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Chapter 26
(1)
Elections and
Parties in Texas
The roles of parties and
interests
• Interest groups and political parties are able to foster
citizen participation in politics.
• Do political parties represent the interests of citizens
or have they hindered “…the state’s ability to keep
pace with today’s rapid changes”?
Challenges to Democratic Party
One-Partyism
• The ”Know-Nothing” party of the 1850s influenced
Texas politics enough to force the Democratic Party
to fully organize.
• Bitterness among Texans during the Reconstruction
era was aimed at the Republican Party.
• The Democrats dominated Texas politics for many
decades after Reconstruction.
• The biggest challenges to the Democrats came from
the Greenback Party and, most importantly, the
Populists or “Peoples Party” of the 1880s and 1890s.
Challenges to Democratic Party
One-Partyism
• The Progressives sought political reforms to
weaken the influence of party machines, and
the Prohibition-era issue of banishing alcohol
invigorated churches, evangelicals, and
women’s groups.
• Much of the Progressive agenda was
absorbed by the Democrats.
• The Republican Party was very slow to
develop for several decades.
Great Depression &
WWII
• Republican Party suffered major setbacks
• President Hoover and Republicans blamed for Great
Depression
• 1952 TX Democratic Party officially supported Republican
Candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower
• 1st time in history that a Republican Presidential Candidate
carried the state.
Challenges to Democratic Party
One-Partyism
• The Democratic Party led the nation in civil rights in
the 1960s after often supporting segregation and
racism, especially in the South, since Reconstruction.
• Civil rights issues began to split the Democratic Party
of Texas and the southern states.
• The Republicans broke Democratic Party dominance
with the election of John Tower to the U.S. Senate in
a 1961 special election to fill the vacated L.B.J. seat
when Johnson became vice-president.
Challenges to Democratic Party
One-Partyism
• The once solid Democratic South transitioned into the
heavily Republican South in the latter part of the 20th
century, and Texas was no exception.
• The Republican Party now dominates all of the
elections and holds each of the statewide offices
even as citizens’ participation in primaries weakens.
• “With 3.9 percent of eligible citizens selecting the
Republican nominees that are almost certain to win
statewide office it appears that the parties are not
creating the broad participation and healthy
competition that the state needs to help it respond to
changes.”
Election Theories and Party
Functions
• The Responsible Party Model
• Electoral Competition Model
FUNCTIONS:
• Parties recruit candidates.
• Parties support candidates by providing logistical
support and campaign staff training as well as cash
contributions and advertising.
• Parties mobilize voters.
• The general one-party nature of Texas elections
moving from Democratic Party dominance to
Republican dominance has diminished healthy twoparty competition.
Party Organizations
• Temporary party organizations are gatherings,
such as primaries, caucuses, and conventions, at
which ordinary party members meet.
• Examples include the precinct convention, county or
senatorial district conventions, and the state party
convention.
• The first convention, the precinct convention, begins
at the close of the polls on primary election night.
• “Primaries have been part of Texas elections since
the Terrell Election Law in 1905 mandated that major
political parties use primaries to select their
nominees.”
Party Organizations
• Permanent party organizations - the party
officials selected by the temporary
organizations to conduct party business
between the primaries, caucuses, and
conventions.
– The state party chair
– The state executive committee - By law, the
committee consists of one man and one woman
from each state senatorial district. Party officials
are rivaled by elected officials of their party.
Party Organizations
Selecting Delegates
• “Today, while the party conventions select which
individuals will be sent to the party’s national
convention as delegates, the allocation of these
delegates between the competing candidates for
president is determined by party rules which use
voting in the presidential preference primary to
allocate candidates on a district-wide or statewide
basis.”
• The state requires that at least 75% of the delegates
representing the state at the party’s national
convention be allocated based on the votes in the
presidential primaries.
Party Organizations
Selecting delegates
• Republicans use the vote counts at the congressional
district and statewide levels. If a candidate wins more
than 50% of the votes within a congressional district ,
that candidate is entitled to all of the delegates to the
Republican convention from that district. If no
candidates receive at least 50%, the delegates are
divided among each of the candidates who receive
more than 20% of the vote.
