A new day for the Harris County GOP?

Lisa Falkenberg postmortems the changing of the guard at the Harris County GOP.

Now that [Paul] Simpson defeated [Jared] Woodfill in the Republican primary election earlier this week, [Rep. Sarah] Davis is hoping her past experience with him is prologue. She and others are looking to Simpson to provide a new kind of leadership, one that is stridently conservative, yet tolerant of other people’s definition of that word.

“I’m very hopeful that Paul will be more open and respectful to Republicans who may have followed the 80-20 rule, as we call it,” she said, referring to President Ronald Reagan’s political philosophy that someone is an ally who agrees with you 80 percent of the time.

“The difference,” Davis said, between Simpson and Woodfill, “is that Paul, to me, cares about expanding the party and making our party grow and become more inclusive so we can become more effective, than just being a party about excluding people and taking out people we don’t like, or who we think don’t belong.”

Simpson says he thinks Davis’ vote was a mistake, as were her harsh words against Republicans in an op-ed published in the Chronicle after the vote. But he says Woodfill’s decision to go after Davis was bad leadership.

“To me, it’s a family squabbling,” he told me. “You don’t discipline your children out in public.”

[…]

Those who might think Simpson’s election was a referendum on the party’s incessant march to the right would be wrong. Plenty of social conservatives and tea-partiers joined moderates such as Harris County Judge Ed Emmett in supporting Simpson out of concern over the management of the party. They were concerned about lagging outreach, poor fund-raising, lax recruitment of party chairs, and a lack of transparency in financial operations.

“The big benefit isn’t going to be philosophical,” said Emmett, who generously dipped into his own war chest to support Simpson. “It’s going to be that the county party is able to go out and generate activity to benefit all the Republicans.”

A few thoughts, and remember that I Am Not A Republican, so take them for what they’re worth.

1. As with most intra-Republican squabbles, the primary fight between Simpson and Woodfill was about tactics and strategy, not philosophy. Paul Simpson won’t publicly back an opponent to Sarah Davis for voting against an anti-abortion bill, and he wouldn’t have recruited people to be plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city of Houston and its revised policy on spousal benefits, but that doesn’t make him or his party pro-choice or pro-equality, and it certainly isn’t a leading indicator for the rest of the state. It’s because Simpson believes that de-emphasizing social issues will help Republicans win races in Harris County. It’s a perfectly reasonable approach, but in the year of Dan Patrick it’s hard to say how much effect it will have.

2. I doubt there will be any lingering effects from the Simpson-Woodfill primary this year. Democrats had no trouble getting back on the same page after the Obama-Clinton primary of 2008, and I expect the same for the Harris County GOP. Nothing unifies like a common enemy, and the nice thing about having our primaries so early in the year is that we have plenty of time to remind ourselves who our real opponents are afterward.

3. That said, factions and rivalries will not just go away. Steven Hotze and Gary Polland aren’t going to stop doing their pay-to-play endorsements because there’s a new party Chair. They just won’t have the imprimatur of the party itself. I suspect that won’t bother them too much. Don’t be surprised if they continue pushing their own slate in 2016.

4. Along those lines, there’s some danger for Simpson if this winds up being a good year for Democrats in Harris County. His campaign was based on the idea that Woodfill’s tactics were holding Republicans back. If a bunch of Republican judges and incumbents like Stan Stanart and Orlando Sanchez wind up losing this fall, his opponents are sure to be quick with the see-I-told-you-so’s.

5. Finally, I confess I have a certain amount of sympathy for Woodfill in re Sarah Davis. It’s smart politics to be tolerant of some heresy from incumbents in tight districts or parts of the state that themselves are not in sync with prevailing opinion. But that doesn’t mean you have to like it, and that doesn’t mean you can’t chide them when they reinforce the other side’s talking points. A Democratic legislator that supported the repeal of the Affordable Care Act would be roundly and rightfully criticized, and I’m sure folks will have long memories about the Democrats that voted for HB2, even if none of them suffered any consequences for it this time. Speaking as a parent, if your kid misbehaves badly enough in public you sometimes do have to discipline them, or at least admonish them, in public. It’s never a pleasant experience, and there are right ways and wrong ways to go about it, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

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2 Responses to A new day for the Harris County GOP?

  1. Jared Woodfill doesn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy after reducing the whole GLBT diaspora to sodomites. He deserved to lose his seat in the leadership.

  2. Bayard Rustin says:

    I agree with Texas Leftist. GLBT people were always the whipping boy for everything wrong in Houston. I resent the demonization. Like a lot of people in politics, Jared Woodfill seems like a none-too-subtle opportunist.

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