Progressive Populist Reformer
Volume I, Issue I Spring 2003

Body: Newsletter from "the democratic wing of the Texas Democratic Party"

Statement of Purpose: The Progressive Populist Caucus stands for reclaiming the Democratic Party of Texas' historic purpose of empowering grassroots Democrats to achieve a more just society, returning our party and state government to the people first, by curtailing the influence of corporations and powerful moneyed interests in diluting the power of the people, advancing basic human rights through election and electoral reform, expanding grassroots, low income and minority participation in our party and government, universal healthcare for Texans, a moratorium of the death penalty and incarceration of petty drug users, universal early childhood and higher education and job training, reforms to enable workers a living wage and right to organize workplaces without unfair coercion and manipulation by employers, clean air and water and fair trade for Texans without loss of democracy or local sovereignty.

Hey PPC, Why Don't You Spend Your Time Criticizing Bush?
Some might ask, "Why is the Progressive Populist Caucus focusing on the Party. Isn’t your time better spent going after Bush?"

Simply put, we in the Caucus leadership have come to the conclusion that the Democratic Party of Texas (and elsewhere) has lost both its effectiveness and ability to move hearts and minds of the electorate. The results over nearly the last decade support this assessment. Clearly what we are doing and how we are doing it as a Party are not working. Like most organizations, the TDP has cycled into a phase of denial of many dysfunctions, structural, process, ideological and leadership to mention a few. It is time for a change.

The solution, we believe, lies in reform of the party to make it more open to new people and new ideas. Reform to foster improvement of process to encourage more, not less, participation. Reform of rules in some instances. Distribution of power to concentrate it less in the hands of a few and involve more in its leadership, including the SDEC and County Chairs. Of major concern to our Caucus is the reality that the tail wags the dog in this Party. Candidates and their consultants are largely setting the agenda for the Party and shaping the issues on which we stand. We believe it should be the other way around. Reform in this aspect of our operations should result in a Platform, which expresses the views of the people in this Party and the recruitment of candidates who represent our views. On specific reforms, see the article below.

This party has not seen meaningful reforms since the 70’s with the successful incursion into its leadership by the Billie Carr forces and the liberals. It is time for another round of reform to make us better to meet the challenges of the Bush and Perry administrations and the Republican onslaught of regressive policies, which deny, hurt and divide people.

The vision our Caucus has for reform culminates with a new era of progressive public policy, which emphasizes social and economic justice. See our Statement of Purpose above. Our vision is populist in that it puts the needs of ordinary Texans above corporations and the power elite who now largely control the agenda of this Party. There is abundant evidence that standing for progressive and populist positions will resonate with a majority of the electorate.

We recommend two books addressing this phenomenon: The Emerging Democratic Majority and Made in Texas, both published recently.

Reform is tough and sometimes punishing. It is always painful because, it involves change and those in power are more often than not resistant to change. It nearly always, in a review of history, requires that those who cannot adapt to change step aside and make way for a new generation of leadership. It is also painful for the reformers because we act out of love for our Party but are often attacked for taking tough positions and are called "disrupters". We, the reformers, all from grassroots Precinct, County and Club organizing backgrounds, are in this to prepare our Party to once again be relevant and victorious. We are not seeking power for ourselves, but for future generations of successful Texas Democrats. Join us in this hard work.

A Report on our Party Reform Work
The Progressive Populist Caucus was formed at our State Convention in June, 2002. We vowed at that time to begin the process of reforming our Party to return it to the progressive and populist values so richly imbedded in our history.

We have been diligently working to introduce Party reforms to our fellow Democrats and more recently, our Party leadership. The ultimate goal is a rejuvenated Party better led and equipped to advocate public policy and field candidates more relevant to grassroots Texans. We number over 400 Party activists across the State with 6 active regional groups in North Texas, Central Texas, San Antonio and the Valley, Houston and Southeast Texas as well as West Texas. Here is what we have embarked on to-date and the result.

• Introduced through members on the SDEC a resolution designed to provide decentralized communication from our State Party to local Party members.
• Submitted a resolution empowering the SDEC with greater responsibility by creating an SDEC Campaign Committee.
• Supported a resolution developed by one of our Caucus members creating a Party Reform Commission.

