RPT Convention Debrief

I spent last week (May 20-26) at the Republican Party of Texas Convention in San Antonio. I intended to have this debrief done a week ago. But I didn’t finish. Then I spent two days doing a careful edit of the platform (along with other editorial team members). Then my computer cord finally gave out (it has been threatening for some months) and wouldn’t turn on. It spent a day in the shop. By then my other regular weekly assignments were urgent. So here we are.

Exhibit Hall at the RPT Convention, Tuesday, May 21, before it was open

I’m not the only one taking this long to debrief. Luke Macias, of Texas Scorecard, did his video podcast debrief just yesterday. He covers three main topics: the runoff that just happened, the state party chair race (which relates to the runoff races), and rule changes. These he covers with a lot of inside knowledge. He just touches on the platform. But I recommend spending a half hour listening to him. Here I’m mainly giving my perspective and experiences. (And, bonus—or “so sorry,” depending on your viewpoint, this makes up for not writing last week by being way way way too long this week. If you read through it all, thank you so much!)

Need to find someone after general session?
Try telling them to meet at the elephant.

This convention is, as we’re often reminded, the biggest political gathering in the country—and probably, therefore, in the world. It’s bigger than the Republican National Convention. Everything’s bigger in Texas.

Still, for a presidential year, it seemed pretty low-key. There were about 7,000 delegates, plus visitors, vendors, elected officials, etc., but we could have accommodated over 9,000 delegates. I only spent about 20 minutes in the exhibit hall, but it seemed smaller, less full of booths, and less full of people than some I remember in the past.

Senator Ted Cruz gave a good speech on Saturday, May 25.

This was my tenth RPT Convention as a delegate. But the previous three I was editing the platform, which kept me occupied day and night at least through Friday of the convention, and then of course varying lengths of time afterward. This time I just advised those I’d passed the assignment on to, and I did some help with document prep. Then, as I mentioned, I just spent a couple of workdays in a semifinal careful edit. But mainly I was just a regular delegate this time around.

I testified in a temporary subcommittee on Tuesday. I didn’t do well (did I mention, our power had been out because of the derecho that struck Houston derecho that struck Houston May 16, so I hadn’t been able to write and print out a speech, which is kind of necessary for me). Oh well. The platform is just one way to get a message out. The next step is contacting legislators about how we want legislation written. Just another day in the life of an individual grassroot.

As a (not very brief) debrief, I’ll talk about some of the business accomplished at the convention.

Party Chair and Other Races

The biggest candidate decision was the new RPT Chair. Chairman Matt Rinaldi, who has held the position for the past three years (after Allen West stepped down to run for governor), announced he wasn’t going to seek reelection. I had liked Rinaldi. I don’t know what political pressures led to his decision not to run. There are always political details I do not understand. I am a policy person more than a political person.

RPT Chair Matt Rinaldi conducts business on Saturday of convention;
CD 38 was seated too far back to see the stage, so we watched screens.

The RPT job covers a lot of territory, but mainly it is there to get good Republicans elected and then to get good Republican policies passed into law. There’s a lot of fundraising involved in the election of candidates. And there’s a lot of managing, somewhat neutrally, the differing factions within the party.

Matt Rinaldi was more focused on policy than previous RPT chairs that I have been aware of. (He did a pretty in-depth interview with Luke Macias here.) To me, that is a good thing. He was also very vocal about Speaker Dade Phelan’s work against the party’s priorities—which come up from the grassroots at the convention, with the platform and legislative priorities voted on by the delegates. Along with that, he was against Phelan’s prosecution/impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton at the tail end of the last legislative session.

It was a relatively short campaign season for RPT Chair. There were several candidates I was getting emails and texts from for a couple of weeks—and inundated with during convention week. I was previously familiar with only one, who was local, Dr. Dana Myers (she’s an MD, before taking on other careers). She had been the incumbent RPT Vice Chair and announced she was running for chair before Rinaldi announced his decision not to run. However, Rinaldi and many strong conservatives recommended Abraham George. The preference seems to be the balance of policy over fundraising—but without neglecting the necessary fundraising.

I had listened to a candidate forum, held here in Harris County a week or so before the convention. I crossed one candidate off my list (would have to consult notes to know who that was). At least three seemed OK to me. During the last couple of days before the vote, there were some vile attacks against Abraham George; I don’t know where they came from. Dana Myers made it clear it wasn’t from her. (She also received a fair number of attacks.) There were at least two candidates who announced the week of convention; my guess is it was from one of them. I don’t know when/if we’ll ever know.

The vote happens in the Senatorial District Caucus, early Friday morning. There had been some form of rule change about how these caucus votes happened. Our SD7 has people from two counties, and they needed to do their votes separately. The counties and SDs are weighted differently. Then, using math, these are combined into one weighted SD vote. These votes are turned in to the Nominating Committee, which then gives a report in a general session. That session was supposed to start around 10:00 AM Friday, but it couldn’t begin until all the SDs were finished caucusing. It got underway around 1:30 PM. And even then, the Legislative Priorities were discussed first, because the Nominations Committee still had to do all their math and prepare their report.

One side of the room during our Thursday first SD7 Caucus

There were people complaining that this was the least organized convention they’d ever seen. But, literally, no business beyond hearing speeches could be done when those caucuses were still meeting. Organizers could do nothing to change that. A rule change to hasten that type of caucus vote next time might be needed.

Eventually the Nominations Committee announced the winner, whom they put into nomination, as Abraham George. Then the floor was opened up to other nominations. A candidate has to have won in at least three SDs in order to be eligible to be nominated from the floor. There were three that first round of voting: Abraham George, Dana Myers, and Weston Martinez. These were the three I liked best from the candidate forum.

party chair vote tally underway, on Friday, May 24

A floor vote takes a long time. The delegates have to be seated and verified (to make sure no non-delegates get to vote). They have to be seated in their SD, but in separate counties, which is a little challenging. (Despite loud announcements and a long enough time to get there, there were delegates locked out during the first round of voting. They got in by the second round.) Then everyone gets a piece of colored paper on which to write their vote. The votes are gathered and counted, and the math is done to give them their weighted strength, and those are reported one SD at a time (there are 31 SDs). And then more math is done to verify the winner.

