OPINION: Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated

And we still are.

By Andy Hogue, Editor

"The report of my death was an exaggeration." --Mark Twain.

Two things amazed me during the Robert Morrow saga, pro and con:

Pro: How quickly and formidably the grassroots came together to solve a problem. By setting up additional checks and balances in a way that was fair to the winner of the county chairman's race and everyone involved, we built a better party in less than half a year. From an objective standpoint, the Travis GOP was running better than ever despite the controversy -- even during Morrow's two months in office.

Con: How much stock a group of voters who supposedly hate "the liberal media" believed media hype about the situation our party was in. You would think we were in shambles waiting for someone to come rescue us, or hunkering down for two years of diminished expectations. This was obviously not the case.

For a month or two, I've been toying around with writing a blog post titled "the greatest county party in America," extolling the virtues of the Travis County Republican Party and its supporters. I still intend on writing that piece, but for now a blog post by a dear friend of mine (and my fellow primary election clerk from 2012) Carla Birk wrote in her new blog.

In her post titled "Wilco GOP expands while Travis Struggles," Carla takes some well-intentioned barbs at the county party, comparing the belt-tightened Travis GOP to our neighbors to the north in much-more-conservative Williamson County.

Give Carla's blog a read sometime -- it's a much-needed voice covering an often-overlooked portion of far northwest Travis County and southern Williamson. But here are a few critiques on the post in question.

>>This week the Williamson County Republican Party opened a satellite office on 620 in Brushy Creek to serve the southern part of Williamson County. ... The Travis County GOP office closed in June as Morrow took office.  

-Indeed we did, but that's more because the Texas Federation of Republican Women (with whom we were sharing office space) did not want Robert Morrow anywhere nearby due to his reputation. We didn't blame them, and left earlier than we had to! During this time, we had considered co-locating with a local campaign and opening a temporary downtown "Victory Travis" office. That would have been two offices. Neither of those plans came to fruition due to a shift in focus toward a chairman's race (and the Victory Travis office was primarily acting Chairman David Duncan's initiative), but we're still functioning well without a physical office. At least for now. (And we do have a storage unit!)

>>The Travis County Republican Party amid the critical weeks leading up to the November election remains in a disadvantaged position with no office and few funds.

-A few things need to be said about that point: 1) the executive committee voted to spend a large chunk of remaining funds on our active local candidates (an advantage for them) before Morrow took office, 2) our books were undergoing some internal scrutiny at the time (another post for another time), and 3) while the chairman vacancy did throw certain plans into disarray, the additional media coverage we received "trickled down" to our local candidates.

In a usual campaign cycle, our candidates would be lucky to get a one-line mention at the bottom of a lengthy Statesman article. Not so this year. I'd say a "disadvantaged position" would be a bunch of money in horded in the bank being wasted late in the game on events and promotions that garner little-to-no attention. But now we are better able to leverage what funds come in to our local candidates' campaign accounts due to our investment and the attention we have received. Eyes and ears are on our efforts.

A Reagan Gala-like event was penciled in for early October, but is now postponed. We predict record-setting donations for this year given various factors, and will be back to our usual financial volume in early spring 2017. On top of that, newly elected Chairman James Dickey has already raised around $20,000 for the county party, which will help as we begin the home slide to November.

>>Regardless of internal party struggles, the spirits of local Republican candidates such as Joe Martinez, Gabriel Nila, Maura Phelan, and Deke Pierce appear undeterred as they travel the county speaking with voters.

-As mentioned above, it's more than just "the spirits" of our candidates that are high. Our chances are indeed greater than usual, especially with recent news about Dawnna Dukes' pending retirement, and voter memory about a drunk DA and a "cocaine constable" sullying the Democratic brand. Minority support for Travis GOP candidates continues to rise.

The Travis County GOP not only rose to the occasion in recent months, but intelligently and artfully dealt the cards it was handed.

It's a shame that so many Monday morning quarterbacks are taking the credit. In true Little Red Hen fashion, some public figures including media pundits and prominent elected officials were quick to hurl public comments decrying Morrow, but were nearly unreachable as we began our "Bigger Than That" campaign to turn things around. I can count the number of media calls Travis GOP received on one hand despite the global coverage. To add insult to injury, some of these same people took credit for their "role" in ousting Mr. Morrow.

In reality, this was a team effort involving all levels of politics led by the grassroots, mixed in with an unknown amount of divine providence. I, for one, appreciate everyone involved, whatever your role in this was (or how much credit you wish to take -- the victory belongs to us all).

And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I was impressed by Morrow's handling of things as chairman (though certainly not as an individual!). He could have easily refused to sign paperwork and could have held our executive meetings hostage. Yet he held his tongue, ran his portion of the executive meetings as a gentleman and a skilled parliamentarian, and even presented his wild theories as calmly and as clearly as he could. Things could have been a lot worse under a more antagonistic chairman, or one with his own faction running the show. Morrow meant what he said when all he wanted was a bully pulpit for his own views.

Yes, I'm still wanting to write that "best county party in America" post. But for now I wanted to set the record straight. It was hard to get the word out that Travis GOP was functioning when the world around us wanted to believe our house was on fire.

If you have any feedback or thoughts to share, the Travis Tracker welcomes guest submissions and is quite generous with our comments section.

ADDENDUM: As Communications Director for the Travis GOP, I would be remiss without urging our readers to donate to our county party. Your donations are safe as we now have more people watching the process and a stronger grassroots team contributing ideas and effort toward local Republican victories. If you've been holding off on donating for awhile and for whatever reason, now is the time to give.