Burnt Orange Report

In The Trenches: My Visit With The Wood County Democrats

By Vince Leibowitz

On Friday night, I was surprised to see about 35 Democrats gathered in my hometown of Mineola for the Wood County Democratic Party's monthly meeting. I had been asked by my counterpart in that county, Dr. Charles Thompson, to speak to that group about some of the things we've been doing in Van Zandt County as well as to offer my take on the Legislative session and (basically) whatever else I wanted to talk about.

Needless to say, I couldn't resist such an invitation, especially when it meant showing off some of the great ads our PAC ran last cycle.

For those of you unfamiliar with Wood County (where I lived most of my life and graduated high school before going to college and eventually coming to Van Zandt County), it is a very, very, very "red" county. However, during the last election cycle, they made some good gains for Democrats, and almost won the Sheriff's race there, which was quite an accomplishment given the way people in that county tend to vote, which is "straight ticket R."

Right before I spoke, Charles updated the group on two local officeholders, one recently re-elected County Commissioner and one recently elected constable, who just switched parties and became Republicans.

Since we had a little experience with that here in 2001, when one of our commissioners turncoated, I opened by telling the people there that it wasn't the end of the world, and that they just had to do everything within their power to defeat those guys in the next election cycle.

After talking about our plan of action for the 2004 election and our plans for the upcoming cycle in 2006, I talked a little about the Lege, specifically school finance, and gave my humble opinion that gambling would be the Lege's poison of choice with regard to school finance, pointing to a Lone Star Survey that shows over 50 percent of Texas voters have no major opposition to large-scale casino gambling in Texas. I noted that, though the GOP may talk a big "morals" game on this, in the end it is what they will end up for a number of reasons.

I also told the Wood County Democrats about all of the lovely work their State Rep, Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola) is doing in Austin, including introducing one of the session's dumbest bills to outlaw nudist youth camps in Texas--all while there is real work to be done on school finance.

I also got a lot of good questions from the Democrats who are, arguably, more conservative than the "hometown crowd" I'm used to here in Canton.

Specifically, I was asked about abortion and the Platform. One elected official present noted that many of his GOP friends are constantly throwing the party platform in his face and claiming how "liberal" Democrats are. So, I pointed him to the masterpiece that is the Texas GOP platform and told him that the next time they did that, to remind him his own party was so far to the right they were advocating things like the dissolution of the United Nations, among other crazy stuff.

On the abortion issue, I advised everyone to discuss the issue as a matter of constitutionality and not religion. I also said that it's best to talk about it in terms of being for or against the "right to choose" as opposed to being for or against abortion. I also noted it wouldn't hurt to point out the GOP's hypocritical stance in that area. They essentially insist every child be brought to term and raised by the mother all the while slashing or eleminating programs that would help that child get off to a good start in life. Clearly, that's not a very good "family values stance," for the GOP.

At any rate, I think the talk was fairly well recieved. I got several laughs talking about GOP hypocrisy and some of the dumb bills legislators are filing all the while we've got school finance staring us in the face.

Too, the crowd (that big that soon after an election) should tell everyone in Wood County that there is hope for the future. Considering the GOP increased its number of voters in the Presidential election my more than 30 percent (while the Dems did so by about 2 percent), I think it's safe to say that the GOP has about plateaued in terms of the number of new voters it can attract in that county. And, given the behavior of some of the elected officials in that county, hopefully the GOP will actually start losing some votes in the next cycle.

Vince Leibowitz is County Chairman of the Democratic Party of Van Zandt County.