Note: These resolutions were tabled at the January 15 SDEC meeting and did not make it to floor based on what we judge to be erroneous parliamentary rulings. Leadership is now simply ignoring them and as of this writing, has failed to meet with our group as was promised to us just prior to the last SDEC meeting. We continue to advocate the hearing of these resolutions and will not give up until they are acted on.

• We introduced a resolution through several of our Caucus members on the SDEC asking the current Chair to step aside for new Party leadership to emerge to introduce obviously-needed reforms to make our Party relevant. It was voted down in committee but allowed open debate on the meeting floor.
• Ten courageous SDEC members supported the resolution, which was given the first open debate by the SDEC that anyone can remember in recent years. We were defeated soundly but many consider the open debate a victory in itself. We observed several violations of
  • Parliamentary procedure, including allowing the Party Chair to be present during the debate, specifically disallowed by Roberts Rules of Order. Party leadership also has failed to meet with us on these important issues of democratic process.
• We advocated the State Party helping County Chairs rebuild grassroots structure to help restore our successful tradition of Precinct-level voter identification, registration and mobilization.
• A Grassroots Committee was formed by the State Party resulting from our reform efforts and members of our Caucus are actively involved with it. A small but significant beginning but it remains to be seen whether this is cosmetics or a genuine interest in addressing solutions to a Party disconnected from its base.

Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that our Party is in crisis? Since the beginning of her term our Chair has led us to less than half a percent increase in turnout compared to l994 while the Republicans have increased their turnout by 16%, adding 59 times more votes to their turnout than we Democrats. The downward trend is irrefutable. This trend is not all the Party Chair’s fault; we all have a stake in it.

Our Party leaders continue to tell us we have continued to fail in turning out our base because of the popularity of Bush, who is bent on taking this nation to a war without justification to our people and the threat of terrorist acts in our land. In your heart do you believe this is the reason struggling working people in this state won’t support Democrats or for that matter, even bother to vote? Or is it because our State Party leaders have not been effective in taking a bold stand on key issues affecting all our lives; healthcare, education and making a living wage for our labor, to name a few? Is it because we have failed to recruit and hold accountable statewide candidates who speak to us about bread and butter issues and a bold Democratic Party plan on public policy designed to bring desperately needed services to our communities and people? Or is it that our Party leaders have for over a decade, not just during the current Chair’s tenure, neglected the development of our base, including core low-income constituents with support for precinct-level mobilization work? We think it is all of the above and a massive reform of how our beloved Party works and how it is led is the necessary starting point.

What is the Progressive Populist Caucus and what gives it the right to demand reform of our Party? We are people who do the "grunt" work at the Precinct and Club level to support our Party and candidates. As our Caucus chair, typical of our Steering Committee members and membership, I have organized Precinct 148 in Houston for the past 8 years with building a loyalist Democrat database, block walking, signs, meetings, phoning and mailings out of my own pocket; I pride myself that I have done this kind of Party work for over 30 years. Others on our Steering Committee organize and lead local Clubs, serve on the SDEC, volunteer at Party headquarters stuffing envelopes and running phone banks and the hands-on work vital to the Party. Jim Mattox, the consummate grassroots advocate, has been a presence at our meetings to urge us on to advocate reform. It was Jim who suggested the theme we use with our name. We hope he will consent to a draft to lead our Party if we can make the leadership change necessary to get genuine reforms started.

Elsewhere in this newsletter we outline some Party Reform ideas generated by our Strategy Committee. We would like your feedback. Tell us how we can help you introduce positive reforms which will bring our State Party back into relevance with Texas voters to help us all regain political power to advocate the public policy people care about. We will then continue to mobilize our Caucus member to work with you to get the job done to reform our beloved Party and make it relevant once again.

We want to lock arms with you, our Party leaders, to reform our Party’s leadership, structure, rules, candidate recruitment, campaign funding methods, election process, grassroots party-building techniques, resolutions and platform process to hear the voice of the people to make our party relevant again as a clear alternative to Republican service to the wealthy and corporations.

Let us hear from you. Visit our web site to see our Working Principles at www.TexasPopulists.com. Let us hear from you as to how we can mobilize to help you get your challenging job done at escramble('info','texaspopulists.com');"> and work together to reform our Party to be once again effective and relevant.

Give us your email address so that we can periodically communicate with you.

Invite one of our members to address your local leadership groups to discuss resolutions and proposals to start the reform process.

