Grassroots vs. the Establishment

The primary season is underway. We started a bit late this year, because of redistricting, which didn’t get settled until November. And Primary Election Day is March 1^st. So, despite attention rightly turning toward holidays the past few weeks, campaigns are starting to heat up. I’m involved in one particular campaign that I feel strongly about, so I’m writing about that today. Much of this is intended as an article elsewhere, but here I can add details of interest to me, and maybe interest to readers here. So here goes.

The necessary redistricting following the 2020 census has given Texas two new US congressional districts. One was placed around Austin. The other, the newly created Texas Congressional District 38, was plopped down in northwest Houston. That’s the one I’m in, after a decade in CD 2 where I pretty joyfully endorsed Rep. Dan Crenshaw in 2016. Anyway, the new CD 38 made changes mainly to the previous lines for CD 2, CD 7, and CD 8.

Redistricting map from FiveThirtyEight

If you live in this area and don’t know what district you’re now in, I suggest the interactive tool in the middle of this article. You type in your address, and it gives you your jurisdictions for US Congress and your Texas House and Senate districts. If you want to know which Harris County Commissioner Precinct you’re now in, go here and look up your precinct number. All these new districts will be shown on your voter registration card, which will be sent out to you sometime between now and early voting, so probably within a month.

Word is that CD 7 (which I was in the first decade of the century) is mostly being given up to Democrats while CD 2, CD 8, and CD 38 will lean even more Republican. (For the whole country, you can check out the redistricting maps and their expected leanings at FiveThirtyEight.) 

·         CD 7 will be D+24

·         CD 2 will be R+30

·         CD 8 will be R+26

·         CD 38 will be R+27

This means that these races will essentially be decided during the March 1^st Primary Election—or at least settled by any needed runoff on May 24^th.

For the brand new CD 38, this will be an opportunity for conservatives to get the representation they want and deserve.

There are ten candidates in the race. There’s one big name, supported by big money and being run from a distance—and the candidate, while Republican, doesn’t “speak conservative" fluently enough to convince close watchers that he’s a true “native” conservative. So the grassroots have been taking a look at the rest of the field.

Republican precinct chairs and other grassroots activists have held two forums, trying to get a feel for who these candidates are. (You can watch the videos of the first one here and the second one here.) At the end of each, they held a straw poll. Both showed Mark Ramsey as the clear winner.

In case you can’t enlarge it enough, every one of the long lines is Mark Ramsey.

Establishment pick Wesley Hunt didn’t show. The first event was because of a scheduling conflict; that’s forgivable. The second no-show was simply declining the invitation. At this point, people were starting to grumble about being snubbed. He was expected at a third event, the Cypress Texas Tea Party (I’m on the board), on December 18^th, and confirmed the night before. But he sent a representative, with word his daughter woke up with a fever. He didn’t, however, ask to reschedule for the next meeting. He’s been doing a few paid-donation dinners and an occasional meet-and-greet, plus some national media. But nothing that qualifies as reaching out to the grassroots. As a precinct chair, I’ve gotten phonecalls from his campaign asking for my endorsement. I say I’m still waiting to hear him in person. Then he doesn’t show at the events, and they call me again to ask for my endorsement. That does not show good listening skills.

For comparison, in 2018 I met candidate Dan Crenshaw three or more times before the primary, and multiple times afterward. He was generous with his time, and talked one-on-one and in small groups, answering questions—which he did rather well. He also ran the full length of the district (it was about 70 miles then), and helped muck out houses and do restoration in a less-affluent area near me following Hurricane Harvey, which happened just about the time he filed to run. Since becoming something of a media star, a fluke brought about by an SNL attack on him and the military, which he handled with grace and humor, he continues to reach out and do townhalls. And he does long-form discussions of issues on his podcast. He does words well; even when we disagree, I can understand his point of view. Wesley Hunt may be a friend to him, and also former military, but he’s not from that mold. He ran for CD 7 in 2020 (not my district, but I preferred two other candidates over him) and lost to the Democrat in the November election.

I gave my endorsement to Mark Ramsey before the second December forum, by the way. I’m an unpaid campaign volunteer, doing what I do (writing and editing), and I might even end up block walking with the best of them.

There have been rumors of interference in the race from faraway DC Republican leadership—what we call the establishment—who think they can choose our candidate without our say so. One candidate (who has since dropped out of the race) had hired three campaign advisors—the dream team, they were called, who had never lost a race when working together. They all quit, because of establishment pressure telling them they’d never work another congressional campaign if they did anything to oppose the NRCC Washington establishment anointed one. Other campaigns have found it nearly impossible to hire help and are struggling along on their own, or are combining with campaigns in other races to extend their reach and resources.