The floor vote got us down to Abraham George and Dana Myers. So we had another floor vote, using a different color of paper.

My phone was dying, so I used the counting and reporting time (about 45 minutes per round of voting, after the time to verify delegates in their seats and have them vote) to plug into a wall, and to entertain myself by editing the platform—the printed copy of which had just been handed out. We were supposed to be doing platform debate in this afternoon general session, but we had to do this vote first.

Abraham George was the winner of that second round. I think he’s from India, immigrated (legally) with his family when he was about 17. I voted for him, and I wish him well in this tough job.

Abraham George is the new RPT Chair

Then came the Vice Chair vote. The Nominations Committee showed D’Rinda Randall as far in the lead, but there were three candidates eligible to be nominated from the floor. (The fourth candidate was male, and party rules require the Vice Chair to be the opposite sex of the Chair. If Dana Myers had won for Chair, he would have been the only eligible candidate for Vice Chair.) Because of the time it was taking, one who was put into nomination was going to decline, to save the body a floor vote. But when the other one was put into nomination, she rescinded her decline. That meant there would be at least two floor votes.

But there wasn’t time. There was a gala scheduled for Friday evening that many delegates had paid good money for. I think the featured speaker was Rep. Matt Gaetz. (Maybe Senator Ted Cruz too; I’m not sure.) But without getting the SD business done that day, we wouldn’t have a vice chair or a platform. So they decided to call a late-night session at 9:00 PM Friday, after the gala. I was heading to Bulverde to have dinner with friends—because no business was supposed to be scheduled that night. As we adjourned around 6:45, I was already quite late. And there was no way I could come back. Since Platform is what I’m most interested in, I was pretty irate about that. But I just had to let it go, and my friends and I had a lovely evening.

It turned out the delegates held the votes for Vice Chair, and D’Rinda Randall won. 

D'Rinda Randall is the new RPT Vice Chair

And then they had platform discussion—adding three planks from the floor; I’ll get to that. But they chose to postpone the voting until Saturday afternoon. The voting is an up-or-down vote on each individual plank, with each delegate filling out a scantron form for their vote. The scantron included voting on Legislative Priorities as well. So I was pleased that I didn’t miss that.

The other SD Caucus business that happened in the Friday morning caucuses was to elect the SREC (State Republican Executive Committee). Each Senatorial District elects an SREC Committeeman and Committeewoman. There was no general assembly needed for these, since they represent the SD level. We had only some mild competition in ours, even though our committeeman had decided not to run for reelection. Again, any divide seems to be between conservative policy people and what you might call big-tent people (which translated into welcoming the Log Cabin Republicans; I had long been welcoming of them in our party on economic issues, until the last few years of LGBTQ pressure, which there just is no place for in a party trying to conserve our Constitution and our civilization. If they give up the pressuring, they could be welcome, but I don’t see that coming.) Anyway, I think in our SD we can all still be friends afterward.

first Congressional District 38 caucus, Thursday, May 23

On Saturday afternoon, we were seated in Congressional District Caucuses, to do business related to national business: National Committeeman, National Committeewoman, Delegates to the National Convention, and Electors to the Electoral College. (Yes, the electors are real people, and this is the process through which they get that privilege.) The CD Caucuses happened at 8:00 AM, again. A similar process was gone through—but without the separation into counties. So the Nominations report was relatively prompt.

National Committeeman was unanimous: Dr. Robin Armstrong (also an MD). I don’t know whether he even had a challenger. I didn’t participate in any 8:00 AM caucuses, because I don’t function in mornings generally, especially when I can’t go back to bed later and also may need to do some long driving. Whenever I can’t plan for a long nap, I just have to forego morning activities. And, might I comment that, when you’re dealing with a large segment of the delegates being 60+, and many quite elderly, working from 8:00 AM to near midnight and starting up again at 8:00 AM is kind of a ridiculous expectation.

National Committeewoman took a floor vote, but it went relatively smoothly, and only required one round. The winner is Debbie Georgatos.

the only photo I got of Debbie Georgatos,
the new National Committeewoman

And then there was the reading of names of the delegates and electors. Beyond that, we had to fill out our scantron sheets for the Platform and Legislative Priorities votes. And that concluded Saturday’s business.

Rules

There was one important rule change worth noting. The Republican Party of Texas is calling for a closed primary. That was already in our platform, but it wasn’t touched by the legislature. Huffines Liberty Foundation, in particular, has articulated how we can make the change at the party level, even without the help of the legislature.

Mark Ramsey presents the Rules Committee report, Friday, May 24

There are only 16 states, including Texas, that have an open primary. I grew up and voted until age 26 in a state with a closed primary. Part of the registration process is to declare your party—instead of wavering up until election day and then declaring your party. You can’t vote in a primary unless you declare a party at some point; it’s a matter of well ahead of time or at the last moment. During the Dade Phelan race, there’s data to show that a significant number of Democrats crossed over to vote for Phelan, who allows them to accomplish their Democrat goals, or at least thwart the Republicans. The number was several times the difference of 366 votes in his race against challenger David Covey. Fifteen other Phelan supporters in the Texas House were defeated. It took big money and Democrats for Phelan to squeak out a return—and we hope this loss of support will result in a change of Speaker.

There are questions about how this change to a closed primary will be accomplished. Will we need everyone to register again? Will we query those who have a mixed record to ascertain their party as part of registration? Do we have an easy way for people to be recruited into our party, who want to promote conservative, constitutional ideas, to switch from Democrat? I hope these things are worked out. We have two years to make it happen before the 2026 primary. There has been precedence set in other states (Idaho, recently). And the legislature could ease the process with enabling legislation.

floor debate on Closed Primaries, during Rules report, Friday, May 24

But what should be obvious is that we don’t need or want people who do not support conservative, constitutional ideas to be choosing our primary candidates.

