Govt 2306 Ch 5 Fall 2019 Notes EPCC Professor Seymour

1. Chapter 5 – Political Parties: Texas in Blue and Red

2. Chapter 5: Political Parties
Learning Objectives
5.1 Describe the function of political parties in Texas.
5.2 Explain the levels or organization of political parties and
their roles.
5.3 Outline the changes in party dominance since the Civil War.
5.4 Analyze the factors that affect party competition.
5.5 Evaluate the impact third parties have had on Texas party
politics and the challenges they face.

3. Chapter 5: Political Parties
From Blue to Red
• In the century after Reconstruction, Democrats dominated Texas politics.
• Most Texans identified as “yellow dog” Democrats, a group that got their
name because they would rather vote for a yellow dog than a
Republican.
• The 1994 gubernatorial election, with candidates Ann Richards and
George W. Bush however, marked a turning point in Texas party politics.
• Texas shifted politically to suburban, middleclass conservatism with
strong ties to the Christian Right.
• Bush, in a Dallas debate, said it all: “I’m the conservative candidate and
she’s the liberal.” He won by 8 percent.

4. Purpose and Functions of Political
Parties
4

5. The Function of Parties
Nowhere does the US Constitution mention the word “party”
although they have become a normal part of government today.
Political Ideology
Conservative: a political philosophy that believes in
limited government, free markets, and individual
entrepreneurship
Liberal: a political philosophy that emphasizes social
equality and a large role for government to protect
liberties and alleviate social problems

6. Why do we have political parties?
6

7. Political Polarization in the United
States
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8. Division within both Political Parties
“Red Kids” and “Blue Kids
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9. The Function of Parties
Recruiting Candidates
• Local and state party leaders evaluate potential candidates, often
screening them for quality and party loyalty.
• Parties have traditionally recruited for partisan races, although
they have expanded to include non-partisan local races
• Parties also recruit candidates to widen the appeal of the party.
• Starting with the election of Governor Bush, Republicans have
made concerted efforts to recruit Hispanics to run for office in
order to make inroads into socially conservative segments within
Texas’s growing Hispanic population.

10. The Function of Parties
Recruiting Candidates
• Early 1900s party leaders nominated candidates for state and local
offices at state conventions
• Power centralized in party elite and special interests which led to
abuse
• 1905 new legislation
– Public primaries to nominate candidates
– Weakened party leadership role in choosing candidates
• Once candidate is identified parties offer support services

11. The Function of Parties
Mobilizing Voters
• Turnout is critical to electoral victory.
• During elections, political parties fire up their turnout machines to
get loyal voters to the polls to support party-endorsed candidates.
• Party activists often call other members to remind them to vote
and even provide transportation to the polls.

12. The Function of Parties
Articulating Interests
• Parties represent groups of citizens with shared values.
• Political ideology = strong predictor of party identification
• Parties also have an incentive to sharpen their differences: If voters
perceive marked distinctions, parties can recruit candidates and
passionate voters more effectively.
• Partisans: strongly committed members of a party
– Volunteer more time and money
– More likely to turn out to vote
– More ideologically extreme

13. The Function of Parties
Organizing Government
• Parties work to make sure that their candidates, once
elected, toe the party line to deliver on electoral
promises.
• Organize legislators into forums to work together and
formulate policy
• Parties provide accountability to voters

14. Party Organization
Party Organization
• The backbone of the party is the party organization: the group of
individuals who volunteer or are paid minimally for positions at local and
state levels.
• Parties are hierarchical, with authority flowing from the national to state
to local levels.
• However, due to the decentralization of party structure in the United
States, state and local activists wield considerable influence over the
future of the party and often go to battle over policy and politics.
Decentralization: the distribution of authority between national,
state, and local party organizations so that each level exercises a
degree of independent authority