Meanwhile, Mark Ramsey’s campaign is picking up grassroots support. There's a snapshot of the current grassroots, measuring precinct chair commitment—which was the first step and the key to winning the three Cy-Fair ISD school board races this past November. Two of the three we ousted were long-time establishment Republicans, by the way. The same people who cared enough to block walk to tens of thousands of homes in order to get CRT and anti-family materials out of our schools are a formidable army. Anyway, in that snapshot, of the 70% of responding precinct chairs who have committed to a candidate, 75% have committed to Mark Ramsey.

In a primary election, the most dedicated voters tend to go to the polls. Precinct chairs can reach those voters in their precincts. Big money from far away might make sense for a tight general election in which the candidate needs to appeal to a broad swath of voter persuasions. But in this particular race, it might come down to who convinces the grassroots that they hold their values.

It is with good reason that Mark Ramsey is leading the grassroots battle right now. He is a tried-and-true conservative. He has worked in grassroots politics for decades. The state platform looks the way it does—categorized according to state Senate committees—because of his innovations. Many of the planks—the ideas and/or their wording—came from his efforts. The state Legislative Priorities, which he chaired in the last state convention, was an invention coming out of Senate District 7’s platform committee while he was chairing that committee, an idea he then carried to the State Republican Executive Committee. He served as the SREC Committeeman for SD 7 from 2012-2020, the end of his term limit. During that time he chaired multiple state committees, as well as additional local committees. This is all unpaid nitty-gritty volunteer work. A look at his endorsement list shows that his work has been well appreciated by true conservatives—although maybe not by party establishment, who often consider conservatives a thorn in their side.

That's me and our editing team—Mark Ramsey was the Platform Committee
Chair—taking last-minute edits from delegates at the 2018 RPT Convention.

Big-money guy Wesley Hunt—and most of the rest of the field—have been MIA from all this citizenship heavy lifting that needs to be done in order to get the government we want. Some of them don’t even vote in the primaries, according to their public record.

I got the graphic above from Ramsey’s website. A friend sent me the one below, one less election cycle, but all the candidates. (David Hogan, by the way, is a precinct chair and has been participating with the grassroots. He calls himself a young Mark Ramsey. I hope he sticks around and runs again for something else in a few years.)

One of the biggest thrills for Ramsey was getting to be a 2020 Presidential Elector. That year he also wrote, defended, and passed a resolution—the first in Electoral College history—condemning the Supreme Court for refusing to take the Texas election integrity case.

Ramsey had a long and distinguished career in oil & gas engineering, and is honored for his ability to pass along his knowledge and experience. He authored a peer-reviewed technical book, Practical Wellbore Hydraulics and Hold Cleaning, © 2019. He received the “Distinguished Instructor Award” as an Exxon employee, and was named a Charter Member of the Texas Tech Academy of Mechanical Engineers “for outstanding contributions to the profession.”

Mark Ramsey and wife Pauline have been married for 40 years and have three grown children and four grandchildren. His commitment to God is how he lives and breathes; they worship at WoodsEdge Community Church.

Unlike his Washington establishment opponent, Hunt, who favors the UN’s global plan on climate change, Ramsey believes in free-market solutions to climate issues, and in returning the US to that “shining city on a hill.” Hunt also dismisses CRT in schools as a non-issue; it’s not. Mark Ramsey helped craft the language in our platform instructing our legislature to get CRT out of our schools—and we got legislation done on that, HB 3979, requiring that civics teaching must include the moral, political, and educational foundations of America. Also, in the previous session, taking a leave from his O&G career, Ramsey served as a legislative staffer where he authored a bill requiring that high school graduates be able to pass the same test about America that legal immigrants are required to take.

About 2020 election integrity problems and what to do about them, he says those who committed election crimes should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And we should increase penalties to the point the crimes are no longer worth it. Engineers, he points out, are problem solvers. He suggests having three independent counting systems: one by Democrats, one by Republicans, one by someone else; all three have to agree, or they have to figure out where the discrepancies are. It’s a built-in audit system. He has been citizen-lobbying the legislature to get better election integrity for years.

Asked what should be done when he believes SCOTUS makes the wrong call? From Congress, do everything to nullify or reverse that opinion. And, he reminds us, Congress can exclude the courts from jurisdiction over certain areas where they have no business stepping in and inventing law.