There’s a common complaint that one party is just as bad as another. That isn’t actually true, particularly at state and local levels. But as far as it is true, it is because of “can’t we all just get along” compromises, which always mean—in Spherical Model terms—going further south into tyranny instead of standing firm up in the freedom zone. If independents want to have a say in who they’re voting for, they could join a party that most closely aligns with their beliefs—or else let those parties decide on the candidates and just choose from among them.

We want to attract voters in the general election. But we don’t want to attract primary voters who are not aligned with our values and allow them to choose our candidates; that only makes the choices more likely to be squishes. What we want is to get the best conservative candidates we can, and then show how electing such people will benefit all voters.

Platform

The platform—pending results from the plank-by-plank voting of the delegates, which I haven’t seen yet—is 252 planks long. That’s down from 274 in 2022, which was down from 337 planks in 2020 (but not fewer words).  Wordcount appears to me to be up again this year, even though we have fewer planks. That usually means the ideas of multiple plans were consolidated into other planks. Occasionally an idea is changed. And frequently new ideas are added—which we want to have happen, based on what we see happening in our world. But seldom are ideas omitted.

There was another numbering difference. For the sake of scantron voting, we have needed to give plank numbers to the Preamble and Principles (made up of an introductory paragraph followed by 10 principles, for a total of 12). I always thought it was confusing to have a plank number in front of a principle number. This year they started plank numbering with the first plank in Constitutional Issues, and gave the Preamble and Principles separate numbers after the platform planks only for the purpose of scantron voting. But that means that 12 of the fewer planks were simply because we didn’t give plank numbers to the Preamble and Principles. So it was only a decrease of 10 planks, not 22 planks.

This year there was a concerted effort to identify planks where legislation had accomplished them. Sometimes even then the idea needs to remain, but sometimes those are ripe for deletion. And still it doesn’t happen.

The Permanent Committee was set up classroom style. I was actually quite close,
front row behind the committee, between the two sides. This was so
they could all see the screen, because internet failures didn't allow them
to see the work live on their own computers. The photo makes it look very far,
but the setup did feel very distant.

Article 5 Plank

Let’s start with the three that were added during floor debate Friday evening. As I said, I wasn’t there for this discussion. And there may have been other amendments from the floor that I haven’t seen yet. (When I edited, it was prior to the convention secretary providing his floor debate file; the past two times, for reasons that escape me, he has waited a week to pass to the editorial committee what I think should have been passed within minutes of close of convention. But, oh well.) Anyway, an ongoing controversy is over the Article 5 Convention of States plank. This has been at the end of the Constitutional Issues segment. Legislation on the Article 5 Convention has passed in Texas already, but the plank remains, because nothing happens until enough other states pass their Article 5 legislation calling for a constitutional convention. There are people against the idea of calling for a constitutional convention. Those fearful say, once you get into a convention, anything can happen. Not legally, of course; it’s limited by what the states call the convention for. But when has the Constitution limited the federal legislators? Anyway, the opponents want to have it removed from our platform (and they want disenabling legislation too).

three planks that were added to the platform during floor debate

I was present for the Permanent Committee of the Whole—that is the discussion after caucuses have elected their permanent committee members, for Platform, Rules, Legislative Priorities, and any other committees. This happens on Thursday; the work done up until that point has been done by appointed temporary committee members. Sometimes members change, although I’m not aware of any changes from Temporary to Permanent Committees this year.

So the Permanent Committee hears additional testimony and then considers amendments to the Temporary Committee Report (the Temporary Committee’s version of the platform). They have very limited time to do this, and it seemed even more limited than usual this year.

And yet, one of the things that happened was the removal of that Article 5 Convention of States plank on Thursday evening. It was a very close vote. It required a roll call vote, and I believe the difference was one vote. These are the same people who voted just the night before to have it in.

I hadn’t been aware, but the Constitutional Issues subcommittee had removed the plank. It was added back in during Temporary Committee of the Whole. Then there must have been some overnight pressure—enough to change a person’s vote—to remove it again in Permanent Committee.

And then it was brought before the body of delegates Friday night, and, as they have done in past conventions, they voted to restore it. Wording changes from the 2022 plank add the purposes for the convention. During scantron voting on Saturday, this and the other two were given temporary numbers at the end of the platform, for the sake of scantron voting with delegates looking at their printed copies, so those printed plank numbers could be referenced without change. Numbers are never permanent until all edits are completed. But, once again, we have the Article 5 Convention of States plank, which will probably end up as plank 24. It reads:

Article 5 Convention of States: The Texas Legislature shall extend the call for a Convention of States to impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office of federal officials and members of Congress.

Abortion Transportation Plank

The next one restored during floor debate was this:

Prohibit Abortion Transportation across State Lines: We support legislation to prohibit the use of any government funds, as well as the transportation of pregnant women across Texas state lines for the purpose of procuring an elective abortion and for the provision of a private right of action against all persons and organizations who aid and abet in the harming of the woman and the killing of her preborn child.

Like I said, I missed that floor debate. But I think this had been an accidental deletion that happened between Temporary and Permanent Committees of the Whole. There was a loss of work that happened for reasons that are unclear to me. It has to do with the speed of work under intense time pressure, and multiple people handling things, maybe slightly differently. I had a way of doing things to prevent this (based on some loss of work that happened in 2020 between subcommittee Monday meetings and the next day; I think we were hacked, in that case; I believe I was able to restore everything because I had saved work in multiple ways, but it made security and work history my priority thereafter). My guess is there may have been use of the “track changes” feature at an unsafe time, and/or possibly a reliance on “version history,” which has never been very satisfying to me. I really don’t know. Anyway, I can’t promise that this wouldn’t have happened had I been editing this year. I have great sympathy for the lead editor, and I’m sure he’s already put in place protocols to prevent it from happening again.

