Texas Democratic Party: Moving Texas Forward

Dear Friend,

Welcome to the inaugural Chairman’s Report! This report will be a monthly briefing in which I’ll attempt to keep you updated on everything your Texas Democratic Party has in the works.

We are constantly and vigilantly getting our message out, countering the Republican spin machine, conducting trainings, raising money, maintaining one of the largest voter databases in the country, and so much more.

The goal of this briefing is to update you on some of those projects we’ve been working on and other things you can keep an eye out for. Particularly for those of you who are Majority Builders, or who have made a contribution to us at any time, we want to make sure you know what your generous contributions are going towards.

I hope you find this report valuable and I welcome you to give us suggestions on how we might make it even more useful.

Thanks!

Boyd Richie
Chairman
Texas Democratic Party

TDP on Hardball with Chris Matthews

For the past few months, we’ve been producing web videos and sending them out via email and through our social media. If you haven’t seen them I’d welcome you to check out our YouTube page. Not too long ago, one of our most popular videos, “Dear America,” in which we apologized for George W. Bush and warned America about Rick Perry (to the tune of Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry”), was featured on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews.

That segment on Hardball was about 7 minutes and it was replayed three times – do the math and that TV time would have cost us upwards of $1.4 million in national paid advertising. For the cost of one staffer taking one day to produce that video and then having our press people push it around to media – you got the equivalent of over a million dollars in media coverage.

I think that’s a pretty nice bang for your buck.

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Another video, Rick Perry’s “Texas Public Education Massacre” gives Perry’s $4 billion cuts to public education the horror movie treatment they deserve. With over 5,000 views on YouTube and over 2,000 shares on Facebook, we’re making sure that people keep talking about what Rick Perry and his Republican Party did to public education in the last legislative session.

If you want to be among the first to know when we release our newest videos make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube page, following us on Twitter, and Like our page on Facebook.

Fighting for Your Voting Rights

After Republicans voted to slash $4 billion from public education and lay off hundreds of thousands of teachers – it’s no wonder they’re frantically looking for ways to avoid facing voters. Texas Republicans are literally waging war on your voting rights. But rest assured, when it comes to fighting Republicans over voting rights, this is not our first rodeo. From Voter ID to gerrymandered maps to Tea Party voter intimidation experts – we’re fighting Republicans in court, in the media, and before the Department of Justice. We have no intention of backing down until we strike down these attempts at making your vote irrelevant.

Voter ID

Republicans passed a discriminatory voter ID law which would allow Texans to vote using a concealed handgun license but not a Veteran Identification card. This law is being reviewed for pre-clearance by the Department of Justice (DOJ), something we are actively advocating gets denied.

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We gathered a petition with thousands of names, sent formal letters of complaint, and are working closely with our legislators on the situation. The DOJ has requested additional information from the Secretary of State and thus far, the state has not complied with the DOJ’s request. We will continue to fight this assault on your voting rights and will keep you updated.

Redistricting

Republicans disregarded voting rights and used their legislative majorities to pass redistricting maps that would guarantee them legislative and congressional majorities, regardless of how you vote. That way they get to keep implementing their policies, regardless of whether or not Texans agree with them.

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Over the last decade 89 percent of our state’s population growth was non-Anglo. That population growth led to Texas gaining four new congressional districts — more new seats than any other state in the country. Yet, as drawn, zero of the four new congressional districts would allow communities of color to elect their candidates of choice.

That’s not just unfair, it’s unconstitutional. It violates the Voting Rights Act and it’s a slap in the face to everyone who ever fought to ensure that every American is able to cast a vote that matters.
Yesterday, a three judge panel in San Antonio heard arguments on possible changes to the election calendar and congressional district maps. Tomorrow a court in D.C. will hear arguments regarding the state’s request to dismiss the challenges to the Republican maps. We will continue to be involved in these lawsuits and will continue to challenge these maps until there is a resolution which gives Texans the ability to cast a meaningful vote in a fair election.

While the legal challenges continue to play out, we’ll also continue to keep the pressure on in the media. Click here to see a media snapshot of just one week of press clippings we generated during the first redistricting trial including numerous national press stories, guest columns in papers around the state, and online and television stories.

King Street Patriots

The King Street Patriots are a Tea Party Republican “poll watcher” group which originated in Houston and made national news in 2010 for sending disruptive Tea Partiers to harass and intimidate voters in minority poll sites around Harris County.

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The national news stories and mass of Texas media that resulted was the result of a fairly small number of “poll watchers”. Stop and think about what kind of chaos would ensue if they had one million poll watchers.

According to recent media reports, that’s exactly what they’re planning.

We’re in the middle of a major legal battle against these “Patriots”. Make no mistake – this group is a serious threat and this lawsuit has potentially powerful ramifications. These “Patriots” are represented in court by James Bopp, Jr., who is infamous in Republican legal circles for being the architect of the Citizens United case.

