Support for secession crops up at some GOP conventions, paving way for debate
A handful of Texas Republican district or county conventions in March passed resolutions calling for a vote on secession, paving the way for a potentially awkward debate at the state GOP conference in May.
A Nederland-based pro-independence activist group, the Texas Nationalist Movement, said at least 22 of the hundreds of conventions passed secession items. Texas GOP Chairman Tom Mechler said he “would be very surprised” if that many had indeed passed the conventions.
The Houston Chronicle reached out to GOP officials in the counties listed by the Nationalist Movement. Ten responded and all confirmed passage of the resolutions. An official count should be available from the Republican Party of Texas in early May.
Significant milestone
A party committee will consider the resolutions for debate on the floor of the state GOP convention in Dallas May 12-14. The volume of independence resolutions — from which party leaders are quick to distance themselves — increases the possibility they could be approved for discussion, though the notion of secession would certainly be shot down swiftly on the convention floor.
Still, the resolutions represent a significant milestone in the growth of a fringe movement in the Texas GOP, which drew attention last year when members of the party’s State Republican Executive Committee pushed for a vote at a December meeting.
“I hadn’t really heard of this in any organized way until this past year,” said Paul Simpson, chairman of the Republican Party of Harris County. “It’s cropped up in a major way just in this last year.”
The Nationalist Movement recently has led the push for a conversation on independence, and SREC officials cited it as inspiration when they introduced a resolution for an independence vote in December. That resolution was voted down overwhelmingly.
Mechler said the Nationalist Movement was not a Republican group, and was using the state party apparatus to push its cause.
“Republican is not even in their name,” Mechler said.
Last year, the Nationalist Movement made headlines for a statewide tour of speaking events, aimed at raising enough signatures to get secession on the GOP primary ballot. They came up short, but the group’s president, Daniel Miller, said he recruited and “trained” volunteers from Amarillo to San Antonio to Beaumont.
“There’s no coincidence that a lot of people who attended those trainings were some of the very minds responsible for championing these resolutions in district and county conventions,” Miller said.
The cause also has a few sympathizers in the Republican ranks. Tanya Robertson, SREC member of Senate District 11 in the Houston area has led the drive for an independence vote within the party, with help from a handful of allies including Bonnie Lugo of SD 13 in Harris and Fort Bend counties.
‘Opportunity to vote’
Even Houston’s Jared Woodfill, a tea party activist running to unseat Mechler as state party chairman, has been an ally.
“I absolutely think the people should have an opportunity to vote on this issue,” he said.
The number of secession resolutions this year contrasts with 2012, when Nationalist Movement activists fanned out at county GOP conventions but were only able to pass their item in one, Miller said.
Last month in SD 11, a resolution passed urging a statewide vote on “whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.”
A similar resolution passed in Harris County SD 6, said State Republican Executive Committee member Glenda Bowles. Officials confirmed resolutions also passed in Jefferson, Tarrant, Webb, Lee, DeWitt and Guadalupe counties.
“The resolution in questions appears to have originated from the Texas Nationalist Movement,” said Guadalupe County GOP Chair Karen Hale.
Lubbock County GOP Chair Carl Tepper said two secession items passed his county convention: one calling for an independence vote, and the other calling for secession in case the constitutional convention suggested by Gov. Greg Abbott fails to right the ways of the federal government.
The county conventions are “kind of a place for people to vent,” he said.
Supporters of an independent Texas allege overreach, corruption and excessive spending by the federal government, and argue that Texas is large and prosperous enough to get by on its own.
Heated rhetoric
Talk of Texas secession long has simmered in Lone Star discourse, flaring up periodically. It has raised tempers in political settings before. At the December SREC meeting, opponents of the notion hotly said it shouldn’t even be discussed, and one official scoffed at the notion of sending Texans to fight the U.S. military.
Miller said that in Jefferson County, where he spoke at a Republican convention, another attendee angrily accused him of “sedition” for advocating secession.
“People are extraordinarily reactionary about this issue,” Miller said. “I’ve heard it for years.”
For the record, the Supreme Court ruled in 1861 that states do not have a right to secede. Secessionists contend that the nation’s laws are irrelevant once a state declares independence. However they would compel the federal government to use force against any Texas rebellion, evoking recollections of the state’s last disastrous attempt to secede.