All of the grassroots candidates see themselves as running to make a difference for conservatives, to represent the people. Ramsey is the one who stands out as the proven person who understands how to solve the problems our government has caused.

For more information, see RamseyForTexas.com. And consider donating time or money if you’re from around here or interested in the success of our conservative grassroots efforts. One thing I hope we've learned by now is that we can't sit back and let people far away—even people from our own party—make decisions for us.

 

 

Redistricting Report

At our Tea Party meeting this past Saturday, we heard from local House Rep. Mike Schofield, who was on the Redistricting Committee, and also Tom Nobis, our SREC (State Republican Executive Committee) Chair, to talk about the outcome of the legislature’s redistricting process.

Rep. Mike Schofield at the Cypress Texas
Tea Party on October 23, 2021.
We meet at a BBQ place, and we work
around the stuff they store in that room.

Rep. Schofield is a good storyteller. He gets up to talk—he talks fast—and an hour and a half later he takes a breath. Before we get to redistricting, I’ll just share one of his stories, for anyone out there who thinks there’s no voter fraud. For background, during early voting, we can vote at any voting location. There were, I’m trying to recall, 40-60 voting locations. There were many more in 2020. He says, 

You may remember back in 2018 they actually beat me by 113 votes. Now, I’m sure I had more actual voters than my opponent did, but after they stuffed the ballot box in some places, we came up 113 short.

Now, by the way, they tried that again this time [2020]. There were 60 votes a day being cast in a precinct over here [SE Harris County] during my race. You may recall there was a pandemic. People were afraid to get out from under their bed. But somehow 60 people a day would drive from here [west end of Harris County] through the fourth largest city in America, out the other side, and vote in the same precinct in my race.

What was happening was, they were stuffing the ballot box. And they knew they had won by 113 votes last time, so they figured the 600-and-some votes they stole this time would be enough to win. What they didn’t know was that I was trying to beat my opponent so badly that, even with the 600 votes, we still beat her by 3500.

So, that kind of stuff goes on. And it goes on more now that the elections are being controlled by the Democratic Party. So, I figured, I’d better get on Redistricting and defend my district.

We didn't have literal ballot boxes to stuff. What he means, I think, is that someone got a list of names from his district and then voted for them. It would have to be someone with access to the machines. That's why it's important to have workers from both parties, as well as poll watchers.

House Districts and General Redistricting Info

I’m assuming similar discussions are going on across the country.

Rep. Schofield says he refers to redistricting as pushing the reset button. Populations move around. There’s growth in some places, not in others. He says,

Now, the very first principle of redistricting, no matter what part of the country you’re in, no matter what year it is, is population. That’s why we do it. People—they get so caught up in the partisan, and the racial and Voting Rights Act and all this, they forget what this is actually for.

The Constitution requires that we redistrict every 10 years to more or less make everything equal again. And the reason is, if you’re in a district like mine, we were the fourth largest district in Texas. And when they started, ten years ago, they were all roughly—we don’t require exact equality in Texas, but they were roughly equal. And then growth happens. Right? And some places shrink in population. Other places grow.

Of the 150 districts in Texas, in the House, the first largest growth and the fourth largest growth were both in Katy [west of Houston, west end of Harris County, and some in Ft. Bend County; Schofield’s was fourth] We’re supposed to have grown from about 167,000 people at the beginning of the decade to about 194,303. Exactly…. That’s supposed to be what we’re all supposed to get to: 194,303. My district had 282,000 people. So, if you lived in my district, your vote counted less, because you’re a lower percentage, than in someplace where they had 187,000 people in their district. Your vote counts on a proportional basis for less than theirs does.

Redistricting has to happen before primary elections, which happen early in the year of even-numbered years. Getting the numbers into the hands of legislators was delayed, so it couldn’t be done during the regular legislative session last January-through-May (in Texas, during odd-numbered years). It couldn’t even be handled during our first two 30-day special sessions.

We were concerned it wouldn’t get done in this third session either. The Dems had walked out of the first special session, saying they were preserving voting rights from the horrendous new legislation designed to make it easier to vote but harder to cheat. They ran out the clock while they were getting Covid and otherwise hanging out in DC. And they have fled the state before during redistricting legislation. This year, I guess they gauged, accurately, that people were already annoyed with them enough over their shenanigans, so they stayed in Austin during the third special session, which was dedicated to redistricting.

Even though the redistricting legislation has now passed, there’s always the possibility that someone will challenge it in court and delay our primary. But for now, we think our primary will happen on the first Tuesday of March, as scheduled.