I think that’s a good plank to have in there. We had offered a new plank idea from SD7 about self-managed abortions—typically pills coming by mail, endangering the woman and killing the baby. There continue to be abortion-related issues, even in a state where abortion is illegal (except under limited circumstances related to endangering the life of the mother). And the fight for life goes on.

Robin Hood School Funding Plank

The third plank added from the floor was related to public school funding:

Robin Hood Accounting: We direct the Texas Legislature to have the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts and Texas Education Agency to provide a full accounting for the funds collected by recapture “Robin Hood” are spent to comply with the Texas Supreme Court-ordered mandate for Wealth Equalization.

This is comparable to a 2020 plank, which read:

School Finance: We support a simple, fair, and efficient method for financing our public school system. We oppose the “Robin Hood” system of public school finance and believe the Texas Legislature, not the courts, should determine the amount of money spent on public education and the distribution thereof. We oppose the Edgewood I and II decisions that legislate school finance from the bench.

This had been consolidated into a bullet point in a College Tuition and Student Loan Reform plank in 2022, which read:

We oppose Robin Hood schemes that raise tuition for some students to give to others.

That seemed to apply to college tuition practices, rather than public school funding, which is probably why the plank was brought back. The new plank is awkward. I suggested edits. But editorial power is pretty limited after the floor votes on something. So you’ve got this problem: If you take out modifiers, you’ve got “to provide a full accounting for the funds are spent.” Adding “how,” as in “how the funds” would probably solve it. But, awkwardness and all, thus it will probably read for the next two years. The idea can still get passed along to the legislature.

Other Planks of Interest

There are some ideas I appreciate seeing in there. In The Right to Keep and Bear Arms plank, a bullet point was added related to responsibility for gun-free zones: “Require that businesses or commercial property owners that prohibit licensed permit holders from carrying a firearm into their establishment assume liability for their safety since they are denying that person’s right to protect themself.” (It should be “themselves.” I’m seeing that now, not even sure I caught that in my careful edit. There’s always more.) Anyway, I’ve been saying this for a while. And I think it should apply to schools and churches as well. If you take away a person’s right to self-defense, you’d better assume liability for their safety.

There was a pretty thorough rewrite of the Foreign Affairs subsection of the National Defense and Foreign Affairs section. The ideas are mainly all there, but maybe more clearly stated, and with fewer planks. I would have liked to have witnessed the writing that went on in that subcommittee.

The subcommittee I sat through on Tuesday of convention week was Education. Overall, I’m pleased with changes there. Over the past several years, there has been a greater emphasis on parental rights and protecting children from sexualization and woke indoctrination. Those continue to be important in this platform, with more refinement as we work through the real-life battles in our school districts.

School choice continues to be a battle front. However, by this point the anti-choice (“we already have choice,” “you can’t have choice without strings attached”) crowd seems to have conceded the argument, and instead of no choice, have suggested just allowing tax credits (a person who takes their child out of public schools would get the amount of their taxes used for public schools reimbursed to them). That is at least closer to the conversations we need to be having. But I’ll talk more about that another day. Their suggestions didn’t make it into the platform. But my suggestions for greater choice (of course without government control) didn’t either.

In Health and Human Services, there was a challenge to the Homosexuality plank’s first line, which was added in Permanent Committee in 2022. The line is “Homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.” The rest is pretty noncontroversial for conservatives: no special status or entitlements based on LGBTQ+ identification. But that first line strikes many as too confrontational. In the end, the delegates kept it. And it doesn’t matter much. The opposition will call us hateful with or without that line, because they want the special legal status. So avoiding controversy is fruitless.

There was a wording change in the Counseling Methods plank, in Health and Human Services. It says:

Counseling Methods: Therapists, psychologists, and counselors practicing in the State of Texas shall not be forbidden or penalized by any licensing board for practicing authentic reparative therapy or other counseling methods when counseling clients of any age with identity disorder or unwanted same-sex attraction.

It used to say:

Counseling Methods: Therapists, psychologists, and counselors licensed with the State of Texas shall not be forbidden or penalized by any licensing board for practicing Reintegrative Therapy or other counseling methods when counseling clients of any age with gender dysphoria or unwanted same-sex attraction.

I highlighted the differences. I have no argument about changing “licensed with” to “practicing in.” That may be an improvement. And “identity disorder” is probably broader than “gender dysphoria,” since we’ve now seen the invention of animal identities, sometimes called “furries.” But I don’t believe “authentic reparative therapy” is an improvement. Reintegrative Therapy is a particular type of standard talk therapy, used in cases of trauma-caused dissociative disorder. The aim is to help the patient heal from the trauma, and then stop dissociating from their real self. In cases of gender dysphoria and same-sex attraction, the result can be overcoming the dysphoria and accepting the gender part of themselves they had dissociated themselves from. It has been more widely accepted, because the stated goal isn’t to “change” the person; it is to heal them. And the result of healing can be what the patient wants to have happen, which can include changing to normal biological desires and behaviors, including lessening or eliminating same-sex attraction.

Reparative therapy is a category name, mainly for therapies intended to change a person’s orientation. Some of these may be effective; some are not. All tend to be controversial, just because the LGBT community, such as it is, claims that orientation is inborn and immutable, against evidence to the contrary. There’s the word “authentic,” which may need some definition. Anyway, I think it was an attempt to cover more therapies, but it actually doesn’t include Reintegrative Therapy, which has been the most successful, because it seems to address an underlying cause, rather than intentionally aiming to change orientation. In the end, though, I don’t think the wording change will affect any legislation significantly.

There was a lot of energy during Senator Cruz's speech, Saturday, May 25

 

Final Words

Those who say the two parties are the same have not read the platforms—or at least not the Texas platform. The conservative grassroots in Texas is working very hard to restore freedom, prosperity, and civilization. And that’s a good thing.

Convention Debrief—Platform and Resolutions

This is Part III of my debriefing of the Republican Party of Texas Convention, which ran Monday, June 13, through Saturday, June 18. (Part I was on the editing adventure; Part II was on Rules and Legislative Priorities.)

