Blog Article
The Republican Party of Texas (RPT) is guided by an Executive Committee. There are 31 Senate Districts in Texas and two representatives from each Senate District (SD) are elected at the Biennial Republican Party of Texas Convention, recently held in San Antonio May 23-25, 2024. An SREC Committeeman and an SREC Committeewoman were elected from each SD making 62 members. Our Chair and Vice-Chair were also elected at the State Convention, along with a National Committeeman and Committeewoman are elected to serve on the Republican National Committee (RNC). There are eight members of the Republican Party of Texas Executive Committee in Dallas County. We proudly serve as volunteers to the RPT in Dallas County. We are elected for up to four 2-year terms and serve on many committees. It is a huge commitment and collectively requires thousands of volunteer hours of meetings, and travel to and from Austin, none of which is funded by the RPT. We also review Resolutions submitted from County Parties all over the State. Please find attached those that were approved at the August meeting.
The State Republican Executive Committee convened Aug 1-3 in Austin for our quarterly meeting, and we wanted to pass on the highlights and important information to you,
SREC Membership
44 of our 62 members returned (including all 8 in Dallas County), and 18 new members were elected at Convention in San Antonio. We added some terrific new members and moved a little bit rightward in the process. Looking forward to working with them! We also welcomed new Chairman Abraham George and Vice Chair D'rinda Randall—they are both solid and have a good working relationship with each other. Chairman George re-established a couple of ‘old’ committees, for Grassroots and for Volunteers. We now have 14 committees in all.
Susan Fountain is in her 4th and final 2 year term and has stepped into more of a ‘mentoring’ role, electing not to run for Officials and moving to Vice Chair of Party Organization while helping Robyn Cooper (El Paso) take over leadership for that committee. She is also serving on Resolutions and Volunteers committees.
Matt Patrick is Chairing Platform Advocacy for a second term, and moved from officials to rules committee where we expect to work on implementation of closed primaries.
SD 2 -- Jerry Fisher is also in her last term—will work on Grassroots and Candidate Development, and returns on Officials Committee. Bruce Bishop is serving on Candidate Development and Local Government Committees.
SD 12 -- David Wylie is back as Chair of Partnerships & Coalitions, as well as working on Local Government and Convention Arrangement Committees. Lisa Hendrickson is on Legislative Priorities as well as Chairing Election Integrity.
SD 23 -- Ed Zenner is Chair of Candidate Development and serving on Election Integrity. Elaine Cook is on Partnerships & Coalitions as well as Candidate Resource Committee.
While not in Dallas County, Leslie Thomas is a former SREC from here but has moved into neighboring SD22. She is returning to the Rules Committee and will also Co-Chair Legislative Priorities. Jim Pikl, our neighbor to the north in Collin County (SD8) is Chairing Rules committee.
RNC
We welcomed back Dr. Robin Armstrong as Texas’ Committeeman on the National Committee, and Debbie Georgatos was elected as our new Committeewoman.
Debbie talked about her radio program and the need to ensure we get the vote out across Texas; need to make sure the margin is ‘too big to rig!”
Robin provided a debriefing on a very important case that involved Galveston County (where he is a County Commissioner) that has gotten national attention. The 5th circuit court met en banc and ruled that the Voting Rights Act did NOT protect ‘coalition’ blocks in redistricting cases. This could result in 3-5 congressional seats in the 5th being flipped from Democrat to Republican. Although not discussed, it should also affect offices at state level or below. HUGE news in our favor! Legal opinions seem to believe that the Dems are unlikely to appeal to SCOTUS because they would probably lose, and that would cost them in a significant number of places across the country that are not affected by the 5th circuit ruling (covers only Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi).
Convention
Gaylynn Devine (Harris County) has agreed to Chair a second time and will be able to put the ‘lessons learned’ in 2024 to use for 2026. Site selection for ’26 is underway but given our size the choices are limited (more so this cycle because a few of the conventions halls that are large enough to accommodate us are/will be under renovation when we need them).
Rules
We completed a review of the SREC Bylaws and adopted all recommended changes on Saturday. This was a major task and was ably led by Jim Pikl, SD8.
Platform Advocacy
Successful kickoff meeting where we set 8 of our 10 ‘focus’ planks for next session. We are also embarking on creating a new system for submission of items to Platform, LP, and Rules committees during the 2026 conventions. The change we initiated to RPT rules providing for this was adopted by the delegation in May, so we will be converting to a required electronic format for all proposed resolutions and rule changes coming out of County & SD conventions next cycle. We are also developing plans for regular communication on the Platform: history, organization, individual thematic areas, and more.
Resolutions
The Resolution Committee was busy for a first meeting. Scott Bowen (Harris) returns as Chair. There were 6 resolutions passed at the 3rd Qtr SREC Meeting. Please find attached the PDF files which are marked either DRAFT or FINAL copy, which is all that is presently available.
/RESOLUTIONHold_Feds_Accountable_for_Border_Invasion.pdf
/ResolutionProclaimingThatLifeWinsElections.pdf
/ResolutionPromotingTheSupportOfTexasActiveMilitaryAndVeterans.pdf
/EnsuringThatAllGeneraElectionVotingLocations.pdf
/ResolutionReaffirmingRPTSupportForEducationalFreedom.pdf
Party Organization
Party Handbooks (SREC, County Chair & Precinct Chair) are now complete; pending final review and approval from RPT Legal Counsel Rachel Hooper.
Focus on County Chairs attending trainings on the last Monday evening of each month by Jennifer Hall, RPT Executive Director, and also a former County Chair for Tarrant County. Reminder text messages have been going out and has caused an increase in attendance. We have 60 new County Chairs who will benefit from attending these meetings, along with their Executive Directors if applicable. Also code to review online in Exclusive Content will be established to monitor attendance.
SRECs will be asked to work with their respective County Chairs to ensure that precinct chairs receive the updated Precinct Chair Handbook and any other precinct chair resources that are available to them such as access to online or in house training, Advantage, Campaign Sidekick and/or GOP Data Center.
Volunteers Committee
RPT is committed to restoring the Volunteer of the Year Award Dinner to honor an outstanding volunteer within each Senate District. It will be held sometime in June-December 2025 to coincide with the 3rd or 4th Quarter SREC Meeting and availability of venue. Further information will be forthcoming.
We will also be helping to distribute volunteer contact information received by the Republican Party of Texas to county parties, candidates, and other entities as they indicate having an interest in participating.
Other issues
Volunteer training for grassroots is available at https://trumpforce47.com/
RPT is working on improving communication on a variety of issues, including training, via a new content portal on the party website. This will be an ongoing effort going into next year.
As always, if you have any questions about what’s going on at the state level, please feel free to reach out to your SREC representative, or either of us; we all help each other in Dallas County.
Matthew Patrick, Committeeman
Susan Fountain, Committeewoman
Republican Party of Texas
Senate District 16
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