• 2002 Party Campaign Spending
• Shortchanged Grassroots Mobilization
• A Plan to Improve for the Future

These observations are based on a cursory review of major categories of campaign spending by the State Party (not including internal operating expenses) during the period July-Dec. 2002 from their reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission. The numbers are rounded estimates and are not to be construed as a detailed audit, in order to gain an overall perspective of spending priorities set by the Party and/or their consultants. As best as possible this analysis excludes costs, which appear to have been associated with running the El Paso convention. The observations are made from the perspective of a marketing communications professional with significant political campaign experience in order to improve future allocation and utilization of Party financial resources.

The overall total reviewed in campaign reports, though not inclusive of campaign funds allocated and spent by individual campaigns, is estimated at nearly $10 million. This is a significant sum by any measure but by standards of attempting to influence an electorate in Texas of several million, modest -- given the dozen or so categories of activity ranging from direct mail, phone banking, media and field activity. The modesty of the amount would suggest the need for careful thought on prioritizing areas of activity to maximize results. 94% of the Party budget was allocated to initiatives other than grassroots mobilization; only 6% was spent on grassroots work. If the geographic location of the "vendors" suggests anything, it appears location of spending was too random and chaotic to maximize effectiveness. Additionally, it appears that priorities and funds allocation were decisions left to consultants with little input from County Chairs and SDEC representatives. The major categories of campaign spending were:

• Media-$4.4 million
• Direct Mail and Phone Banking $4 million
• Field Services and Literature-$600,000
• Consulting-$330,000
• Contract Services-$175,000
• Polling and Research-$100,000
• Misc.-$200,000

42 "vendors" were utilized over this six-month period. Without precise information about the supervisory structure in place to manage such a large number of "vendors" it is difficult to make a certain assessment of the appropriateness of such a quantity of vendors. However, it is reasonable to ask whether trained, knowledgeable supervision was in place to assure competent oversight of both budgeting, spending and the efficacy of the activity engaged? Further, who was that supervision and were they accountable to Party officials for detailed budget and project management reporting and approval?

17 of the "vendors" were out of town resources. They may indeed have been the best choices based on experience and track record. However, given that Dallas is regarded as the "direct marketing" center of the U.S., Houston the telemarketing center of America, with some of America’s largest media buying services and advertising agencies located in Dallas, Austin and Houston, as well as several of America’s most respected Hispanic marketing communications companies in San Antonio and Houston as well as some of America’s most respected political consultants born and bred in Texas, one would have to ask:

• Why would over $250,000 have to be spent with direct mail firms in San Francisco?
• Why would over $4 million have to be spent for "media" with Washington DC firms?
• Why would over $120,000 have to be spent for "consulting" with firms in San Francisco, Chicago and Baton Rouge? Or nearly $100,000 in "polling or research" with a firm in DC? Or, $12,000 for un-described projects spent in Mill Valley with Dave Richards and DC with Strother Duffy, LTD?
• Nearly half of the total $10 million tallied was spent through out of state firms. Was that the wisest allocation of the budget based on using the best available vendors?
• Though a small matter, why would a graphics design project need to be awarded to a DC based firm, when Austin is one of the creative centers of America?

$600,000 was spent for "field services and literature" among 4 firms in Texas. "field services" fees were paid to an uncountable number of other small vendors across the State over and above this amount, but likely would add only about half again this sum in total. Of the nearly $10 million, only 6% of the total campaign activity allocation appears to have been spend "on the ground, at the grassroots". Yet, there is no indication that their work included voter registration or resultant data base creation and management and subsequent voter mobilization to get out the vote including already registered loyalist Democratic voters. It would be useful to know what kind of productivity tracking and results accountability reporting exists to document their actual work. Or was much of this the infamous "walking around money" legendary in Democratic campaigns? A key question is whether this "field work" is in appropriate proportion to the direct mail and media spending discussed below. Was it supported by time sheets and task lists? Perhaps the most concerning question is why was over 60% spent with one firm in the DFW area?

44% of the total spending went to "Media". It appears this was broadcast and print production and media buys, mostly made by out of state firms. Was the standard 15% media commission allowed or was it negotiated down as is the industry practice? Were gross and target rating point goals given to Party experts supervising? Were affidavits provided post-buy to document actual buy executions. How about ratings to goal reports? Was the allocation for media in proportion to "field services" and grassroots mobilization spending? How about production costs in ratio to actual media buys?