15. Party Organization
Party Organization
• Precinct Chairs: Counties are subdivided into smaller units called precincts. Precinct
chairs are elected in the party’s primary and serve for two years. As the most local
party leaders, the precinct chairs recruit volunteers, coordinate campaign workers
during elections, and participate in get-out-the-vote and voter registration drives.
• County Party Chairs: County party chairs recruit candidates to run for local or
regional offices, act as a spokesperson for local issues, manage the funds of the
local party, and serve with precinct chairs.
• State Party Chairs: The state party chair’s primary responsibility is to develop and
communicate the party’s brand to the voters and to raise and manage political
funds for the party at the state level.
• Party Executive Committees: Executive committee members are the center of
party power, as they govern the operations of the party and direct the overall
message.

16. Party Organization

17. Party Organization
Party Conventions
• Every two years, the party hosts a convention
– Decide how party functions
– Set political agenda
• Precinct conventions elect delegates to county conventions.
• County conventions elect delegates to the state convention but also
may submit resolutions that may become part of the party platform.
Party Platform: a list of values, beliefs, and policy issues that are
endorsed and supported by a political party

18. Party Organization
Party Platforms
• Democrats
– Issue-based
– Prominent words: state, health, public, programs
• Republicans
– More negative posture
– Prominent words: oppose, united, public
• Used for political marketing
• Help to understand party position
• Ideological distance between party platforms increasing

19. Party Organization

20. Party Platforms
Democratic Party Platform Republican Party Platform
ENFORCE THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 REPEAL THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965
STRONGLY OPPOSE “REPARATIVE THERAPY” FOR
LGBT TEXANS
REPARATIVE THERAPY IS A ‘CURE’ FOR
HOMOSEXUALITY
CLIMATE CHANGE IS A REAL AND SERIOUS THREAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS A CONSIPIRACY
REDUCE POVERTY AND HUNGER DRUG TEST WELFARE RECIPIENTS
EDUCATION IS A BUDGET PRIORITH ABOLISH THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
SUPPORT COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM SUPPORT EXPANSION OF BORDER WALL AND
STRENGTHEN IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS
RESPECT FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS STRENGTHEN ABORTION RESTRICTIONS INCLUDING
IN CASES OF RAPE OR INCEST
TAKE ACTION AGAINST DISCRIMINATION OPPOSE NON-DISCRIMINATION LAWS
UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO PRE-K AND KINDERGARTEN
AND PLACE MORATORIUM ON NEW CHARTER
SCHOOLS
SUPPORT CHARTER SCHOOLS AND RESTRICT
FUNDING TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS
IMPROVE HEALTH OF TEXAS CHILDREN THROUGH
EXPANDED PUBLIC INSURANCE
LIMIT EXPANSION OF MEDICAID AND EXPANSION OF
PUBLIC INSURANCE FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

21. Party Platform – Guns/Gun Safety

22. • Republicans first added support for letting Texans carry a handgun
without a permit — what’s also known as “constitutional carry” – to
their platform in 2012. Democrats have long supported
strengthening and reforming current gun laws, and their 2018
platform calls for the repeal of current laws allowing for “open
carry” of handguns and assault rifles.
• Following the shooting at Santa Fe high school that left 10 dead,
both parties expanded the sections of their platforms dealing with
guns. The GOP platform now includes opposition to “red flag” laws,
which allow for the temporary removal of firearms from someone
who poses an immediate danger. The Democrats added a plank to
support allowing law enforcement to confiscate firearms from
suspects charged with domestic violence, stalking, human
trafficking and other crimes.
Party Platform – Guns/Gun Safety

23. Party Platform – Border Wall

24. Party Platform – Border Wall
• Texas Republicans this year passed a plank in
support of border security funding that
mentioned “a border wall, or fence everywhere
along the border where it is feasible and useful.”
This replaced an earlier plank that called for
“building a high wall with a wide gate ... where it
is deemed effective and cost-efficient.”
• Democrats' denouncement of a border wall is
nothing new; similar language was present in the
2016 platform.

