committee version and reject the minority report that was trying to change things back. So that was sufficient. (Mark's testimony and the one before him here.)

It was shortly after that that we postponed the rest of deliberation until Saturday, when we hoped the printed copies would be available.

So, when we took up Rules in the Saturday General Session, Mark Ramsey called the question on Rules—meaning that, with the exception of the Minority Report, which we were required to consider, there would be no other debate on Rules, that the previous day’s debate would suffice. The move passed, and we proceeded with the Minority Report, which was about Rule 44—Censure Process and Penalties. It seems to me that Rules talk about this Rule 44 every convention, so I think it is frequently refined. I believe the purpose is to maintain integrity and to hold elected officials accountable to uphold the Party Principles (a list of 10 core beliefs at the beginning of the Platform).

The Minority Report was an attempt to add more teeth to the censure process. But it did it in a way that was probably not legal and would open up the Party to legal liability. It failed.

 

Legislative Priorities

Legislative Priorities is a relatively new innovation to the convention, begun officially in 2018. It has a similar purpose to the Platform—to let the Legislature know what we want them to accomplish. The Platform is broad and detailed; the Legislative Priorities are a way to say, “If you can’t get anything else accomplished, at least get these things done.” That year I think we had to narrow the list down to five. In 2020 we narrowed it down to 8. But there was a new process: the LP Committee narrowed the hundreds of submissions from around the state down to 15 or 16 (we had 15 this year). And then the body votes on their priorities.

Floor debate was on accepting the wording. Each priority has a title and a short statement, very similar to Platform planks. Here are the 15 priorities presented by the LP Committee (the brief summaries here are mine):

·        Protect Our Elections (strengthening election integrity, requiring citizenship verification, limiting mail-in ballots, shorten early voting).

·        Ban Democrat Chairs (in an attempt to get more of our legislation to pass out of committee for a floor vote).

·        Abolish Abortion in Texas (granting preborn children the right to life and equal protection of the laws).

·        Eliminate Property Tax (to end the practice of people losing their homes, because on their fixed income they can no longer afford the tax—as though they do not own their property).

·        Stop Sexualizing Texas Kids (getting rid of sexualizing material in schools, which have been exempted from following obscenity laws under the guise of education).

·        Protect the Electric Grid (protection from weather and manmade or natural disturbances—which we should be able to accomplish, because Texas has its own grid).

·        Ban Gender Modification of Children (related to the transgender movement, specifically for children).

·        Secure the Border and Protect Texans (several ways of securing the border and stopping illegal alien magnets, such as taxpayer-funded services and subsidies).

·        Parental Rights and Educational Freedom (parents want to regain rightful control over the education of their children).

·        Protect Medical Freedom (in response to so much government overreach during the pandemic).

·        Defend Our Gun Rights (constant vigilance required, such as against red flag laws and gun-free zones).

·        Ban Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying (much of this relates to school districts using tax money to hire lobbyists who work against the will of the people and in favor of unions and administrators).

·        Stop Executive Overreach (another response to the pandemic response, which suspended laws and impacted religious freedom and business freedom).

·        Convention of States (the call for COS passed several years ago, but needs to be extended so it doesn’t sunset while waiting for enough other states to join the movement—more on this below, in the Platform).

·        Save Women’s Sports (another response to transgenderism; we passed legislation on public schools last session, but not for collegiate athletics).

The order above is the ranking order provided by the LP Committee. The delegates (about 5,000 participated) marked 8 of these on their ballots. The scoring came out Wednesday. I don’t yet have rankings, but these are the 8 final Legislative Priorities: 

·        Protect our Elections

·        Abolish Abortion

·        Stop Sexualizing Texas Kids

·        Ban Democrat Chairs

·        Ban Gender Modification of Children

·        Secure the Border & Protect Texans

·        Parental Rights & Educational Freedom

·        Defend our Gun Rights

Here’s a little color commentary on the process and on the RPT Chair, Matt Rinaldi, who has the very difficult job of maintaining order during all the complicated Roberts-Rules-of-Order conversation among several thousand people at a time.

During Legislative Priorities, there was debate on a proposed amendment at one point that was taking time and was probably unnecessary, considering that Legislative Priorities are merely a statement of the issue, not law cut in stone. A friend of mine, Terri Leo Wilson, who won her runoff race to become the candidate for the Texas House in her new district, HD 23 (after moving away from here, where she was our SREC person up until two years ago) called a point of information. That’s a question to the Chair to clarify something rather than to make a motion or offer debate. 

Terri Leo Wilson calls for a point of information.
screenshot from here

What she said was,

We are currently working on Legislative Priorities. We are not crafting words for the Platform. We are not making laws. We are saying, “Protect our elections, Legislature; you figure it out.” “Ban Democrat chairs; you figure it out.” “Abolish abortion in Texas; you figure it out.” We are not wordsmithing. We are just telling the Legislature, “Get busy. This is what we want done.”

So, that wasn’t a point of information; that was a statement. But it was actually a helpful reminder. The Chair, Matt Rinaldi, did not interrupt her. He let her finish. Then he said, “That’s not a proper point of information, but we’re counting that as a speech against.” And he did this cute smile that he has, no annoyance, just enjoyment, that makes him well suited for the high-pressure position as public face of the Party.

RPT Chair Matt Rinaldi
screenshot from here

Rinaldi was elected by the SREC after Allen West stepped down to run for Governor. I wasn’t very familiar with him. On Monday I was with the Platform Committee Chair in our large committee room, and he came in wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, and looking so young I thought he was just one of the RPT staffers. The Chair was talking to him about logistical things we were lacking, and he agreed to see to them. The Chair told me who he was after he left. Really? The state party chair looks like a young staffer? Up on the big screen, in a suit, he looks appropriately serious. But even there he’s more casual than some of his predecessors, and he does seem to have a very pleasant personality.

The only time I saw things a bit out of control were during Platform discussion. People kept asking questions about how to fill out the scantron sheets—the way we vote up or down on each plank. It would have been less distracting to hand them out after debate concluded; also, the doors weren’t closed and a quorum called. But ta number of senatorial districts had handed them out, so others went ahead and passed them out. Many people haven’t filled out a scantron since school exams, so they wanted to know, do you put your name on it? Is there a code for your district? Does that go to the left or the right? Do you fill in zeros for the blanks you don’t use? Does True and False equate to “Yes, keep this plank” and “No, do not keep this plank”? These questions kept popping up in the middle of debate on various amendments, and it was getting annoying, especially when the same questions got asked more than once. Handing them out probably allowed more people to vote the scantron than would have waited all the way till the end. But, lesson learned for next time: explain how to use them as soon as you pass them out, whether that’s at the beginning, middle, or end.

I had originally intended to complete the whole debrief today. I’ve written and outlined a few portions already about the Platform. But there’s too much, on top of Rules and LPs, for one post. So this debrief will have a Part III just on the Platform, coming in the next post.