Reflections on my experience as a delegate at the Texas State Convention
This was my first ever state convention. I'm still decompressing from the whole experience but wanted to share some observations and musings based upon what I experienced.
Going into the convention, we (a loosely tied/self-coordinating group of liberty lovers) expected that our voting strength for our Congressional District (CD) was likley to be around 45% of duly elected delegates from the county (Senate District [SD]) conventions. Our county (roughly 1/3 of the CD) did not even fill it's total allotment of delegates, so we didn't have any alternates. I expected that the other two counties in our CD were likely in a similar situation.
I showed up to the convention Thursday morning, so I missed all the committee stuff that happened earlier in the week. I wasn't aware that I could have gone earlier to sit in on them. It sounds like there were liberty minded people there though, so thank you to the peeps who invested that time and expense. From what I gathered, it had a positive impact - especially with getting the rules committee to adopt the change to the video taping rule (ensuring that all caucuses and committee meetings can be video taped by anyone [anyone who has a right to attend or witness anyway]).
I arrived eary on Thursday morning and after checking in, walked around the exhibit hall a bit and I'm pretty sure I talked to reps at almost every booth there. I was pleased to see We Texans (Debra Medina's group) there with a booth. There were a few other liberty minded groups exhibiting there and one exhibitor told me that they had been trying to get a booth at the Texas state convention for years but never allowed to participate. They credited Steve Munisteri (the new Chairman elected at the last convention in 2010 or 2008 - not sure which) as opening the door for them and others. From what I gathered, Steve was elected largely thanks to the liberty movement getting involved in earlier conventions. He appears to be a true diamond in the rough from what I saw throughout the convention - very fair, accommodating and funny/personable. He is definitely keeping a big, open tent for everyone.
There were a lot of campaign speeches given in the general sessions and they were all pretty forgettable pablum as far as I was concerned. A few random observations:- Rick Perry is very good at delivering self depricating humor. He has a lot of material to work with.
- Ted Cruz was very popular with the delegation. Dewhurst, not so much.
- Dewhurst is a world class tip top superchampion liar. He stood on that stage enduring, quite honestly, some pretty disrespectful catcalling and heckling specifically on the issue of the Texas anti-TSA bill that he killed and then he claimed credit for passing it! It was a totally WTF!?!?! moment for me. It was also hugely instructive to me how the establishment members of my county GOP didn't have a clue what was going on (what the heckling was about or the fact that Dewhurst told a bald faced lie on the stage). I got the distinct impression that the folks who are currently running my county's GOP machine is a high school social club cheerleading a team because they like the color of the uniform (and are completely clueless as to what they are doing on the field).
- Dewhurst is very lucky that he wasn't shanghai'd to a gulag somewhere for making terroristic threats. He said he wanted to "blow up Washington D.C.". I may need to call in a tip to the DHS under their "see something, say something" program, because I'm pretty sure you aren't allowed to say things like that in this country any more.
- I was very tempted to yell out "Oh no, Al Queda!" when Cornyn was on stage. I restrained myself because I kept the bigger picture in mind. Saturday morning, while heading to my CD caucus, Cornyn and I crossed paths in the lobby of the Omni Hotel. I thought about accosting him there and picking a few bones with him (over his support of TARP, NDAA and litany of other issues), but again restrained myself. I was very surprised that I had the strength to hold back on that. I suppose some might call it divine providence. I really wanted to give him a piece of my mind.
- I heard Greg Parker (runoff election for railroad commissioner) give his campaign speech (the same speech) two times (SD and CD caucuses) and laughed both times. He is very good.