25. Party Platform – LGBT Rights

26. Party Platform – LGBT Rights
• Texas Republicans softened their language opposing
homosexuality and same-sex marriage in this year’s
platform. Two years earlier, the platform described
homosexuality as “a chosen behavior that is contrary to
the fundamental unchanging truths.” The GOP
maintained its support for a bill regulating which
restrooms transgender Texans can use.
• The Democrats' LGBTQ Rights plank is nearly identical
to the 2016 one, including support for the right of
transgender Texans to use facilities consistent with
their gender identity regardless of what gender they
were identified as having at birth.

27. Party Platform – Marijuana

28. Party Platform – Marijuana
• Republicans have inched the platform away from
a firm anti-marijuana stance in recent years. This
year, the party passed a plank that supports
decriminalizing possession of small amounts of
marijuana.
• Democrats have advocated for marijuana
decriminalization since 2012, but this year, they
tweaked platform language to call for full
legalization.

29. Party Platform – School Subsidies

30. Party Platform – School Subsidies
• Democrats have long opposed subsidizing private
school education but added language to this
year’s platform to argue that such subsidies
would particularly affect access to special
education services for Texas students with
disabilities.
• The GOP modified its platform, which has long
supported school choice, to assert that “no child
should be forced to attend a failing school,” and
to “reject the intrusion of government in private,
parochial, or homeschools.”

31. Party Platform – Voter ID Requirements

32. Party Platform – Voter ID Requirements
• Neither party’s position on this issue has drastically
changed in recent years. But Democrats added
language to their platform this year in support of
“complete adherence to the federal ‘Motor Voter’
laws” which allows states to give residents the
opportunity to register to vote at the same time that
they apply for or renew their driver’s licenses.
• The Republican platform calls for the repeal of those
laws. In May, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals temporarily blocked a lower court ruling
mandating Texas enact a voter registration system that
would allow drivers to register to vote when they
renew their driver’s licenses online.

33. Party Platform – Abortion/Right to Life
• Parental Consent: We support parental consent for all
medical care, counseling, etc., for all minors.
• Alternatives to Abortion: Until abortion is made illegal in
Texas, we urge the Republican Party of Texas and the
Texas Legislature to assist in educating the public
regarding alternatives to abortion, especially adoption.
• Discriminatory Abortion: We support legislation such as
the “Preborn Non-Discrimination Act”v (PreNDA) to
close existing discriminatory loopholes that fail to
protect unborn children suspected of having a “fetal
anomaly” or disability and to enact anti-discriminatory
language to apply additional protections to unborn
children at risk of being aborted because of their sex,
race, or disability, in addition to providing families with
information about life-affirming social and medical
services available to them in Texas, such as perinatal
palliative care.
• Planned Parenthood: We support completely eliminating
public funding for Planned Parenthood and any other
abortion providers and all their affiliates, and we oppose
their digital or physical presence in our schools and
other public institutions. We also support elimination of
public funding for embryonic stem cell research,
research on fetal tissue, or human cloning.
• Texas Democrats believe in the fundamental American values
of freedom, privacy and personal responsibility. We believe in
the right to make sound, responsible personal healthcare
choices for ourselves and our families.
• Trust Texans to make personal and responsible decisions about
whether and when to bear children, in consultation with their
families, physicians, personal consciences, and/or their faith;
• Oppose TRAP (targeted regulation of abortion providers)
legislation, which create dangerous restrictions on Texans’
access to abortion care;
• Support using sound, mainstream medical science and
evidence-based data to guide reproductive health care
policies;
• Recognize the product of a joined egg and sperm has no
independent status, standing, entitlements or rights that
would in any way usurp or supersede the rights of the mother
or woman which are paramount;
• Support individuals’ rights to acquire all forms of
contraception, including long-acting reversible contraception,
abortion care, or other reproductive services through their
health insurance provider without additional premiums;
• Support family planning funding for pregnancy prevention and
preventive health care by all qualified providers in regulated,
licensed medical facilities, including Planned Parenthood;
• Remove funding for crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) whose
misrepresentations and arguably fraudulent customer
acquisition and service practices draw unsuspecting young
women through their doors;

