David Van Os On Texas Democratic Chaimanship

The other day I wrote a post on the current Texas Democratic Party chairman Boyd Richie (pictured above). The point of my post was that Richie has been utterly ineffective as chairman and the state party needs a new chairman. The Democratic Party doesn't hold a single statewide post in the state of Texas -- that's 0 for 29 if you're keeping score. And yet I still hear people talking about what a good chairman Richie has been. Frankly, I'm at a loss to understand their thinking on this.

Fortunately, the state party will again vote for a chairman at it's convention over the next two days. The good news is that there is a candidate running against Richie. He is Michael Barnes. Is he the answer for Texas Democrats? I don't know. What I do know is that he couldn't be any worse than the current chairman. I plan to vote for Barnes, and I urge other delegates to the state convention to do the same.

I just learned today that one of the states leading progressive Democrats, David Van Os, agrees with me on this matter. Here is what Mr. Van Os has to say:

Many of you reading this message will be delegates to the Texas Democratic Party State Convention that opens tomorrow in Corpus Christi. You will have the opportunity to make a badly needed change in the election for state party chairman that will take place on Saturday. I will be eagerly casting my delegate vote for Michael Barnes for state party chairman and respectfully urge you to do the same. Michael met with me recently during a visit he made to San Antonio. I liked what I learned about him. Michael knows that Republican control of all 29 of the statewide elective offices in Texas state government, as it has existed since 1998, is intolerably detrimental to the economic conditions, health, education, and welfare of the vast majority of Texans. He knows that incumbent party chairman Boyd Richie refuses to acknowledge any accountability for the party's failure to win statewide on his watch, but to the contrary, is full of excuses. Michael knows that if something isn't working it needs to be changed. Michael has vision and a winner's attitude. He knows that the people of Texas need relief from Republican Corporate rule and "wait until next time" is not a satisfactory response from the Texas Democratic Party leadership. Michael knows that unelected mercenary consultants are making the strategic decisions behind the scenes and the skills and insights of grassroots Democrats are ignored. Michael knows that to be true to its professed values the Texas Democratic Party has to be governed democratically from the bottom up. He knows that going 0 for 29 in the statewide offices is failure, not success. Michael knows that Texas Democrats have to stop rewarding failure with re-election of the same officers and more contracts for the same consultants. Please let me share some background history and facts with you that you may find relevant. Twelve years ago in 1998, the Texas Corporate Republican Party came out of that year's general election holding all 29 statewide offices in the Executive and Judicial branches of State government. (The executive branch offices are Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller, Land Commissioner, Agriculture Commissioner, and the three Railroad Commissioners; the judicial branch offices are the nine Justices on the Texas Supreme Court and the nine Judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals) As the Democratic Party's candidate against incumbent Republican corporate-loving Texas Supreme Court Justice Greg Abbott that year, I experienced the 1998 wipeout very personally. A few days after the election, I predicted on my website that with Republicans now owning 29 of 29 statewide offices the people of Texas would be subject to the iron grip of corporate power to a worse degree than at any previous time in the state's history. Reviewing the history of the past 12 years, was I wrong or right? Have millions of Texans lost ground compared to 1998, or have they not? For the last 12 years I have continually believed and advocated that the first priority of the Texas Democratic Party should be to win back the statewide offices with hard-driving populist campaigns showing, and meaning it, the will to fight back on behalf of the people of Texas against the domination of our state by undemocratic aristocracies of the rich and powerful. In my opinion, by defaulting on the statewide offices the Texas Democratic Party defaults on its historical mission to give the people an equal voice with the powerful. In contrast, the leaders (actually, the unelected consultants like Matt Angle of the Texas Democratic Trust who are the true strategic decision makers) of the Texas Democratic Party have primarily concentrated on trying to win seats in the Texas House of Representatives each election. They usually "target" about 10 to 15 Texas house districts, apply cleverly crafted lip service to the statewide races and the other 100 or so contested legislative races, and then proclaim victory if they win a handful of their "targeted" house districts while staying 0 for 29 in the elections for the far more powerful, more widely impacting, statewide offices. With all due respect to the members of the Texas House, and there are certainly many members whom I greatly respect, winning a majority solely in one of the two chambers of the legislative branch