Finally I’m getting to Platform, plus Resolutions, which probably require some explaining. 

Platform Committee taking a vote, screenshot from here.
The middle section, with Chairman Matt Patrick in the center, is upper left;
right side is upper right; left side is below. I am handling the file, seated next to the Chair.

Just a word, first. If you’ve been looking online for the final version, it is not there yet. I have not yet received the end-of-convention file from RPT, which handled it during floor debate. In the meantime, we’ve worked on taking care of editing issues, noticing repeated titles in different sections, and creating an index. Maybe we’ll get the file tomorrow. My hope is to get it completed and turned in by Friday so I can enjoy a nice holiday weekend. I’m not sure why I didn’t get the file right away. The person handling the file got sick, so we pushed our deadline back a week. But I really just need it sent as an attachment, so it shouldn’t require much work on their part.

They may want to delay until they get the scantron done. That’s the counting of the up-or-down votes on each plank. The machine was delivered to them last Friday; it was the wrong machine. The replacement should come on Tuesday (tomorrow), so they should be able to set it up and do the counting on Wednesday. Again, I don’t need that information before I do my editing. If a plank, or planks, gets under 50% approval, then deleting that plank is a very simple matter. But it has never happened. In fact, I don’t think there’s ever been a plank that got under 2/3 approval. But getting a higher approval (90% or higher) is used to convince the legislators to support an issue.

 

Resolutions

The platform gets created out of resolutions that get set to state from district and county conventions, which got them from precinct conventions. A resolution has a format, typically with explanations of reasoning with each paragraph worded, “Whereas….” Then comes the statement part, often worded as “Therefore, be it resolved that….” When it comes to writing the platform, we take the wording in the “be it resolved statement” and reword it as a platform plank—something like, “We urge the Legislature to…” or “We support…” or “We proclaim that….” The Whereas statements might get referred to on rare occasions for clarity. But our process would be simpler if submissions came in closer to platform wording, which some of them do. My senatorial district sends them all in as platform wording.

But there is another type of resolution that is not part of the platform. These resolutions are statements proclaimed by the body. I didn’t understand about these different resolutions until I became a precinct chair, and we started dealing with resolutions as part of our quarterly meetings. In those cases, the Harris County Republican Party Executive Committee, made up of precinct chairs and officers, would vote on acceptance and wording of such proposed resolutions. Those that were accepted by the body would be posted on the website, and sent to the appropriate people, such as officeholders and media.

Some years at the state convention there are no such resolutions for the Platform & Resolutions Committee to deal with. Last time there was one, and it did not pass. This year there are two; both passed. And they have gotten some media attention, which might have been a goal of some people. But the media—even thorough media like The Epoch Times—has misunderstood. The resolutions are not part of our platform, but they are part of the Platform & Resolutions Committee Report. They show up below the platform in the report. And they become, if approved, statements made by the body of delegates.

Both resolutions came up late in the process, on the day of Permanent Committee, if I’m remembering right. They are considered separately from the sections of the platform, and are required to be handled in floor debate.

The first one proclaims that election fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. It’s bold to say so, but it’s a fact, provable if we would ever get a court to look at the evidence (the movie 2000 Mules was shown in various discussion sessions during convention week), and the majority of the delegates hold this view.

As with all platform planks and resolutions, this does not have the force of law. It is a statement; that is all.  But a very loud majority felt like it was worth saying.

The second one was a response to the Senate vote that week on gun control, signed onto by Texas’s Senator John Cornyn and a number of others. They were called out and condemned for going against the Constitution and the will of the people of Texas.

 

Platform

I talked about our process in the first post. Today is finally about platform content—which I did not affect, other than as a delegate. Editors are there to facilitate the work of the Committee, not to influence it. I had my chance to do that at the senatorial district level.

The sections still relate broadly to Senate committees in the Texas Legislature, but order was changed somewhat this year. Rather than the sections being alphabetical, they’re laid out in ways that seem to flow logically. Constitutional Issues is the first section after Preamble & Principles, since it states overriding purposes. Business then flows into Finance, which deals with funding, so Education follows and then Health & Human Services. Then we get into governing, local on up to national, with Criminal & Civil Justice, State Affairs, Government & Election Integrity, and finally National Defense and Foreign Affairs.

The names of the last two were changed. Election Integrity was always in Government, but parts of it were also in State Affairs; now they’re together. Government used to contain Foreign Affairs, but that seemed like a more logical fit with National Defense.

All of this is to say, if you’re trying to track the changes from the previous platform, good luck with that. After subcommittees do their work, the Committee of the Whole is creating a whole new document, to be used for the next two years.

There are seldom changes to the Preamble and Principles. Two years ago we added a single word: “equally.” But this year there is a sentence added within the Preamble: “We recognize that human nature is immutable.” I believe this is referring to attempts to change gender or some other characteristic we’re born with. There was a suggested amendment about repudiating socialism and asserting national sovereignty, but it failed. Those ideas, however, show up elsewhere in the document.

Parents’ Rights

Parental rights, as you saw from Legislative Priorities, was a big issue this year. It comes up in Constitutional Issues, subsection Citizen Rights, and again in Education, subsection Parents’ Rights, with several planks. The one in Constitutional Issues was amended on the floor to add language about transparency and a Parental Rights Amendment to the state constitution. That issue was covered and detailed in one of the Education planks. But I guess it doesn’t hurt to say it in more than one place. I’d just like the floor to know, that issue was not neglected by the Committee.

 

Convention of States

One of the contended issues was Article V Convention of States. Texas passed the call for an Article V convention several years ago. But that hasn’t stopped opposition from trying to get rid of it every year. They did that last year during Temporary Committee, and it had to be brought back during Permanent Committee. This year it was there at the end of subcommittee, but got struck during Temporary Committee of the Whole. I missed that debate, doing other duties across the hall. But it was first order of business for Permanent Committee on Thursday, and it got reinstated with slightly different wording, asking the Legislature to extend the call.

