Democrat effort in Texas more hype than reality

Austin American-Statesman:

With a splash of national media attention, Democrats on Tuesday launched Battleground Texas, an effort to turn bright red Texas blue.

The effort is the brainchild of some veterans of President Barack Obama’s campaign who hope to bring their political organizing and social media skills to a state that Jeremy Bird, a former national field director for the Obama campaign, acknowledged hasn’t elected a Democrat in 100 statewide races dating back to 1996.

Hyped by a front-page story in Politico last month that generated a lot of buzz, what Battleground Texas actually unveiled Tuesday was very modest: a website and two on-the-ground organizers.

The executive director is Jenn Brown, a native Californian who worked on both Obama presidential campaigns, serving as his field director in the critical battleground state of Ohio in 2012.

The digital director is Christina Gomez, who is returning to her hometown of Austin from a stint in Washington as a digital strategist for the Democratic National Committee. A graduate of Texas State University, Gomez worked in the Texas Legislature for state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer and as director of the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus.

Brown and Gomez are essentially starting from scratch with very little in the way of scratch. But they are buoyed by a sense of confidence that the state’s changing demography and underperformance by the party in the recent, listless past offer the prospect of meaningful gains — even as they acknowledge the enormity of the task ahead. 

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Democrat efforts in Texas are not from lack of organization or effort.  The failures are because Texas is largely rejecting the evils of liberalism.  They see how it has destroyed blue state economies and don't want to eat the same dog food.  Why would any intelligent sentient being want to duplicate, California, Illinois and New York?   If we followed their lead we would be hopelessly in debt and not have the jobs from oil and gas development through fracking.  Just because Texas has a lot of Hispanics, it does not mean they are too unintelligent to not enjoy the economy that conservatism has built in Texas.