of government, while continuing to forfeit the executive and judicial branches, which together possess far greater power to improve the lives of Texas' people and protect the people's Constitutional rights,does not constitute turning Texas blue. Over the next two and one-half days, incumbent party chairman Boyd Richie will be loudly proclaiming his dedication to the mission of winning statewide offices. Do not waste one second listening to him. He says this every election year. He has never meant it sincerely and does not mean it now. During the election campaign season of 2006, most of us on the statewide ticket (which included me as candidate for Texas Attorney General) knew that the state party staff and chairman (Boyd Richie) had a defeatist attitude about the statewide races that projected itself to the public and the media to the great detriment of our candidacies. We were close to the situation and it was obvious to all of us. Most of us, maybe all of us, voiced our concern about this to Boyd and/or the party staff. In response, Boyd repeatedly denied any defeatism. If you asked him about this during 2006, he denied it to you too. Well now, here is a direct quote from Boyd's recent interview with Reeve Hamilton of the Texas Tribune, wherein Boyd's objective was to deny accountability for the 2006 defeats: "Frankly when I became chairman in 2006, our statewide candidates had already been nominated. I had nothing to do with recruitment, or how they got to be nominees. Those campaigns were doomed from the beginning." A lot of you put in many passionate volunteer hours in support of the 2006 statewide candidates. You believed in that ticket. You fought for it and sweated for it. You probably believed that your state party shared your belief and your enthusiasm. After all, the state chairman told you so, right? But the truth is, as he now confesses when it suits him to do so, the state chairman had a defeatist attitude about that ticket. Do you call that leadership? I don't. You may remember my last-minute run for state party chair against Boyd at the 2008 state Democratic convention. On the very eve of the convention I decided to make that run when I read Boyd's quote in the Burnt Orange Report that as far as trying to carry Texas for the Democratic presidential ticket, the presidential campaign would "take care of itself". This was proof to me that nothing had changed - there was to be no serious attempt by the Texas Democratic Party to win Texas statewide. I publicly confronted Boyd over the statement. His response was that the quote had been garbled and did not accurately express his meaning. That response of his was pure bull. After I promised in my speech to the convention that if elected chair my first order of business would be to fly to Chicago to press the Obama campaign to make a serious effort in Texas, Boyd took the podium and proclaimed how hard he would work to carry Texas statewide. He did not mean a word of it. Usually when somebody evades something that means they have something to evade. Here is what Boyd also said in the recent Texas Tribune interview: "This year is the first year that I've had the opportunity to have any input about recruitment." Come again, Boyd? Were you not party chair in 2008 and had you not served as party chair since 2006? Really, how much more transparent can you be in your attempt to deny accountability? What do you say now to the candidates who carried the party's banner in the statewide races of 2008? Indeed, Boyd should hardly be bragging about his recruitment efforts for 2010. For the first time in many elections, there is no Democratic candidate for the major office of Comptroller of Public Accounts. To make matters worse, Boyd has repeatedly emphasized the importance, in his outlook, of the upcoming decennial redistricting. One would think that since he places such a priority on redistricting he would have certainly fielded a candidate for Comptroller, since the Comptroller holds one of the five seats on the Legislative Redistricting Board. This is the excuse the Texas Tribune reports out of Boyd's mouth: "That was a seat that we took very seriously," he says, "and I'm very disappointed that we weren't able to recruit somebody." Did you know that Boyd Richie was trying to recruit a Democrat to run for Comptroller? Did he put any word out about it in your community, or your county, or your Democratic club or organization? Of course not! The real translation of Boyd's statement is, "we asked a few people within our insider circle." Is that good enough for you? And the deeper meaning is a recurrence of the continuing theme: Whatever goes wrong is never my failing. It is somebody else's: the pre-doomed candidates whom I didn't recruit in 2006, the possible candidates for Comptroller who wouldn't step up and run in 2010, and 2008 doesn't matter because even though I had been chairman since 2006 I had no opportunity to participate in recruiting candidates for 2008. Under Chairman Richie, Texas Democrats have not only had failure, but even worse, evasion of accountability. Michael Barnes knows what the problem is and he won't make excuses if he fails to deliver. It is time for a CHANGE. If you are a delegate to the Texas Democratic Convention, I respectfully urge you to vote for MICHAEL BARNES for state party chairman on Saturday.

Thank you for your consideration of my point of view. Sincerely, David Van Os