Blog Article

Nov 11 2022

Texas Is a Red State

  • Author: Bill Anderton
  • Category: Commentary
  • Views: 107,767
  • Comments: 9

According to many in the press, Texas is turning purple. Yeah, sure, any day now.

Can we lay this trope to rest? Texas turning purple is a pipedream used to raise campaign funds from out-of-state donors. Texas is a red state. Texans know it; even the candidates themselves know it but outside money from deep blue donors still pours into the state every election cycle.

These left-coast donors have become like Herman Meville's Ahab chasing his white whale, "to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee." Dude, give it a rest. Texas really doesn't care what you think. Don't mess with Texas!

Don’t get me wrong, we like what these misspent campaign donations do for the State’s economy. Much of it gets spent here and we really appreciate the business. Lots of media buys, and lots of political consultants buying bigger boats and the latest Porsches. But the funds produce few political results of any consequence.

For 28 years Republicans have won every statewide race on the ballot, a clean sweep the whole time. In Tuesday’s election:

The Governor was an 11-point victor this week.

The Attorney General, a ten-point victor.

The Lt. Governor, a ten-point victor.

The Land Commissioner, a 14-point victor.

The Railroad Commissioner, a 15-point victor.

The Agriculture Commissioner, a 13-point victor.

The Comptroller, a 15-point victor.

The 15-seat State Board of Education already has nine Republican seats and will likely get redder with the tenth Republican seat still to be called.

We hold all of the seats on the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Republicans also control both chambers of the Texas Legislature.

Republicans hold both U.S. Senate seats and 25 of our 38 U.S. House seats.

The upshot is that Republicans control the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the government of the State of Texas.

But, sure as shoot’n, in the next election cycle, a huge amount of money will flow into Texas from gullible out-of-state Democratic donors based on the promises of uber-liberal candidates and their consultants that “THIS CYCLE” things will turn purple. Money will be raised and money will be wasted yet again with no lasting impact. We have a long and ignominious history of this phenomenon.

Hollywood may want these characters but clearly, Texas doesn’t.

Hey, personally, I nominate Beto O’Rourke to be named the official State of Texas Cash Cow. It is time he won something kind’a like a participation prize. He raised and spent about $190 million to lose three races in the last four years. One must work hard to lose that badly and waste that much money. That deserves some sort of recognition.

For bringing that much money into the state to lose it here, the Comptroller should at least send him a certificate of appreciation or something.

Nope, he doesn’t get the Governor’s mansion, but a certificate would do nicely. You know, there are several templates you can get to gen-up something on an ink-jet printer. Heck, we could even spring for the 24-lb paper. It doesn’t even have to be framed. Beto can get one of his capricious non-Texas donors to pick up the framing tab.

This way, he can hang it on his wall and point to it and tell visitors, “See, this is how much Texas appreciates me!”

Who knows, maybe it will be enough to stop him from running again. Oh, dear God, please.

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9 Comments Add Comment
Added by Angela Heiter

Your statement that Republicans are in control is extremely misleading. We currently reside in Texas, which is not free to conduct its own elections. You can accept their money all day, then see where it gets you, YOU ARE CONTROLLED BY THE MONEY TO ACCEPT DEMOCRAT LEADERSHIP IN ALL THE MAJOR CITIES OF TEXAS. THAT MEANS THAT FULLY ONE THIRD OF THE STATE IS COMPLETELY CONTROLLED BY THE COMMUNISTS. YOU HAVE SOLD YOUR BIRTHRIGHT FOR A MESS OF POTTAGE.

How long will this last if RINOs hold those seats and continuously sell us down the river?

Unless and until we remove the electronics from our vote centers and tabulation centers, we will not be a republic, we will remain a banana republic.
Added by jupiterdelta

Yes, but . . . I watched polls at three different Dallas county early voting sites and worked as an alternate judge at a fourth location on Election Day. I saw a tremendously well organized Dallas Democrat Party. We now have a county commission that is ALL Democrat. So, even with a Republican State Senator and Representative, I'm getting the feel of San Francisco as I live in Dallas. My district attorney is Soros guy, who won't prosecute shoplifters and won't do anything about homeless folk under Central at Forest Lane. Worse, I've got a County Commission run by a petty tyrant with a retinue and constituency that's still wearing masks in their cars and outdoors The petty tyrant despises small business and parents' rights. These urban Democrat organizations are duplicated in other major Texas cities -- Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Ft. Worth and El Paso. Our Republican Governor and State Legislature need to follow the example of Governor Desantis and move assertively to assist the building of strong Republican organizations within these urban centers. The Democrats are building out the big cites with their machine so that they can turn Texas. Let's not whistle past the graveyard.
Added by Chris.Milton

I always stress that the political, cultural, and economic sovereignty of Texas is under constant assault by those outside of our great state. Any campaign funding for Texas offices, should be banned. However, if we want to get rid of the Soros money, the Zuckerbucks, we need to get our own party here to commit to saying no to outside funding. Texas First, Texas Forever.
Added by luciarushton