While the “Patriots” exist to help Republican candidates through their voter intimidation program, Bopp’s involvement is part of his stated quest to “dismantle the entire regulatory regime that is called campaign finance law.”
The King Street Patriots, as a nonprofit corporation, are not legally allowed to engage in the kind of partisan political activities they’ve been using that are clearly intended to benefit Republican candidates. Our lawsuit would force them to obey the same laws every other political entity in Texas has to adhere to.

If we’re successful, these “Patriots” will no longer be able to raise unknown amounts of money from undisclosed donors in order to conduct their vote suppression schemes. But if they are successful, there would be nothing stopping corporate mega-donors from pouring millions of dollars into the “Patriots” voter intimidation programs – all without anyone ever knowing who is funding it all.

New on MeetRickPerry.com

On the day Rick Perry announced he was running for President, we launched MeetRickPerry.com. We posted the real facts on Rick Perry’s record and detailed his many scandals, policy failures, and several web videos. Tens of thousands of people consistently visit this site. Our videos have collectively received well over 100,000 views.

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In the coming weeks, we’ll be rolling out:

State Agency Scandals – A site accounting the various state agency scandals under Rick Perry. “State agency” might not sound exciting but I guarantee you’ll be shocked at some of the things that have occurred under Rick Perry’s watch.

Rickipedia – A massive data dump of press releases we’ve put out on Rick Perry which date back to 1996.

And you can bet we’ll have even more Rick Perry-themed videos for your viewing pleasure!

Hispanic Communications

Republicans somehow manage to keep a straight face when giving lip-service to Hispanic values while simultaneously doing everything they can to disenfranchise Hispanics and work against their interests. But we’re not going to sit back and let Republicans say one thing while they do another.

We launched Rick Perry’s anti-Latino agenda in both English and Spanish, so that we could expose Perry’s record of policies and stances that go against the interests of Latinos. We exposed the Hispanic Republican Conference of Texas for redistricting away their Hispanic populations while they went on a supposed Hispanic outreach tour.

The Texas Democratic Party and our affiliates wrote guest columns on the illegal Republican gerrymander and how it hurts Hispanics for the McAllen Monitor, Rio Grande Guardian, Houston Chronicle, El Paso Times, and News Taco.

We called out Republican Aaron Pena for selling out his constituents by illegally gerrymandering his district and lying about it in the: Austin American Statesman, McAllen Monitor, Texas Observer, News Taco, and Raw Story. Our oped, Peña Voted to Disenfranchise Thousands in Hidalgo County, was published in the McAllen Monitor, Rio Grande Guardian and News Taco. You can read that piece here.

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We sounded the alarm when we found out Republican John Garza disenfranchised his constituents and rejected the inclusion of politically organized Hispanics in his district.

We also spoke out against the Republican voter suppression legislation in the Rio Grande Guardian and News Taco.

And our party spokespeople have been actively spreading our democratic message in two languages via tv, the radio airwaves, and in print. You can read some of our Spanish-language earned media here, here, here, here, and here.

Social Media

The Texas Democratic Party has grown by leaps and bounds on both Facebook and Twitter, which are essential to reaching entirely new demographics of Texas Democrats. We currently have a little over 9,300 followers on Facebook, up from 7,000 just a few months ago. On Twitter, we have grown our base to over 4,000 followers, surpassing the Republican Party of Texas, and becoming the 3rd largest twitter account of any state Democratic party in the nation. For commentary and news, videos and breaking updates, be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter today!

Training

One of your Texas Democratic Party’s most important functions is taking the lead in training candidates, campaign staffers and activists with the skills they need to run effective campaigns. In the past few months we’ve conducted two highly selective Campaign Camps geared towards candidates and campaign staffers. And we have more of those in the works.

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We’ve also conducted webinars in Redistricting, Compliance, Grassroots Organizing and several other subjects. Next year we’ll host trainings all over the state to educate people on the Delegate Selection Process so they know how to navigate the convention system and get to the national convention in Charlotte.

Fundraising

Over the past few months, we’ve hosted a series of successful fundraising events across the state, beginning with our annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner this past August in Austin and followed by a very successful event (with a live donkey!) in Houston. Our next event will be at the Dallas World Aquarium on Saturday, November 5th. Over 200 people have already RSVP’d and the list continues to grow. In addition to our traditional fundraising events, the Texas Democratic Party has been hosting Texas Majority Builder happy hours with the hopes of growing the program within the young professional crowd. We also have a Texas Majority Builder drive underway online. That drive has recruited 25 new members this month so far and is only 10 members away from its goal!

The Texas VAN

The TDP recently updated its voter file to include new information for almost 232,000 voters. This allows our Democratic Campaigns have to the most up to date information to accurate target the voters they need to run successful campaigns. The VAN is not limited to campaigns. Our new county chairs are using the VAN to organize Democratic activity in their area. With 2012 right around the corner, our candidates are getting on early start with VAN to hit the ground running.