Important public testimony came from the Chair of Legislative Priorities, who pointed out that COS was one of the 15 priorities of that committee, and it would be more than awkward to have a legislative priority that was struck from the platform.

One committee member, Tom Glass, had voted to strike in Temporary Committee, but changed his mind the next day. He had been thinking, since we’ve passed the legislation, it didn’t still need to be in our platform. But because there is a time-sensitive sunset clause, we need it in the platform to make sure it doesn’t disappear. He did, however, amend to keep only the last sentence, which related to that clause.

Bill Ely, the committee member from my SD, and another board member of our local Tea Party with me, is a COS champion. He gave an excellent speech in the Permanent Committee, bringing in data from the resolutions across the state, which he had studied after setting up our spreadsheet for us. I wanted to link to that here (it cues up here), but the sound cuts out almost as he starts, I was disappointed to find. Anyway, he rebutted some of the previous night’s testimony, which claimed a majority of senatorial districts were opposed to a Convention of States. Bill showed that wasn’t accurate. Even in those districts that put forth resolutions against an Article V COS, most of those districts also put forth resolutions in favor. And there were many districts who sent resolutions in favor that did not also have resolutions opposing. So if you look at the state overall, and the resolutions overall, the picture is quite different from what convinced the committee to strike the plank the night before.

The plank is back in, in shortened form, preserving what is necessary.

 

School Choice

There’s a moment here to talk about how important testimony can be. As we saw at our SD level, and as we prepared documents for the state platform, people are pretty upset with our schools. Parents want choice, transparency, and removal of anything that even hints at indoctrination. In the Education subcommittee, the room was cavernous. It was supposed to be divided but hadn’t been, so another committee got moved. What was left was bigger than the room we used for Committee of the Whole. People were lined up out the door for testimony. They took four hours of testimony, which placed them getting their work done and turned in to me around midnight, several hours later than scheduled. But it was important that the people got heard.

There is an ongoing split in the school choice world. A small but vocal minority of homeschoolers (homeschoolers as a whole are a small minority; this is a much smaller sub-minority) fear school choice, because they fear government might step in and regulate them. While I understand their arguments, I do not agree with them. We have to be vigilant against government intrusion regardless of what choices are offered to people who feel stuck in public schools. Fear of some nebulous possibility is no reason to deprive all those families trapped in the public school monopoly. If we introduce choice, we get the possibility of improvement.

This small minority is vocally active. They took part in the subcommittee debate, but they were outnumbered there with so much other testimony, much of it about breaking that monopoly somehow. But in testimony for permanent committee, where there is limited time for each section, they managed to fill all the slots, probably six or so individuals.

As they had hoped, they gave the impression that there was a huge outcry against the phrase “and the funding should follow the student,” claiming that isn’t possible without strings attached. Even if that were so—it is not—it wouldn’t attach strings to them if they’re not taking the money, so they’re really just interfering with other people’s decisions. Anyway, a committee member did bring up such an amendment. Subcommittee Chair Will Lutz spoke strongly against taking those words out. I looked forward to relistening to his speech in the livestream. It is here. He reminded people of the testimony they’d received from across the state. And he reminded them that every year school choice planks get watered down in committee, and then when the body of delegates see it, they put the strong school choice language back in—with loud acclamation. We should follow what the people in the state are telling us.

screenshot from here

I took a look at the starting document for education, which contains all the education resolutions from the 31 senatorial districts in the state. In addition to resolutions with wording in favor of school choice, there were 31 resolutions specifically stating that the money needs to follow the child. There were I think three resolutions in opposition to funding following the child. Chairman Lutz was right.

There were a couple of other speeches for and against the amendment. There was a committee member who homeschools, who spoke out well in favor of the money following the child.

And there was another committee member who pointed out that, when he got a GI bill, he could use it for education at a religious seminary, and the government had no say in that. They couldn’t tell him where he could study or what he could study; they could only insist that the money was spent on education. I appreciate that comparison. It’s how I’ve been seeing it. That is the freedom we want to give parents. Since the very next plank reiterates that government will not be allowed to regulate curriculum for homeschoolers or private schoolers, that ought to do. Again, we’re not writing law; we’re telling the legislature what we want and saying, “You figure it out.”

The amendment failed. But it was a close call—because of those final testimonies. It would have been such a sad day for all those who testified in subcommittee, if those final voices had gotten the last word.

 

Homosexuality and Gender Issues

There was an amendment that has gotten undue attention. A sentence was added at the beginning of the Homosexuality plank: “Homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.” The rest was about not granting special legal entitlements or special status based on homosexual behavior or other LGBTQ identification. I was satisfied with the plank the way it was. The new language states basic fact, but it did cause an uproar on the committee, where we had one committee member who is a gay man—unknown to most of us, because he didn’t press for those issues and was overall pretty conservative and helpful. (I had suspected, because I'd heard him give reports from Log Cabin Republicans before.) So he felt personally hurt. I don’t believe that was the intention. You can hear the discussion starting here. If the purpose had been intended to provoke while being factual, it could have been, “Homosexuality is a perversion of normal human sexual reproduction,” perhaps. It wasn’t that inflammatory. But it did draw attention that the original might not have. And you can decide whether that is a good thing or not.

screenshot from here

 

Election Integrity

Election Integrity was a huge issue. There’s debate about whether paper ballots ought to be the solution or not. I believe they are not; there’s a “long and glorious tradition[i]” of voter fraud using paper, well established before machines were brought into the picture. That aside, there was a lot of agreement that we need better and stronger election integrity laws. We got what people are calling an A-Z plank, with bullet points covering most of the alphabet.  That was amended with one addition during floor debate that is probably also useful. Now we just need the legislature to go at it.

