Texas Democratic Leaders Are Still Ignoring The Panhandle And West Texas

I received an e-mail from the Texas Democratic Party leadership in Austin yesterday. Here is part of that e-mail:

(Austin) - The Texas Democratic Party today announced the second phase of their Latino engagement program known as The Promesa Project.

Through this project, Texas Democrats seek to engage young Latinos and ask them to be our Democratic messengers to their family, friends and social networks. Research found that young Latinos, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college, are increasingly becoming the trusted sources of political information within their familial units. Another study found that young people are now getting more of their news via online sources than from television. Based on those findings, the Texas Democratic Party constructed Promesa to utilize a combination of online and grassroots techniques to recruit and engage young Latinos.

In this second phase of Promesa, Texas Democrats will launch a Fellowship Program and place fellows in at least eleven campuses across Texas, including: UTEP, UT-Pan Am, UTSA, UT, U of H, A&M-International, UT-Brownsville, UT-Arlington, UNT-Dallas, UH-Downtown, and A&M CC.

"These universities were selected because they have a large Latino enrollment and is perfectly located to provide the opportunity to affect several local competitive races,” said TDP Deputy Executive Director Anthony Gutierrez.

The Promesa Fellowship program will include a training program conducted by experienced campaign professionals. Fellows will then work to register voters, recruit Latinos to the campaign, organize campus events, get out the vote and much more. All the work done by Fellows will be geared towards turning out young Latinos in the Democratic Primary who would likely not participate otherwise.

Now don't get me wrong. I think this is a smart move by the state party, and should have been done long ago. By their attacks on Hispanics (and their language and culture), the Republicans have made the Hispanic demographic (the fasted growing demographic in the state by far) a fertile hunting ground for new Democratic votes.

But as I read the list of universities in phase two of this project, it became clear to me that this, like other efforts by the state party is far from a statewide outreach effort. In the past, they have only reached out to urban areas and tended to ignore the many rural counties in the state. Now it seems they are only reaching out to certain portions of the state's large and growing Hispanic population -- which makes no sense to me, since all areas of the state now have a significant percentage of Hispanics. Why not reach out to ALL of them?


Many of the universities listed are in areas that already vote heavily Democratic (like UTEP, UT-Pan Am, UTSA, A&M-International, and UT_Brownsville), and I have no problem with that. I don't doubt there are untapped Democratic votes in those areas, and it makes sense to go after them.

But where is the outreach to Hispanic college students (and their families) in West Texas and the Panhandle? It's not like those areas don't have some significant colleges ripe for an outreach. There is Texas Tech in Lubbock, one of the largest universities in the state, where 15% of the student body is of Hispanic heritage. And a couple of hours north of Tech is West Texas A&M, where 20% of the student body is of Hispanic heritage. Together these two schools have more than 6,000 Hispanic students, who could be invaluable in reaching out to a large and growing portion of the population in these two areas.

Just in the Panhandle alone, there are 12 of its 26 counties that already have a majority Hispanic population. And there are many others that are nearing the tipping point, where they will also become majority Hispanic. The fact is that the percentage of whites in the Panhandle is decreasing (as many of the young move to other areas and the elderly die off), while the Hispanic percentage continues a strong growth -- and will do so for the foreseeable future.

Both the Panhandle and West Texas are ripe for Democratic picking. These areas may be solidly red right now, but there is no reason they couldn't be turned blue in a fairly short period of time. It will eventually happen anyway, but with a little hard work and organization in an outreach to the Hispanic community, it could happen much sooner. But these areas need some help from the state party. The party organizations in these areas are so demoralized and disorganized after years of Republican victories and being ignored by the state party that they need some help.

The Promesa Project could be a very good first step in turning the Panhandle and West Texas blue, but once again they are being ignored. I realize these areas are largely rural and don't have the huge population of other areas of the state, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to count on the area's Hispanic votes in a close statewide election? And wouldn't it be nice to have Panhandle and West Texas voters send a few Democrats to the state legislature instead of the Republicans they now send?

It could happen. But it won't happen until the state party leaders adopt a plan that reaches out to voters in the whole state -- and not just in certain areas. It's time for new leadership in the state party -- leadership that wants to win and is willing to work for that.