DEMOCRATS: County party sees gains, but will they persist?

Democrats swept Harris County last Tuesday in nothing short of a rout, claiming every countywide position on the ballot as Hillary Clinton toppled Donald Trump by more than 12 points — a larger margin of victory than George W. Bush enjoyed here in either of his presidential bids.

That edge — and the domino effect it had on local races — exceeded many Democrats’ most optimistic projections. It also fueled speculation that the nation’s largest swing county soon could be reliably blue.

Yet some on the left still worry that, absent Trump, the party’s decentralized coalition could make that transformation a tall order near-term, despite favorable demographic shifts.

“It’s not something that’s going to be sustained with the party

infrastructure we have right now,” local Democratic direct mail vendor Ryan Slattery said, recalling the party’s trouncing in 2010, two years after President Barack Obama won the county. “You’ll always have this ebb and flow.”

Former Mayor Annise Parker agreed the party “has underperformed in the past” but was more hopeful.

“In this election cycle, both the Harris County Democratic Party in its official leadership and committed Democrats came together, and we all played nicely,” Parker said. “The way we swept Harris County down here and knowing the way midterm elections generally go, it might be a pretty good place to be a Democrat in two years and even four years.”

Demographic shifts

Democrats’ four-decade presidential losing streak in Harris County came to an end eight years ago against the backdrop of rapid political and demographic changes.

The region shifted from plurality white to plurality Hispanic between 2005 and 2015, U.S. Census data show.

Concurrently, the share of county residents who identified as Democrats rose steeply, to 48 percent from 35 percent, according to the Kinder Institute’s Houston Area Survey. The percentage of Republicans fell to 30 percent from 37 percent.

Democrats have harnessed that momentum in presidential election years but floundered in the interim, when Republicans capitalized on national political discontent and lower turnout.

After earning nearly 48,000 more straight-ticket votes than Republicans did in 2008, Democrats lost the straight-ticket vote by nearly 50,000 votes in 2010 and 44,000 votes in 2014. They earned nearly 3,000 more straight-ticket votes in 2012 and 70,000 this year.

Several progressive organizations emerged in that window and began to buoy the Democratic Party’s efforts. The Texas Organizing Project and Battleground Texas joined groups like the River Oaks Area Democratic Women in getting out the vote, while, in Houston, the New Leaders Council trained progressive candidates and activists.

“Several of my friends and I looked around and were like, ‘What is going on? We’re not building a back bench. We’re not training our candidates well. We have people that are running that have no idea what they’re doing or how to run,’ ” recalled Democratic consultant Lillie Schechter, who helped open the Houston chapter of the New Leaders Council.

Democratic mega-donors also sought to fill a resource gap.

“We really started working very seriously in 2010, and every election cycle we have built on the past election cycles,” said trial lawyer Amber Mostyn. “This has been a slow, methodical march toward building the infrastructure, changing voting habits, getting people engaged.”

Together with their law firm, the Mostyn family contributed $514,000 this year to TOP’s political action committee, campaign finance records show, and $391,000 to Battleground, in addition to hosting phone banks aimed at turning out low-propensity voters.

Separately, Texans for America’s Future, a super PAC the Mostyns founded, spent three-quarters of a million dollars urging Harris County women, Hispanics and African-Americans to the polls.

Billionaire George Soros, meanwhile, spent more than $583,000 on behalf of Democratic District Attorney-elect Kim Ogg, through his own political action committee, and contributed $250,000 to TOP’s PAC, plus other non-monetary services like polling.

The Harris County Democratic Party, however, remained underfunded.

Its executive committee raised just $381,000 this year, according to campaign finance reports, and spent slightly less.

“We have a lot of really great affinity groups, and it’s designed in a way where people aren’t stepping on each other’s toes,” party chairman Lane Lewis said.

Slattery, the direct mail vendor, put it another way.

“There are two Harris County Democratic parties,” he said. “I think there’s the institution, and then I think there are the actual Democrats who constitute the party.”

Democratic strategist Grant Martin, who ran Sheriff-elect Ed Gonzalez’s campaign, emphasized the importance of organizations such as TOP in increasing voter participation but said the absence of a strong centralized party can make campaigning here challenging.

“The unpredictability and decentralization — it’s very difficult. If you’re going to run a campaign for a Democratic candidate, you don’t know what you’re going to be able to expect,” said Martin, who also ran mayoral campaigns for Parker and Sylvester Turner. “Because most of the funding is controlled outside the party, it’s not like there’s even a transparent process to figure out who’s going to get support or who’s not going to get support. Or even what the consultants are going to do. Am I going to get six pieces of mail out of the party? Or am I only going to get one? Because then I need to send out five more.”

GOP brings in cash

Local Republicans have their fractures, too, but the Harris County Republican Party has played a more central role of late, raising $1.4 million this year, or more than three times the haul of their Democratic counterpart. In the past six weeks, it spent $740,000 of that on polling, printing and advertising for its straight-ticket Republican message.

“It’s sort of a federation. We provide the infrastructure and the campaign for the county, but other people were also campaigning, and we worked to avoid too much redundancy,” Harris County Republican Party chair Paul Simpson said.

Those investments appear to have made a dent in local races, where Republicans’ margin of defeat ranged from less than a point in the tax assessorcollector’s race to 8 points in the district attorney’s race, compared with Trump’s 12-point loss. Republican state Rep. Sarah Davis also won re-election by 10 points, even as Clinton defeated Trump by 15 points in her west Houston district.

Simpson projected confidence looking to 2018.

“We won’t have the headwinds we had this time at the top of the ticket,” he said. “Republican voters will come home.”

Democrats acknowledged the role Clinton’s coattails and disaffection for Trump played in their local victories.

“It’s … a lucky break,” Martin said. “Trump provided this excitement — this extra reason for people to go out — but I don’t think that just Trump would have been enough, or just turnout would have been enough. Now, the big question will be: Can they sustain that?”

Reasons for hope

Local insiders pointed to Harris County’s growing minority population and the motivation Trump’s presidency could provide.

“Demographics will continue to change in our favor, and our county will continue to become more diverse,” said Joe Maddon, treasurer of the Texans for America’s Future super PAC. “Unfortunately, President-elect Trump will likely be passing policies that will cause blowback and harm to the Republican brand and serve as a motivator to those same Democratic voters.”

Even so, some stressed the need for a stronger party backbone.

“What happens when people start creeping into everybody else’s lane?” Slattery asked. “You need an effective leader.”

Schechter, for her part, called the local party’s meager fundraising “a huge problem.”

Lewis defended the Harris County Democratic Party’s efforts to increase the number of Democratic mail voters.

“I am proud of the gain that the Democratic Party made, particularly with our senior vote for the past three cycles in a row,” the party chairman said. “Our efforts to engage mail ballot votes, which we had historically lost, improved each cycle, and this past year, we won.”

Former mayor Parker said the party did not keep voters sufficiently engaged after 2008 but expects that to change — and the party to strengthen — with more Democrats in countywide elected office.

“The Harris County Democratic Party apparatus is fired up and frustrated,” Parker said. “Since there’s no place to put our energy at the national level, I think it’s going to be expressed here.”