 

And that, actually, is what we need to do for the whole platform. Set it before the legislators, get their attention, remind them of the platform—which their constituents support. Train their staff to recognize the platform and refer to it continually. So, the platform, in tandem with Legislative Priorities, is kind of a blueprint for the Legislature. To quote my friend Terri again, “This is what we want done. Get busy. You figure it out.”

---

[i] Princess Bride reference.

The Neverending Convention, Part III

About the neverending Texas State Republican Convention, (see part I and part II) I don’t know whether the report of the Platform Committee will ever happen. It would normally happen on Friday and Saturday of a convention weekend—usually the last major piece of business. But this year’s convention was anything but normal.

The Eventual Schedule

Thursday was a full day of delay because of technical difficulties related to doing a planned in-person convention suddenly online. All contingency plans that had been underway for months turned out to be inadequate, especially when you add denial-of-service attacks into the mix. Thursday evening an emergency meeting of the State Republican Executive Committee—the SREC: two representatives from each of the 31 senatorial districts—made the decision to postpone all business until Saturday morning and try to do all that would have happened Thursday through Saturday instead on Saturday and Sunday.

That might have worked, if everything had gone smoothly. But online issues continued. Even people who had been able to participate in earlier meetings were shut out of later meetings. Congressional District (CD) and then Senatorial District (SD) caucus meetings went late into the night.

The Permanent Platform Committee would normally have met on Thursday. Instead, most committee members drove home that day. And Friday we were on hold. Then we had to be ready to go all day Saturday, adjusting each time the schedule got pushed back. We eventually met at 9:00 AM, under a tight timeline; we were supposed to present the final report at noon on Sunday.

The online meeting of the Platform Committee was livestreamed.
Screenshot from here

Online meetings are difficult to begin with. There was the added difficulty that SD caucuses met late Saturday night—at which time they elected permanent committee members. During mine, my computer froze and I was unable to vote, although we made all temporary committee members permanent, so I didn’t feel disenfranchised. That was a personal technical issue not caused by the convention’s typical issues, most of which did not affect me.

Anyway, not all of the SD reports got to the committee chair in time. So invitations for the Sunday morning Zoom meeting went out to the temporary committee members—without the knowledge that some of them had been replaced for the permanent committee. Three people showed up who shouldn’t have been there, and three people didn’t immediately get the invitation when they should have. When that was straightened out, we hadn’t gone much beyond roll call. There was debate about a plank, with amendments proposed by a temporary committee member who did not belong there—and she knew she did not belong but acted as if she had authorization.

There was a need for a break for technical reasons—because the livestream wasn’t yet working. During the break, that huge membership issue was corrected, new members were welcomed, and business backed up to the debate of that plank. The original plank was proposed again; the friendly amendment was proposed again and accepted. And the amendment, by the unauthorized committee member who was attempting to infuse LGBT sensibilities to the plank—insisting that the Republican Party was leaving her out—was not proposed. I suspect it was her push for LGBT issues throughout the process that got her replaced by her SD.

There were only a handful of planks and amendments that got handled in permanent committee, and then testimony was taken. The committee had been told there would be no time for testimony, but then complaints about that being against the rules pressed for inviting testimony. I’m glad. I think testimony is an essential element of the process, although it’s not nearly as easy to accomplish online as in person. Time was supposed to be limited to 20 minutes. With getting started, plus additions to the time added, testimony took up about 45 minutes.

Much of the meeting looked like this, with the document shared on the screen.
Screenshot from here

At that point we were already supposed to be getting ready for the report in the general session. And at that point, my challenge is to make the document ready for floor debate (strikes and edits removed, make the document clean—and we still hadn’t had the opportunity for a full careful edit).

Anyway, the meeting handled maybe one more proposed amendment before the meeting was called to close. There were issues people felt strongly about and wanted to handle (an issue I’ll talk about below) that may end up in a minority report—an alternate platform version—which is a fairly rare thing usually handled during floor debate.

General session was postponed from noon until around 4:00 PM. Eventually all committees except Rules and Platform were able to give their reports. And then an hour or more was spent on a proposal to postpone all except the essential business of another SD caucus to some future day, to be determined by some ad hoc committee chosen by the body. (I never saw the choosing happen. While I was watching, the RPT people were handling an onslaught of suggested names—nearly as many as there were delegates—which was yet another denial-of-service attack. How and when that got resolved, I did not see.)

Technical problems were disenfranchising too many in my SD, so we did not gavel in that night; we met around 10:00 AM Monday, getting our voting for State Party Chair and Vice Chair done hours after the vote was in (from the SDs that met Sunday night, and all the way up until 5:00 AM, I heard) and the winners declared. So our vote was irrelevant. But we did get to choose our SREC members, which was important business.

That left Platform and Rules on hold. Yesterday we got word that the ad hoc committee has recommended that these two reports will be approved “pending 60% line-by-line voting by the delegates.” This will be done by a “Survey Monkey-style” survey to delegates and alternates, allowing three days for completion. This will include the proposed language of the Minority Report.

There will be no floor debate. No ability to amend. No ability to add any planks or language. I don’t know if this can be done without a legal challenge, but it might be the best reasonable compromise, since there’s no guarantee that a newly scheduled online meeting won’t meet with the same denial-of-service attacks and resulting credentialing issues that caused the original delay. Any way you look at it, people have been disenfranchised

.

Now, on to the content discussion.

Pandemic Response

The pandemic is on everyone’s minds. There are several new planks related to lockdowns and pandemic response. It was my impression, reading through the resolutions that came in, that just about every subcommittee got proposed ideas related to pandemic response. But two new planks came out of Constitutional Issues and three came out of Health and Human Services. I think you can tell Texas Republicans really don’t like our inalienable rights to be alienated. Platform planks of course do not have the power of law; they are intended to direct our elected officials in what we want the law to say.

Constitutional Issues

Lockdowns Never Again: The Republican Party of Texas calls upon our elected officials to never again implement mass lockdowns on the people, our businesses, and churches in the name of communicable disease response; nor should Texas officials ever again presume they know better how to treat or prioritize the medical treatment of Texans and to make command and control edicts that dictate to healthcare providers how to do their job. We oppose funding or implementation of any form of contact tracing.