This election was a big eye opener for me. And being in the trenches, I have to disagree with some of your points above. I am incredibly disappointed at the low Republican turn out we had. I had no idea how Blue Dallas is. I was shocked that Lauren Davis did not win, that the people of Dallas are happy with the current state of affairs and blatant disregard for our personal rights and medical freedoms (to name just two). What I saw was voting down the line, Blue blue blue.
Of the roughly 44% that voted in Dallas county, basically only 30% were Republicans. We need to be proactive for 2024 (and beyond). the link here is a great idea.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-florida-ron-desantis-reelection-democratic-collapse/?srnd=premium&leadSource=uverify%20wall
I also think this should be Abbott's last term and the party needs to find a DeSantis style person and start grooming them now. The race was just to close. We cannot afford to wait to pick his successor.
Just my two cents.
Added by Bill Anderton

Dear ANGELA HEITER,

Thanks for your comment. My point is that Texas is a Republican State. I stand by my statements in the blog; the numbers speak for themselves. However, there are indeed four deep blue counties in Texas: Harris, Dallas, Bexar, and Travis. These four counties produced 1.6-million votes for Beto and 1.1-million for Abbot. However, they were more than offset by the 2.2-million votes for Abbot and only 711-k for Beto produced by the Solid Red Counties. The rest of the state (the Border Counties and the six Rapidly Changing Counties) we pretty much evenly split. That is why all of the statewide races were decided by an extra million Republic Voters or so.

It is the Solid Red Counties that have made Texas Red for the last two and a half decades and don't show signs of change. We should take it for granted. It is our roots and our future.

Texas is a big state and the attitudes and political affinities of the four big urban counties don't reflect the other part of the state. This is ALWAYS overlooked. Democrats are urban-centric and their policies ONLY play well in the urban centers.
Added by Bill Anderton

Dear JUPITERDELTA,

I serve on the both Judges, Alternates and Clerks Committee as well as the Election Integrity Committee and, first of all, thank you for your service. It is our Republican Election Workers and Poll Watchers that keep elections honest DESPITE Republicans being the minority party in Dallas County.

For the last 18 months or so, for the first time in a long time, Republicans are becoming organized as well. We are finally addressing the party infrastructure and basic needs. The organization that recruited you as a Poll Watcher is only about 11 months old. We went as far and as fast as we could in the time we had. We started from little and tripled the size of the Election Workers and Poll Watcher corps. PLUS, we are not nearly finished. We are building on the base we have created. Admin will improve along with training. Bigger, better, smarter is the theme of the day.

Yes, the Dems are very well organized. Also, there are a lot of them. We are significantly outnumbered. But, the county isn't 100% Dems. We have a base of Republicans, we just have make it bigger. My own precinct is blue, but just by ~70 households. That can be flipped. Flip enough precincts, we can win districts. Flip some more and we can start winning county-wide elections again.

For the time being, yes, we're like strangers in a strange land. But the answer is simple: we have to make more Republican Voters. No, that is not a trite answer, it must become our mission. Yes, it will be a long process with a lot of work involved. Dallas is not solid blue, Dems are just the majority. We won some races and lost others. We have to take the victories where we can and make every election cycle a bit redder. Plus, the whole time, we must keep our statewide base intact and strong.
Added by Bill Anderton

Dear LUCIARUSHTON,

I wish every Dallas Republican would make a plaque for their walls with what you said, "I had no idea how Blue Dallas is."

IMHO, the vast number of Republicans don't realize this. We are simply outnumbered and outvoted and I'm not yet sure that is was simply low voter turnout (more on this below.)

Also, these Blue votes aren't "accidental Democrats" or "occasional Democrats," they are true believers. They truly believe Clay Jenkins is their savior and one of the good guys. No, we don't think that way but the Democrats do. The "government is out of control" message doesn't resonate with people that think that big intrusive government is a good thing. They think differently than we do. Put enough of them together and it becomes difficult to win a county-wide race as a Republican.

Later, I may have additional information about turnout. Being a data-&-analytics guy, I am in the middle of a precinct-by-precinct county-wide voter and turnout analysis for Tuesday's election correlating it to known precinct compositions. It is too early to say for sure but I think I'm seeing something fairly incredible that may seem counter-intuitive. That is why I'm having to do a precinct-by-precinct analysis; the gross turnout number obscures what happened.

I'm not ready to do into detail because there is nothing so dangerous as a half-completed analysis. I could be wrong and don't want to go into details until I complete the required rigor.
Added by luciarushton

I for one would be VERY interested in learning more about your analysis once completed. thank you,
Added by Bill Anderton

Hi Lucia,

I finished Version 1 last night. Version 1 is the raw data compiled from the unofficial DCED results. I shared it with the Precinct Chairs late last night. I will let them chew on it first and then send you a copy in a day or two. We all have our County Executive Committee meeting tonight and I will circulate it more broadly after that.

As time allows this week, I going to try and do some interpretation of the data based on Version 1 that only adds my personal conclusions as Version 2. I am thinking about using it as the basis for writing the second part of this blog posting titled "Living In a Very Blue County In a Very Red State." With the CEC meeting tonight, I may not have time to write it by my Tuesday deadline.

After canvassing and certifying the election, we'll get the "final-final" data and I will do Version 3.
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