40% of spending was allocated to direct mail and phone banking. 8 local and 2 out of state firms were used for direct mail services, total 10. About 40% of the total was spent with one Austin firm, the Thompson Group on behalf of the Partnership as I understand it. Was the "one size fits all" template approach appropriate for message customization per the many candidates dispersed around the State in differing markets and circumstances? Were they and the other firms accountable for documentation of executed mailings to assure candidates that they actually were printed or delivered to post offices timely?

Several firms with significant portions of the overall budget were tasked with highly specialized activity in various disparate specializations. For example, direct mail and phone banking, two usually highly specialized endeavors requiring very different expertise usually not found with a single firm. One firm, the Thompson Group was tasked with direct mail and media projects. Another was tasked with phone banking and printing. This task mixing is highly unusual given the unique specialization of these areas of expertise.

Bottom Line Recommendation
The party chair in consultation with the SDEC communications committee appoint a pro-bono team of marketing communications experts in these fields precluded from doing business with the party, to serve as unpaid advisors to those in the state party selecting, negotiating With and interfacing With key Vendors or qualified consultants in:

• grassroots training,
• mobilization and management,
• direct mail,
• phone banking,
• broadcast and print production,
• media time and space buying,
• media relations and market research firms.

The Party's Future Depends on Restoring Grassroots Voter Mobilization
The 2002 election debacle has proven conclusively that throwing media money at the electorate, without an on-the-ground campaign to pull Democratic voters to the polls, is accomplishing nothing except enriching the consultants.

The strategy for the future, quite literally for the Democratic Party of Texas, has to involve two core initiatives:

• Mobilize Democratic voter loyalists through revitalized precinct organization, with greater support in those precincts from County organizations and the State Party.
• A massive registration, motivation and GOTV effort in precincts long ago ignored and abandoned by the Democratic Party, populated by low income Latino Americans, African Americans and Anglos.

Mobilizing the Base
The author of this article speaks with some authority. He has been an organizer at the Precinct level for decades. Most recently, over the past 8 years he has served as the volunteer organizer for Precinct 148 in Houston, taking on this task to support the Democratic Precinct Chair. He recruited his current Precinct Chair when the previous Chair retired after many years of service. He has built a database of frequent voting Democrats by going to the County Courthouse and pulling the Primary voting records to identify the loyalists as well as cobble together others lists which have come his way from Campaigns he has assisted in his Precinct. He has self-funded mailings to invite Democrats in the Precinct to social gatherings and meetings; he has created telephone lists and dialed endlessly to recruit workers and build participation in gatherings, sign distributions and block walking. He has organized attendees to participate in Precinct Conventions and continually updated his Precinct database. Many volunteers do not have the skills necessary, financial resources or the computer power to build and maintain such lists, let alone fund mailings and social gatherings. State Party officials might ask why he is not a Sustaining Member of the State Party. It is because he finances several mailings a year in his Precinct, each time costing about $90. The computer power and list-building work should appropriately be developed by some combination of the County Democratic organization and the State Party leveraging their vendor relationships.

The Party has, by fiat, turned over initiative #1 largely to the campaign organizations of candidates, both incumbents and newcomers, except for a few willing activist-volunteers who do the hard, grunt work necessary to maintain voter lists, do the contact and motivation and on election day get them to the polls. In many instances Precinct Chairs view their job mainly to run elections, leaving voter mobilization to others.

County Chairs, aided by local leadership in the SDEC and Senate District organizations are going to have to launch a massive statewide effort to staff unfilled Precinct Chairs, retrain Precinct Chairs viewing their job as mainly running elections or support them with help in recruiting organizers from within their Precincts to take on the task of mobilizing voters. The County organizations, with much more support than previously supplied by the State Party, are going to have to be equipped with both funds and tools necessary to identify and communicate with the frequent and occasional voting Democrats. In high resident turnover and high growth newer precincts, this is going to have to include lists of eligible but unregistered voters.

The State Party should play a key role in developing precinct organizing/mobilizing training programs and sophisticated data base information on Democratic voters from across the state and the computer support necessary to assist the Counties and local organizations down to the precinct level in turning that data into usable, on-the-ground voter lists for block walking, local phoning, emailing, snail mailing and other contact activity to result in getting those voters to the polls. Candidates, incumbents and newcomers alike, are going to have to be required to assist in funding these on-the-ground activities before they spend their first dollar on media.