Limit Executive Power: In the event the State Executive Branch activates the emergency powers for a disaster, the Legislature will automatically be convened two weeks later for a session to take up whatever matters deemed necessary for the Legislature.

Health and Human Services

Contact Tracing: We strongly oppose contact tracing, tracking, or surveillance, and we also strongly oppose any action similar to the federal TRACE Act. Contract tracing, tracking, or surveillance or not core functions of public health. No government entity, nor private entity, nor combination thereof, nor the Texas National Guard, shall ever be employed to violate the natural rights of Texans.

Pandemic Release: The Republican Party Texas opposes the release of convicted felons from prison due to a risk of infection within the prison system during a pandemic.

Pandemic Business Fines: The RPT supports prohibiting fines or imprisonment of business owners for operating their business during pandemics and call for the legislature to pass these protections into law.

Convention of the States

The Minority Report, which I haven’t seen, I believe will relate to the Convention of States plank. This has been a plank for some time. But the Texas Legislature accomplished its call for an Article 5 Convention of States two sessions ago (if I’m right, it was in 2017). Our platform is long, and one thing that can be done is remove planks that are no longer needed, because the legislature wrote it into law. That’s on a case-by-case basis, because sometimes the law only accomplishes in part, and sometimes the party wants to keep proclaiming the idea, even though it is law in Texas. For example, I think we’ll always say that we want Texas free from any state income tax, even though that is the law—just in case some future legislative body isn’t aware of our absolute declaration against it. But sometimes we can delete a plank. For example, in 2018 we had a plank called Abby’s Law, referring to a woman who testified at convention about the need for swift processing of sexual assault evidence (rape kits). The law was passed in 2019, so this year’s platform doesn’t include it.

About the Article V plank: in 2018, even though the legislation had been passed, it was recent, and the platform committee didn’t want to delete the idea that the Republican Party supported it. So the wording was changed from calling for it to reaffirming our support for it:

Article V Convention of States: We reaffirm our support for our Texas State Legislators’ call for a limited Article V Convention of States for the specific purpose of reducing the power of the federal government, including fiscal responsibility, balanced budget, and term limits. Any proposed amendments must be ratified by three-fourths of the states.

This time around an odd thing happened. It was expected that there would be a decision about whether to still keep this reaffirming language or not, since it wasn’t necessary to say this many years after it was accomplished. Either in or out, Texas is one of the states calling for a convention of the states.

But in subcommittee it got turned around entirely. Some temporary committee members were against the Convention of States and were attempting to convince everyone of its danger, to call for the Texas legislature to undo—rescind—their call for it. While I know people of goodwill on both sides of this issue, I would not say that the rescind side actually represents the will of a strong contingent of Republican voters, let alone a majority. In other words, the call to rescind was the opinion of a relatively small faction. Here’s their wording:

Article V Convention of States: We support the rescission of the State of Texas application to Congress for a convention under article V for proposing amendments to change the current limits on federal spending, jurisdiction, and terms of office. Our Constitution is the firewall guarding our unalienable rights – but it is a document, not self-enforcing. We petition our elected officials at all levels to support, enforce, and give effect to the Constitution and to Interpose between The People and the federal government, as required under Article VI, and resist any efforts to enforce it via changes. This is the remedy espoused by James Madison to “runaway government.”

Article VI is added in, and various other things. Here’s where politics comes in. What I believe happened was this: the temporary committee people who favored the rescind idea planned, got themselves appointed (usually this happens by volunteering to whoever handled the platform at the SD level), and then expressed interest in the Constitutional Issues subcommittee, where they could put forth their ideas and persuade the rest of the subcommittee.

Their SDs were made aware—because the Convention of States people were paying attention—and those temporary committee members were replaced Saturday night at their respective SD caucuses. Then, in the Sunday morning meeting, the debate was to delete the plank—the rescind version above. That passed, meaning no Article 5 plank remaining. But there was confusion by some on the committee, because they thought that this would automatically mean it would revert to the 2018 wording. With more time for debate, that could have happened. A proposal could have been made to add a plank containing the 2018 wording. But the motion to delete happened just before the break to begin testimony. And the short time before close of meeting after testimony didn’t allow for it.

Again, with or without, Texas has already expressed its favor for a Convention of States by passing the legislation. And we haven’t changed that in any official expression. Removal of that plank from the 2020 platform can be seen as just housekeeping. But I believe the Minority Report is asking to restore the 2018 wording.

I was concerned that, bringing it up during floor debate would open an opportunity to the rescind people to express their message to the whole crowd, and it might do more harm than good to the Convention of States cause. (Personally, I lean slightly in favor of COS, but with some reservations. I have experts to turn to, but I don’t know for certain that it is safe. Mark Levin’s book on this issue is on my reading list. There’s time while we wait for additional states to make their call.)

However, the way it stands, being able to bring it up in a survey, without floor debate, may just accomplish what Convention of States people want without the downside of a floor debate.

Notes I scribble to myself to document each
editorial change as I make it permanent,
collaborating with the committee chair.
Glamorous work, I know.

As for my work, it’s nearly done. I was finally able to do a careful edit this week, and go through each and every jot and tittle with the committee chair. There are still a few questions outstanding, where I’m waiting for feedback. Meanwhile that latest edited version is available for viewing on the convention website, as it has been all along (with some formatting problems inherent in Google Docs that look perfectly fine in the master document in Word). I hope when/if they do the survey, it is using the post-careful-edit version, instead of the quick and dirty one the RPT has had in hand since Sunday afternoon in anticipation of floor debate.

What I thought was going to be a week-long commitment has eaten up much of my month. And that was with the help of a good team. So I’d like this neverending convention to be over. If you still find errors in the final product, please forgive me. But I think it’s worth reading. And, if you find an issue you’re passionate about, consider doing some citizen lobbying when we get to the next legislative session, just a half a year away.