34. Political Parties in Texas –
Five Stages
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35. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas
Democratic Reign in the Postbellum Era
• Republicans represented Texas immediately following Civil War,
during Reconstruction
• Once the national government pulled its soldiers out of Texas, many
Texans rallied against the Republican Party—associating it with the
scarcity that followed the Civil War and unwanted military rule.
• Democrats won all the congressional seats in 1871, took majority
control of the state legislature in 1872, and captured the
governorship in 1873.
• For more than 130 years after the Civil War, Texas was dominated by
the Democratic Party.

36. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas
The Decline of Democrats
• In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt pushed through the New Deal, which
enabled Democrats to tie voters closer to party through patronage—participation
in party politics meant contracts, jobs, and status.
• During President Roosevelt’s first term, the Supreme Court declared much of the
New Deal legislation unconstitutional.
• The vice president, John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner, was a Texas Democrat but
came from the conservative rural wing of the party. He and other conservative
Democrats, known as the “Texas Regulars,” quietly and privately began to drum
up opposition to Roosevelt’s court-packing plan.

37. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas
The Decline of Democrats
• In the 1952 presidential election, the state Democratic convention
divided along ideological lines, with some supporting national
Democratic welfare programs and some supporting a more
conservative economic approach.
• In the 1980s the rise of conservative, pro-Ronald Reagan Democrats,
“blue dog Democrats”
– Cut taxes,
– Increase military spending
– Reduce social services

38. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas
The Decline of Democrats
• Economic development and population growth weakens Democratic Party
• Upper-class whites moved to the Republican Party.
• As cities boomed, rural areas, which had traditionally been havens of Democratic
power, lost influence.
• Migrants from other states supported Republican Party
• Last Democratic hurrah 1982: last election Democrats captured all statewide
offices

39. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas

40. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas
The Rise of Republicans
• Future First Lady Barbara Bush recalled when she and the future
president volunteered to work the Republican primary polls in
Midland in 1958: “Exactly three people voted Republican that day.
The two of us and a man who you could say was a little inebriated
and wasn’t sure what he was doing.”
• John Tower’s win to replace Lyndon Johnson in the US Senate was
first Republican statewide win since Reconstruction
• Republican takeover at the national level improved Texas
Republicans
• Republican strongholds grew from 1978 to 1994

41. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas
The Rise of Republicans
• By 1978, a deeply divided Democratic Party and a well-financed Republican Party
cut a trail to the election of Bill Clements as governor and the reelection of John
Tower to the US Senate.
• By 1980 Republicans had elected more than 150 county officials and made
substantial gains in the state legislature
• 1998 Republicans swept all statewide offices and a majority on both supreme
courts
• By 2002, the Republican Party of Texas boasted strong representatives in the US
Congress and controlled every single statewide office and both chambers of the
state legislature.

42. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas

43. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas
The Tea Party
• The 2006 primary elections brought out a new breed of Republican
voter
• Leaders worked to purge the RINOs: Republican in Name Only
• The rise of the Tea Party in the mid-2000s deepened the fissure
between economic conservatives and social conservatives.
• The Tea Party held a series of rallies in 2009 in response to the
Obama administration’s economic recovery plans and the
Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare).
• Grassroots conservatives

44. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas
The Tea Party
• Deep Texas roots: sprouted from Texan Dick Armey’s
organization
• Tea Party support higher in Texas than nationally
• Among Texas Republicans, on average between 30 and 40
percent of the public identify with the Tea Party.
• Tea Party-backed candidates
– Ted Cruz
– Dan Patrick

45. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas
Fissures in the Republican Party
• Consequences of rise of Tea Party profound for Texas
• Friction develops
– Socially Conservative vs Libertarian
• Socially conservative: Ideas of morality imposed on state policies
• Libertarian: Government out of just about everything
– Fiscal Conservatives vs Business Conservatives
• Fiscal conservative: low-tax state, minimal spending on government
services
• Business conservatives: increase spending on infrastructure,
transportation and education

46. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas
Lessons from Texas Party Politics
• Develop New Party Blood
• Offer a Bigger, Better Vision
• Give Goodies

47. Party Competition
Party Competition: electoral conflict that signals how successful
one party is over another
best indicator of shift in party power is in legislature
Reapportionment: redistribution of representation based on
decennial recounting of residents, done by redistricting
Redistricting: redrawing of the legislative districts by the
legislature to meet federal and state requirements, when
legislature cannot agree Legislative Redistricting Board draws
district lines

48. Rise and Fall of Political Parties in Texas

49. Party Competition

50. Party Competition
Legislative Redistricting Board: made up of lieutenant
governor, speaker of the house, attorney general, state
comptroller and land commissioner
• Map can be deemed unconstitutional by Supreme Court
• Electoral districts encompass approximately the same
number of people
– Reduces number of rural districts
– Increase urban districts
– Shifts power to urban districts
– Gerrymander: process of manipulating district boundaries to
benefit a single group, unconstitutional

51. Party Competition
2001 Redistricting Battle
• Following 2000 census Texas was slated to receive two
additional Congressional seats
– Republican governor, Democrat state house, split Senate
– Could not agree on new district lines
– LRB favored Republicans
• Shifted “safe” Democratic districts to Republican districts
• Republicans took a majority of legislature in 2002
elections
• Republican majority legislature draws new districts

52. Party Competition
2003 Redistricting Battle and the Killer Ds
• Fifty-two Democrats from the House and Senate fled
Austin to Ardmore, Oklahoma for eleven days to stall a
vote
• Senate vote on redistricting could not be held, lack of
sufficient senators
• Special session called to pass redistricting bill, bill passed

53. Party Competition
Redistricting 2011
• 2010 census added four US House seats
• Redistricting occurred in 2011
– Challenged in court for not taking minority population into
account
Redistricting 2013
• Special session
• 80 new Republican districts, 65 more liberal districts

54. Party Competition
Party Switching
• Politicians of one party switch to another, join the
“winning team”
• 1980s: several incumbent southern legislators switch from
Democratic to Republican
• WD-40s
– White Democrats
– Over 40 years of age
• Democrats in redrawn districts
• Many party switchers survive

55. Third Parties and Independents
Third Parties and Independents
• Traditionally, the United States has had two major political parties.
• Why only two parties?
Winner-take-all elections: whichever candidate wins the most
votes wins the seat
Duverger’s Law: a winner-take-all electoral system generally
leads to a two-party system

56. Third Parties and Independents
Third Parties and Independents
• Several factors further obstruct the rise of independent and third-
party candidates in Texas.
• Most voters are attached to the “name brand,” or political platform,
of one of the two major parties.
• The two major parties also have a significant head start on
fundraising and can tap a deep bench of donors.
• Furthermore, state laws set requirements that serve as obstacles for
third parties and independent candidates. For instance, a new third
party must create a state executive committee and establish
procedures for governing the party meetings and selection of
candidates.

57. Third Parties and Independents
Third Parties and Independents
LA RAZA UNIDA PARTY: In the 1970s, La Raza Unida tried to break the Democrats’
monopoly on local politics. As a separate political entity, La Raza Unida posed serious
problems for Democrats as Mexican Americans began defecting from the party and
voting for the new party.
LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF TEXAS: The Libertarian Party of Texas emphasizes liberty as
their main philosophy, encouraging freedom of choice and the importance of
individual judgment.
GREEN PARTY OF TEXAS: The Green Party of Texas emphasizes local control of
communities, nonviolent resolution of disputes, and social justice.
INDEPENDENT: candidates can run independent if so declared