The Party is going to have to play a stronger role in conveying to Candidates and their consultants the issues important to Democratic voters at the grassroots, not the other way around. This is crucial; this party in the past two decades has been largely driven by issues developed by consultants. The Platform is a product mainly of campaign consultants, not the thinking of the people in their neighborhoods and communities. The people are going to have to take their Party back from the consultants and take charge of the consultants and give strong guidance to Candidates as to what issues are important to them.

Party Building
The hard work of building the Party has clearly been neglected for decades, likely because it is in fact such hard work. Note the evidence; a half a percent voter growth since 1994 for Democrats, while we know the population has grown many times that half a percent. So, the Party is in a net loss position in its growth.

The Consultants have advised both the Party and our Candidates to let the hard work be done by "media buys". The reality about the use of media well known to marketing experts in the commercial sector is that media is only successful when it serves to support on-the-ground activity such as sales forces, retail shelf space and expanded distribution and the like. In the political world, Consultants have convinced gullible and inexperienced Candidates that media can mobilize voters alone because they make no media fees from grassroots organizing work. There certainly are other explanations for the difficulty in Party building; the cocooning phenomenon making it hard to root people out of their homes to volunteer, the typical 20% residential turnover (higher in low income communities) yearly, voter demoralization with the political system so heavily influenced by corporate money and big-money influence peddling, to name a few. But we now know media alone does not get the job done, if we learned nothing else from election 2002.

This author has direct, hands-on experience in lower income voter mobilization. During the period 2000 and 2002 he was a part of a small group who analyzed the voter data in Harris County and learned that there are 400,000 eligible but unregistered low income and minority voters in that region. That translates to well over a million across the State. This group raised the funds and tested an intensive voter mobilization program in selective Precincts through two election cycles and demonstrated that it was possible, going door to door and first registering, maintaining voter databases and then returning to those voters by local contact and door-to-door work to turn them out. Their results, using paid grassroots organizers, included registering about 10,000 new low-income voters and exceeding voter turnouts among this population by 10% compared to similarly populated Precincts where no mobilization efforts were mounted. They learned, as have other studies like this around the USA, that it takes personal contact, in densely populated areas such as apartment complexes and issues appealing to those in such neighborhoods and door-to-door work to mobilize this key voter population, once the core constituency of the Democratic Party. In recent decades the Consultants had us convinced that if we targeted "soccer moms" and "suburban techies", we could build a voter base. Now we know we cannot abandon our core, low income and minority voters who, if presented with classical bread and butter issues and a kept-promise for help in bettering their neighborhoods, improving education and access to a living wage as well as healthcare for their families, Democrats win.

No one said it is inexpensive; estimates range from $15 to $25 per mobilized voter with paid supervisors, relentless record-keeping, fairly paid field workers to register and door to door work on election day, neighbor to neighbor. But compared to the multi-million dollar media budgets in large urban areas, it is highly affordable. What is needed is a Party with the will to seek the funds and provide Party-building support, which translates into a growing, not shrinking voter base. This must include primary emphasis on low income and minority voters who are naturally attracted to the Democratic Party promise for a better life.

What is also needed is the will on the part of incumbent Democrats who are willing to "change the molecular structure" of their voter base and expand the universe of voting Democrats. Too many Democratic incumbents have been heard by this author to say…"I know who my voters are who I can rely on to turn out on election day for me", rather than take the courageous step of reaching out in their Districts and bring in new voters to make this truly a participatory democracy. Currently too many of our Democratic incumbents are fostering a system of the "tyranny" of a shrinking voter population representing a statistical minority of eligible voters, returning incumbents to office who represent them, not the greater mass of their constituents who have opted out of the voting process in despair.

At the heart of the progressive and populist movement is Party building with issues which address the core needs
of the people and candidates and campaigns dedicated to touching people where they live, in their neighborhoods
Materials) on grassroots mobilization for the County Chairs; train trainers within the Counties and precincts. This will go a long way toward restoring democracy, which must be the first priority of the Democratic Party.