Party Organizations
Local parties
• Precinct chairs - Elected by party members in each
voting precinct by majority vote
• County chairs - selected in countywide voting during
the primary election
• At the county level, the County Executive Committee
is composed of a county chair and one precinct chair
from each precinct in the county. This committee is a
permanent committee.
The Texas GOP in 2006
• “…the 2006 Texas Republican party platform has
“demanded” the elimination of presidential authority to
issue executive orders and the repeal of all previous
executive orders, despite the fact that the executive
order has become a common tool of President Bush
and other Republican presidents.”
• “While the Texas Republican Party’s attempt to oust
Kay Bailey Hutchison and the 2006 party platform’s
independence from President Bush illustrate the
potential autonomy of the state parties, such rebellion
remains rare because the national party conventions
have come to be dominated by the campaign
organization of the presidential candidates rather than
by the state parties.”
Presidential Preference
Primaries
• State law requires the parties to hold “presidential
preference primaries” in conjunction with their regular
party primaries.
• The state party convention selects the delegates to
the national party convention.
• Texas held its primaries in June for many years.
• Primary elections were moved to early March in
1998.
• The 2007 Legislature considered moving the primary
date even sooner but settled on March 4, 2008.
Types of Elections in TX
Primary elections - Democrats & Republicans each
hold March primaries to elect candidates to run under
the party label in the November general election.
Three types of primaries:
1. Closed primary - an election contest restricted to
party loyalists, excluding supporters of other political
parties and independent voters.
2. Open primary - an electoral contest in which
voters do not have to declare party affiliation to
participate, but must request a specific party’s ballot
at the primary, and are then barred from participating
in the other party’s primary.
Types of Elections in TX
3. Blanket or wide-open primary - a primary in which
voters do not register party affiliation and receive
ballots containing the names of all candidates from all
political parties running for office. Voters may choose
only one candidate per political party. Only Louisiana
has a blanket primary for state & local races.
• In Texas’s open primary system, voters do not have
to declare party affiliation when registering to vote.
“…the open primary is more exposed to manipulation
from the outside.”
Voter Registration & Turnout
• Between 1974 and the 1990s, voter registration
remained relatively stable: in the low-to-mid 60%
range among eligible voters.
• Voter registration leveled off to around 80% in the
mid-2000s, likely due to “Motor Voter” registration,
online registration provided by the Texas Secretary of
State’s office. New technologies and databases,
along with better training of local election officials,
has also influenced voter registration rates.
Voter Registration & Turnout
• Voter turnout is higher during presidential election
years than during “off-year” statewide elections.
• Voter turnout is calculated two ways:
1. The percentage of ballots cast in the election
based upon the total number of registered voters
2. The percentage of ballots cast in the election
based upon the total population over age
eighteen (or voting age eligible population)
“…the more accurate figure, especially for
comparison purposes, is to use the total population
over age eighteen.”
Voter Registration & Turnout
• Texas consistently ranks near the bottom of the list in
voter turnout among the fifty states.
• Lower voter turnout may be a result of the influence of
both the traditionalistic and individualistic political cultures.
• In Texas, women are more likely to vote than men.
• The youngest of voters (18-24 yrs.) consistently vote at
levels much below the national or state average.
• “…low voter turnout among African American and
Hispanic voters in Texas means that fewer government
decisions reflect these groups’ beliefs than might
otherwise occur.”
• The same holds true for younger voters.
Campaign Finance in Texas
• Money is essential to political campaigns.
• “The issue of campaign finance … raises the issue of
whether organized interests ‘buy’ favorable
legislation, court rulings, and executive decisions.”
• Individual citizens, interest groups, corporations, and
labor unions make contributions to candidates and
political campaigns.
• State & local elections are governed by state
campaign finance laws.
Campaign Finance in Texas
• Disclosure - the reporting of who contributed
money to the campaign and how much is
contributed by each individual or corporation.
• The Texas Ethics Commission is responsible
for collecting campaign contributions and
expenditures and providing the information to
the public.
www.ethics.state.tx.us