At our SD, the establishement candidate for SREC woman ran unopposed. The establishment candidate for SREC man was an incumbent seeking his last term available under term limits. When a nomination was made for another candidate, an establishment guy running for State Representative (now facing a run-off) who sat two seats down from me started laughing out loud (at the audacity, impudence and futility of the gesture no doubt). When the vote was announced, he audibly gasped and wasn't laughing any more. We didn't quite have the strength to unseat the encumbant establishment guy for SREC, but it was a much closer vote than the social club had expected. The vote totals indicated that maybe only half the (total) delegates duly elected at our county caucus had shown up so far. Had more of our (ie. RP/liberty supporting) duly elected delegates shown up on Thursday, we might have been able to get our candidate on the SREC. It's more the pity considering that our county was short of it's alotment of duly elected delegates and anyone who showed up at our county convention and expressed interest was duly elected. We had room for 10-20 delegates and 100+ alternates who could have helped us easily take over our county and control the caucus.
At our first CD caucus meeting on Friday afternoon, the chair took nominations for the (sorry, forgot the proper name for the position) person who would represent our district on the committee that decides the at-large delegates. The establishment candidate was nominated first. Our guy was nominated second and perhaps it was just my imagination, but the establishment peeps in the room were, I think, perhaps surprised that anyone else was nominated to run against their well known and popular candidate. Establishment candidate and friends gave their three minute speech lauding service to party, credentials, etc. Our guy and one supporter gave their speeches too. Vote was taken and confusion reigned for a while as vote totals didn't match records of people who had checked in. Eventually, the situation was resolved as a couple delegates had entered the room taken a seat at the beginning without checking in first. Situation settled, vote was announced and our guy won by ~20 votes. Whoa. That was very unexpected and the establishment crowd was served notice that this was not going to be a coronation for the social club.
Unfortunately, the situation was different come Saturday morning. Our CD caucus convened to elect delegates to Tampa and there were a few more people in the room (the balance of which was not in our favor). Most delegate/alternate positions were two candidate races between an establishment candidate and a new face. The first big contest of the day pitted the county chair of the largest of the 3 counties against a relative unknown (to the crowd). Our candidate didn't have any party credentials but he had a lot of sincere passion and was able to articulate it well. He gave a very moving speech. Vote was taken and it ended in a tie with over a buck and half votes cast. Holy shit. We had a tea party delegate who had missed being seated for the vote by two minutes or so and had to stand at the back of the room for the vote. Had the delegate arrived just a wee bit earlier, I'm pretty confident our new face would have won on the first vote. There was a lot of discussion and the chair even had to consult with the State parliamentarian to figure out how to proceed. We ended up taking a new vote after allowing a few more people who had shown up in the interim to be seated. The county chair was visibly distraught over the situation (and the fact that the county s/he chaired didn't deliver the victory). The county chair ended up winning the second vote by a very narrow margin (I guess the new arrivals were slightly in the establishment's favor). We had some pretty strong candidates for the other positions, but none of remaining votes were as close at that one.
There were various socials/mixers/parties going on around the event and for my part personally, may have been the most productive time I spent at the convention. At one in particular, I established some important connections with the establishment crowd in my county including many elected officials and candidates for office that are likely to be elected shortly. I had good conversations with a couple in particular. I know that they are going to be more receptive to further conversations with me because of my participation there and I am hopeful that I can plant some seeds that grow.
I'm leaving out a lot of things I would like to say, but not in an open forum. The bottom line though is that, for as much as people lament that voting in elections doesn't matter and doesn't affect things, I would say that the opposite is true in attending these conventions. One vote can make a HUGE difference at the conventions and your voice/POV has much greater influence on everything. I've always heard the expression that all politics is local. I never really grokked that until now. The people who control the county machines are the ones grooming the candidates for higher office and the committees at the higher levels that have a strong influence on the direction of the party.
I would urge anyone who has an earnest desire to see the liberty movement grow and has not yet broken out of their rusty cage to get involved at their local level and start meshing with the establishment social club. We had a golden opportunity in my county this cycle that was not fully realized. That can be corrected in 2014. I was told my local precinct, one of the largest (or at least strongest in voting bloc strength) for our county, generally only has 3-4 people show up on average for precinct conventions (roughly 1/10 of our county voting block strength!). I had no idea the door was so wide open in my county.
