The latest Republican Party Of Texas news from The Texas Tribune.
Which part of "this is a red state" doesn't Luke Hayes understand? Undaunted and optimistic, the 26-year-old state director of Organizing for America, the forward operating base for the president's re-election bid, sees blue in our future — perhaps as soon as 2012. Full Story
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Grissom on the transgender marriage conundrum, Hu on the workers' comp whistleblowers, M. Smith on the Texas GOP's brush with debt, Garcia-Ditta on why student regents should vote, Aguilar on the tripling of the number of visas given by the feds to undocumented crime victims, Hamilton on the paltry number of state universities with graduation rates above 50 percent, Ramshaw and Stiles on the high percentage of Texas doctors trained in another country, Ramsey and Stiles on congressmen giving to congressmen, Galbraith on how prepared Texas is (very) for a BP-like oil spill, and my conversation with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst: The best of our best from May 10 to 14, 2010. Full Story
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Don’t look now, but the Texas GOP, the party of budgetary teetotalers, has been piling up debt like a college kid with his first credit card — and that has put chair Cathie Adams in the hot seat a month before she seeks reelection at the state Republican convention. Full Story
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Two candidates hope to unseat Republican Party of Texas chair Cathie Adams at next month's state convention in Dallas. The biggest issue isn't their ideological differences — there are none. It's the effectiveness of the party in organizing voter support, and, to a lesser degree, how willing the GOP should be to reach across the aisle and seek common ground. Full Story
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How do the three candidates vying to be the state GOP's next chair feel about the hot-potato issue of immigration? Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports that they believe their fellow Republicans shouldn't rush to embrace the controversial new Arizona law. Full Story
Mark Sanders, the long-black-coat-from-The-Matrix-clad spokesperson for Republican-turned-independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, is throwing his weight and help behind another apostate Republican, according to Peggy Fikac of the Express-News. But not in Texas. Full Story
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Karen Hughes, a communications advisor to Speaker Joe Straus, told our TribLive audience this morning that it was "a little undemocratic" of the newly formed Independent Conservative Republicans of Texas not to invite every Republican in the House and Senate to join. Full Story
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Former gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina took her free market politics to the Texas Senate on Thursday, sharing a lively debate with lawmakers on the Health and Human Services Committee. Full Story
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The Texas Democratic Party wants you to know that 49 percent of the people who voted in last month's GOP primary voted against Gov. Rick Perry. Full Story
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Today’s elections in 18 Texas primary races, all but two involving Republicans, probably won't change the overall temperature of the statehouse or our delegation to Congress. The partisan makeup of those places isn't at stake until November. But for three House incumbents and challengers in two other races — for the State Board of Education and the Texas Supreme Court — how the vote turns out is a big deal. Full Story
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State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, is promoting a new group — the Independent Conservative Republicans of Texas — on conservative talk radio this morning. Full Story
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Governor Rick Perry's speech at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference has national media pundits talking about Perry for president in 2012. Full Story
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Voters in Central Texas, Dallas and Plano will get to vote for the third month in a row in May, in special elections for the Texas House and Senate. Three officeholders — Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, and Reps. Terri Hodge, D-Dallas, and Brian McCall, R-Plano — resigned before their terms were up. Today was the deadline for candidate filing. Full Story
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Delwin Jones, who was first elected to the Texas House in 1964 after two unsuccessful attempts, says he has handed out 765,000 promotional emery boards since his start in politics. His tenure and those files weren't enough to win a bruising primary outright last month, though, and the veteran legislator now finds himself in a runoff against Tea Party organizer Charles Perry, who's capitalizing on voter anger at incumbents. Full Story
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The runoff between John Frullo and Mark Griffin shares one important characteristic with the adjacent race in HD-83: It pits inside-the-tent Lubbock Republicans against a coalition of social and libertarian conservatives who are distinctly unhappy with government in Washington and Texas. In that frame, Frullo's the insurgent and Griffin represents the establishment. Full Story
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"The 2011 session is no time to test the learning curve a freshman member," says state Rep. Fred Brown, R-College Station. But former Brazos County Tax Assessor-Collector Gerald "Buddy" Winn thinks new leadership is precisely what this Central Texas House district needs — even if he's "not the shiniest penny in the pile." Full Story
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It's money versus geography and name ID in the race between the two top finishers in the five-way GOP primary in this conservative-leaning congressional district. The winner will face U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco. Full Story
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Primary night was humming along swimmingly for Humble school board president Dan Huberty, and after the early vote he seemed headed to victory. Then the numbers dipped and his fortunes changed, and now he's in a heated GOP run-off with Dr. Susan Curling. As another Election Day draws closer, the contest is getting personal. Full Story
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In 2011, political mapmakers will take the latest census numbers (Texas is expected to have a population of more than 25 million) and use them to draw new congressional and legislative districts. The last time this was done, in 2003, Republican mappers took control of the U.S. House by peeling away seats from the Democrats. This time, Texas is poised to add up to four seats to its congressional delegation — and early numbers indicate bad news ahead for West Texas and other areas that haven't kept up with the state's phenomenal growth. Full Story
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One candidate touts her education policy expertise; the other, his conservative political credentials. This race for retiring incumbent Cynthia Dunbar's seat on the State Board of Education may come down to campaign money vs. Christian grassroots muscle. Full Story
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