Redistricting didn’t start from scratch at the beginning of this special session a month ago. Rep. Schofield, along with the committee, was working on map redrawing all through the legislative session, based on estimated numbers.

The numbers come from a snapshot in time: April 1, 2020. However many people, and wherever they were living on that date, that’s what counts. Schofield’s district, HD 132, grew by 30,000 in just one year, and may have grown another 20,000 in the time since the census date. That meant he needed to lose about 88,000 out of his district based on growth since the last census. Controlling how that went was why he wanted to be on the committee that got to decide. He’s puzzled by representatives who called him the last couple of weeks, worried about what was happening to their district. They could have called him any time since February, rather than waiting until it was being voted on.

There are rules determining how redistricting must be done. The purpose is to make all districts approximately equal in size. When they work on US Congressional districts, that has to be literally equal, down to the individual voter, but things aren’t quite that exact in the state House and Senate. There is a rule for the House that they can’t cross county lines. On at least two sides of Schofield’s district, that’s a constraint. Then there are efforts to use natural boundaries, such as highways, waterways, reservoirs, etc.

When you see contorted, oddly shaped districts, the ones that people use to describe gerrymandering, those are shaped that way in order to meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, to allow for minority representation. In Harris County, he pointed out one of these that is Hispanic, and another that is Black. The assumption, for those who set up those lines, is that they will vote Democrat, so it’s actually in the law that districts must be set up in a way to favor Democrats.

Oddly, the reason for the Voting Rights Act is to counter previous gerrymandering intent on preventing minority representation. That was done by Democrats. Every time. So, the Democrats gerrymandered to make districts the way they wanted them—based on race. And that caused a law to be put into place for the Democrats to make districts the way they want them—based on race. The solution? Somehow overcome the lie that the Republicans were the racists. It’s a slow process.

Anyway, while my House district , HD 138, shifted somewhat to the west, I’m still in the same district. I was moved in 2010, so I’m glad I don’t have to deal with another new House district.

Current and new House district maps
images available at District Viewer, here

Senate Districts

The Senate has 31 districts in the state. By comparison, there are about to be 38 congressional districts. So the state senators have more constituents than US Congressmen have.

Like the House, they start with the districts they had and make adjustments from there. They need to each have 940,178 more or less.  They don’t get to deviate as much as House districts do, because they don’t have a county line rule. But they can be off by a small handful.

Rep. Schofield gave us some behind-the-scenes play in the legislature. The Senate originates its own map and then sends it to the House, and vice versa. In most legislation, when a bill passes the originating chamber, it gets passed on to the other one, where it can undergo a fair amount of amending before getting back to the originators, who then can either concur with the amendments or get a reconciliation committee, made up of members of both chambers, to come to an agreement on what ought to be in the bill.

Redistricting bills, however, are expected to be left alone by the other chamber. As some Democrat House member once put it, “The Republicans are the opposition; the real enemy is the Senate.” If they don’t want they other chamber messing with their map, it behooves them both not to mess with the other chamber’s maps.

In order to avoid getting each other’s bills messed with, they have an arrangement where they will gavel down at exactly the same moment. If one chamber gaveled down (approved the other chamber’s map with a vote) first, the remaining chamber could then mess with its map at will, and there would be no leverage to stop it. So the two chambers, located at opposite ends of the building, open up all doors between the two, and coordinate so that both can gavel down at the exact same moment. Because, you know, trust is everything—but you can’t trust anybody.

Current and new Senate district maps
images available at District Viewer, here

Tom Nobis summarized for us the SD changes in Harris County and affecting Montgomery County, just to the north, with this graphic:

 

Congressional Districts

Congress is totally different in many ways. Mainly, they don’t draw their own districts. The state legislature does it. In Texas, that originates in the Senate, but it seemed to me they worked together on this map quite a lot.

Some people suggest putting together a non-partisan commission, to take politics out of redistricting. In theory that may sound good, but it’s not possible in reality. Rep. Schofield says,

No such thing as a non-partisan angel gonna drift down from heaven and make sure everything is fair.

He says, when the legislature goes through their process, everybody fights for their area. They tug and they pull, and they go, “I want these guys on the other side of the reservoir,” and so forth. There are a lot of complicated issues. You deal with the minority areas first—and that’s why they come out looking so oddly shaped. Then you deal with all the other things that the constituents and the representatives might care about.