REFORM IDEAS FROM OUR CAUCUS STRATEGY COMMITTEE

These reform ideas have been developed by our Caucus Strategy Committee in discussions with County Chairs, SDEC members and with members of our Caucus:

• Create a Reform Commission to guide the Party through a top to bottom reform process
• Clarify the relationship between the SDEC and County Chairs, particularly but not limited to campaign season
• Regionalization of communications within the State Party
• Creation of SDEC Campaign Committee-perhaps adding County Chair representation
• More County Chair participation in Party Strategic Planning
• Immediate focus group discussions with County Chairs on their party-building and grassroots development needs
• State Party provide the County chairs more grassroots development materials from the best data sources, such as precinct by precinct frequent voter lists, walk lists, telephone lists, email and snail mail lists
• State Party provide training programs (including seminars, videos, audio tapes, and written)
• State Party provide County Chairs and local candidates with best quality targeted mailing lists, including localized, but Statewide data base of Dem. Voter lists, or local implementation including content and graphics, printing, mailing services
• Print ad and newsletter templates with Democratic themes (issues) but for local customization
• Statewide sponsored issues polling, demographic studies and Democratic voter focus groups, but with localized adjustment to allow for issues difference by region
• Statewide sponsored think tanks on Democratic issues (i.e.: using local university academics with issues expertise),pull best and brightest from around the state together in think tanks
• Statewide Democrat expert speakers on key platform items, dispatched for meeting and press briefings in local areas
• Idea sharing among top performing clubs, recognized by the State Party for unique accomplishments and pulled together for idea generation.
• New resident mailings statewide inviting involvement with the local Party as well as voter registration
• Statewide but localized new resident lists supplied to County Chairs for voter registration
• Database assistance by State Party to transform new voter registration lists into turnout/GOTV lists for campaigns
• Lower cost counterpart to Sustaining Member campaign for lower income people
• Simplified operating instructions for clubs on how clubs can make contributions and create PACS
• Clarify Senate District Chair and SDEC objectives and empower them with duties during non-convention periods
• Create guidelines for local and Statewide Democratic Candidates and their consultants to comply with basic loyalty to the Party and its platform in exchange for their use of the Party’s name and reputation
• Create channel for local volunteers interested in working on State Party committees and projects
• Help from State Party in filling local precinct chair vacancies
• Create a statewide email network and 24 hour telephone hotline; a discussion site dedicated to County Chairs and Party Chair; secure grants to fund providing email capability to those County Chairs not having
• Provide support to all Counties with a Web site template and technical support
• Develop a program to assist County Chairs in reintegrating Democrat elected office holders into support for the local Party and its activities
• A pro bono committee of media/communications experts advising the SDEC Finance Committee on appropriate use of campaign consultants
• Create process whereby Platform Committee is informed by resolutions from Party activists in their deliberations and broaden grassroots participation in Platform writing in advance of Convention, including Platform hearings scheduled around the State
• Redefine Precinct Chair duties and responsibilities to include voter mobilization

MEMBERSHIP FORM

Every Voting Member and Officer of the Progressive Populist Caucus, at every level (state, regional, and sub regional), shall fill out the membership form.

Progressive Populist Declaration

I am a member of the Democratic Party. I will not vote in the nominating Primary of, nor participate in the nominating Convention of, any political party but the Democratic Party. In general principle, I support the nominees of the Democratic Party in all partisan General Elections, but I reserve the democratic choice to make exceptions in the case of nominees who do not display support for the Democratic Party’s platform or its traditional progressive populist ideals. I will strive to hold Democratic candidates and office-holders accountable to such values. I further declare that I support the Strategic Plan of the Progressive Populist Caucus as it is presently constituted and as it may be amended from time to time through democratic means. I reserve the democratic freedom to retract this Declaration and thereby withdraw from Voting Membership in the PPC.

Please click here if you'd like to become a member of the PPC.

STEERING COMMITTTEE OF THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST CAUCUS

OFFICERS

Chair: Stan Merriman, Harris County
Secretary: Kathy Curley, Dallas County
Treasurer: Armando C. Cadena, Bexar County
Sgt. at Arms: Anna V. Casey, Collin County
Membership: John Curley, Dallas County
Strategy Chair: John Courage, Bexar County
Convention Strategy Chair: John Behrman, Harris County
Parlimentarian: David Van Os, Bexar County

Vice Chairs:

San Antonio/South: Ann Marie Schroeder, Bexar County
Austin/Central: Bruce W. Barrick, Travis County
Houston/SouthEast: Julie Jackson Lusby, Harris County
DFW/North: Bill Howell, Dallas County
West: Wild Horse, El Paso

"Texas belongs to the people, not the corporations." - James Stephen Hogg, l896