Texas GOP pushes out chairman
Tea party firebrand picked to lead into 2020 elections
Republicans in Texas are turning to a Florida tea party hero from 2010 to lead them into November, despite a push from within to soften the party’s tone to better suit suburban voters.
Early Monday morning the Republican Party of Texas voted overwhelmingly to replace James Dickey, its chairman since 2017, with former U.S. Rep. Allen West, a 22-year Army veteran who became a leading voice in the tea party movement in 2010 and has been a fundraising dynamo in the party.
West is also known for incendiary rhetoric that has included saying Nazis would be impressed with the media tactics deployed by Democrats.
A retired Army lieutenant colonel, West
made known his frustration with Texas GOP political leaders as he campaigned for the top spot in the party, appearing to take issue with Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive orders to control the coronavirus.
West decried “the tyranny that we see in the great state of Texas” in his pitch to Republican delegates. “We have executive orders and mandates, people telling us what we can and cannot do, who is essential and who is not essential.”
That language comes as at least eight county Republican executive committees have voted to censure Abbott for issuing executive orders such as requiring that Texans wear face coverings in public if they are in counties with at least 20 active coronavirus cases.
West has also been critical of leading Texas GOP lawmakers who allow Democrats to serve as committee chairs in the state Legislature — something that House Speaker Dennis Bonnen and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have done.
He secured the win with the majority of votes in 22 Texas Senate districts, compared with just four for Dickey.
After announcing his win early Monday morning, West called on the party to remain united “to make sure Texas continues to be the strong red conservative state that it is.”
Alamo, Goliad — and 2020
West, who now lives just outside of Dallas, was elected to represent a Palm Beach Countybased district in Congress in 2010. He served one term and lost his reelection campaign despite raising $19 million — more than any incumbent House member in the nation.
West’s district, which had included President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, had been redrawn, and he was forced to move into a swing district.
During his short tenure in Congress, West made a habit of scolding Democrats. In an email to fellow Florida U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, he called her “the most vile, unprofessional, and despicable member of the U.S. House of Representatives.” At another point he claimed to know up to 81 members of the Democratic Party were members of the Communist Party.
But for conservatives, West brings an uncompromising message that is often infused with military references. In his video presentation to the GOP activists in Texas, he chose the San Jacinto Battlefield Monument as his backdrop and talked about Sam Houston’s victory over the Mexican dictator Santa Anna.
“There were setbacks, there were disappointments — places like the Alamo and Goliad — but they persevered,” West said. “They continued to believe in their cause.”
West, 59, is originally from Georgia and grew up in Atlanta’s inner city before joining the military and ascending to the rank of lieutenant colonel. His military career came to an abrupt end after he fired a pistol near the head of an Iraqi detainee during interrogation. West insisted he was only trying to protect his men from an ambush.
West, who has lived in North Texas since 2014, has not served as a county or local party chairman within the GOP.
With 2020 elections less than four months ahead, West said he will turn to Dickey for counsel,
“because I know how to jump out of airplanes, but I’m going to learn to be a pretty good chairman of the Republican Party of Texas.”
‘Shut it down and get it right’
Texas Republicans are looking to regain their footing after a rough 2018 election cycle marked by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s narrow victory over Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who came within 3 percentage points. While Cruz survived, Democrats flipped two congressional seats, two seats in the Texas Senate and 12 seats in the Texas House. Many of those seats were in suburban districts where women appeared to break from the GOP.
About 57 percent of Texas women voted Republican in 2014. But that began to change in 2016 with a near split in the presidential race, according to CNN exit polling. In the 2018 governor’s race, 54 percent of Texas women voted for O’Rourke over Cruz, the exit polls showed.
Dickey had campaigned for reelection citing his long experience in Texas Republican politics. He has been a precinct chair, a Travis County party chairman and has served as a delegate on various levels. He said that in 2017, he took over a state party that was in financial disarray. During the party’s convention last week, he reported that it has $5 million in the bank — the most cash on hand the party has ever had going into a presidential election cycle.
“I have fought and bled for the Republican Party of Texas,” Dickey said in his closing reelection argument.
The last few days have brought criticism of Dickey as he was forced to turn the convention into an all-virtual meeting. Last week, Mayor Sylvester Turner blocked the party from holding an in-person convention in Houston. Turner said he worried the estimated crowd of 6,000 would turn the convention into a super spreader for the coronavirus.
Forced online, the convention was filled with technical glitches that required convention activities scheduled for Friday to be moved to Saturday. Party business pushed past midnight on both Saturday and Sunday before activists voted Dickey out as party leader.
West, on his Facebook page, called the convention a “debacle” and had accused Dickey of disenfranchising Republican delegates with delays and hassle in getting online voting credentials.
“Shut it down and get it right,” West said.
The party still has remaining convention tasks to complete in the weeks ahead.