But when you have these nonpartisan groups, say 7 of each of the two major parties, plus an impartial judge, what you get is, one side wins 8-7 and takes everything. That judge belongs to one of the parties, and may have been appointed by the governor. So that’s the tie breaker. There’s nothing non-partisan about it, except the label to fool the people.

Anyway, so you’ve got growth. In Texas, we’ve had growth—and added congressional seats—every census since statehood, I think he said. Wherever those new districts go, it’s like dropping two giant boulders in the middle of existing districts. And they have to have exactly the same number of people in them as every other district, when everything is said and done. Around 875,000. If you can’t get it right, you have to split up precincts, or blocks, or maybe just cut a house or two, until you get it exactly right. That is, according to how it was on April 1, 2020; you could be off by thousands by the time redistricting goes into effect, but it’s the count on that date that matters.

There were various places around the state that were suggested for the new districts. The decision finally came down to Harris County, where Houston is, and the Austin area.

The splat of the Harris County boulder came down on my district. I was in District 2, with Rep. Dan Crenshaw. He got pushed further north (not sure he’s actually still living in that district). And I’m now in the new CD 38. Wesley Hunt has declared as a candidate; he ran against Lizzie Fletcher in CD 7 two years ago. I imagine others will run as well. But he’s former special forces, a friend of Crenshaw. He’s conservative.  And happens to be black, which makes him bulletproof against certain criticisms. I’m looking forward to learning more about him.

What I’ve heard is that both Crenshaw’s district and the new district are likely to go safely Republican, and CD 7 will be sacrificed to the Democrats for the foreseeable future.

Rep. Schofield talked about the philosophy behind safe versus competitive districts. He said people complain when they’re in a district where their representative doesn’t agree with them on various issues—likely because they’re in a different party. If you’re in a competitive district, 49% or so of the district is going to feel like that—dissatisfied, unrepresented. But in a “safe” district, a higher percentage of constituents will be satisfied with their representative. So he’s changed his opinion over the years and now favors safe districts when possible.

That’s great if you’re in agreement with your representative, but what if you’re not? We’ve had sympathy for conservatives in Sheila Jackson Lee’s area for ages (she wins with over 80% of the vote; it’s  too much to be attributable to voter fraud). Rep. Schofield says, it’s not that you’re without representation. It’s like, when you’re in a group and order out for pizza, who gets to decide what kind of pizza? The guy who wants only cheese so everyone is OK with it? The one who wants meat lovers? The vegetarian? Whoever wins, the others still get their slice of pizza (the representation); they just may have to pick things off or go without what they would have preferred.

Current and new US Congressional district maps
images available at District Viewer, here

 

Other Districts

We talked only briefly about SBOE (State Board of Education) districts. The legislature sets those up as well. There were 15 before redistricting; there are 15 after. These are the largest in the state. It’s an unpaid position, without a bunch of constituents financially supporting a candidate. So getting to visit every part of the district is practically impossible.

We also talked about the Harris County Commissioner Precinct redistricting. This isn’t a legislative issue; it’s being done at the county level. But it’s on our minds. Harris County is, I think, the second largest non-state government jurisdiction in the US. It’s run by someone on her first job out of college, since 2018. It’s run badly. And it’s run according to whatever “progressive” (i.e., Marxist) strategies of the pushiest commissioner (one Rodney Ellis) wants. There are five commissioners: 3 Dems, 2 Republicans. These two intrepid Republicans go up against this wall of hypocrisy and graft daily. (The list of their faults and failings is too long for this late in a post.)  The Dems don’t like the opposition, the calling to account, the occasional public calling them out so the public knows what they’re up to. What they want to do is get rid of one of the Republican commissioners. They’ve chosen Tom Ramsey (mine is Jack Cagle). The plan is to pile as many Republicans into Cagle’s district as they can manage—taking them out of Ramsey’s. The hope is that they can then oust Ramsey and wreak havoc with a 4-1 Commissioner’s Court, plus Hidalgo the County Judge (executive). That would be the setup for a decade.

They may handle the redistricting at their regular Commissioners’ Court Meeting tomorrow (October 26) at 10:00 AM, hoping to slide it in before anyone notices. If you live here and would like to take a stand against local tyranny, you need to sign up by 8:00 AM to speak virtually (sign up and info here). 

If not, they will have a public hearing on Thursday (October 28) of this week, 12:30 PM. The County GOP was sending out announcements today, calling for a large voice from the people.

 

So, in summary, statewide we’re doing OK as conservatives. Locally, in Harris County, some of us are OK and some not. By law, redistricting has to be done. I’m glad this decade it was done with conservatives in the driver’s seat.