"Ain't nothing gonna break my stride,
nobody gonna slow me down, oh no,
I've got to keep on moving!"
-Matthew Wilder, Break My Stride
October was a very busy month for conservatives in Texas and as well as for me personally. After several months of hard work, I sent my German Chancellor Fellowship application off to Bonn, Germany. No job was found in law or politics due to hiring freezes, and as a result I've been hitting the stores and malls of Sugar Land to try to find some way of supporting myself over the next few months...months during which I'll also be working as a volunteer driver for the Shriner Hospital for Children in Houston (I became a Shriner last month), studying for the LSAT on February 5th (signed up tody for intensive LSAT prep courses 3-4 days/week Dec-Feb , ouch), and...wait, what's this? I *also* need to take the GRE by the end of December in order to be able to apply by February for the TransAtlantic Master's Program in N.C./Berlin that I want to combine with my Chancellor Fellowship? So I'm going to be studying for two graduate entrance exams at the same time? Oh joy!I've got to keep on moving!"
-Matthew Wilder, Break My Stride
My time has also been getting vaporized with all of my drives up to Austin from Fort Bend and back every weekend- I think I've been up to Austin five of the last six weekends or something equally crazy. Being out of school, out of work, and out of spare miles on my old car, I'm sadly having to cut back and stay put in Houston for a while...which is a shame, since this weekend Austin features the Texas GOP Candidate Training seminar on Nov. 6-7.
Even better, on Nov. 14th the New Politics Forum is kicking off again with its Career in Politics seminar. I went to something similar as my first NPF event two years ago or so and it was awesome (and interestingly enough, my then-boss State Rep. Mark Strama turned out to be the sponsor who had helped the group get their room in the capital building). Since I am looking so hard for a job in a legislative office or on a campaign, it seems stupid not to go. On the other hand, my wallet is hurting from gas costs, my girlfriend recently moved out of her apartment in the city and is back in her small town (again, stupid job market!), and my little sister is still in a dorm and not an apartment of her own. Decisions, decisions. I really wish I could find an opportunity on my own already, instead of attending conference after conference. Everyone I ask tells me that my resume is just dandy, but that there's nothing they can do since all positions are taken. My time living in Berlin in the first half of this year seems to have really been when most job openings and internships got snapped up!
Oh well. At least this past weekend in Austin was a lot of fun- no politics, just living up to my annual promise to take my girlfriend to 6th Street for Halloween. Thankfully this year I didn't get hit by a crazy, pathologically lying girl in a fairy costume going 10 mph over the river on Congress. Instead I got to party it up with the entire Sesame Street crew sans Big Bird (he was probably in the VIP room).
The Republican Party in Texas and in Fort Bend also had a very busy October. Yesterday we had the big vote for amendments to the state constitution, all of which passed. I was very happy to see that #4 got voted up- I've spent a lot of time on Facebook over the last few weeks arguing in comments and threads from the Young Conservatives of Texas, since was one of the rare times where I felt that the group's position and the analysis by the (very smart) Tony McDonald and others were misguided. In any case, we'll see who was right in the next couple of years as the research funds in the state get restructured. We desperately need more Tier-1 universities and I really hope that this is enough of a push.
We also had our first post-Constitution (ours, not the state's!) meeting for the Fort Bend Young Republicans at Berry Hill's last night. It was nice to see some new faces at the meetings as well as continued visits and support from the the county GOP and other grass-roots groups in the area. But more on that some other time. Today we're having the:
Texas Politics October Round-Up
First Social Mixer of the Fort Bend Young Republicans, Kona Grill, Sugar Land, 10/5/09
The Fort Bend YRs met early in October for our first social mixer, after the success of our normal meetings. I suggested Kona Grill at Sugar Land Town Center, because their happy hour is basically all the time except a 2-hour rush period, and their pizzas, margaritas, appetizers, etc. are 50% off (and they aren't that expensive at the normal price). The food and drinks were great but sadly we had the flakiest waitress of all time (must be a Harry Reid fan) so our future socials are likely to be at other places.
I was wondering what a "social" for a cause-oriented group like ours would look like, and I was worried it would be an officer meeting lite, with planning and nothing but political talk. To my happy surprise a lot of people brought girlfriends/friends/etc., and the political talk was limited to making fun of Pelosi and events in the news. One thing I love about the new FBYRs is that we have such a mix of people in terms of age, profession, background, etc. Our first social was a huge success and we stayed a lot longer than I expected to spend out that night. I have a lot of experience founding/running/maintaining groups from high school and at the University of Texas, and I continue to be surprised by the speed of our local Young Republican chapter on every level. Not only did we start getting speakers, political training seminars, our constitution, an online presence, and so on set up right away, but we're moving very quickly towards what I consider to be the most important and difficult goal for any voluntary organization: building a sense of community. Even though I'm a political junkie, I'm starting to look forward to our various meetings more to see my new friends and to meet the new faces that are probably coming to one of our events for the first time. This ultimately gives people a more concrete reason to attend and take time out of the evening, and is going to make the elbow-grease work we'll do together during campaign season a lot more fun since we'll feel like a team.
The last thing I would add is that I continue to be surprised by the interest in the YRs from outside groups in and near Fort Bend County. Two or three times we had representatives from other organizations "swinging by" our table since they knew where we were meeting that night, including James Ives and his wife of the Fort Bend County Tea Party. I think Fort Bend presents a lot of opportunities for the people in the 18-40 YR range...not only are people who were a part of the first big wave of moves to the county in the 90's now grown and in that age range, but the last five years have brought even more young people and their families to the area. This really makes our demographic more important than it is in other places, and it's nice to see that other grass-root groups as well as the GOP itself are realizing that in the future they can't rely on a "youth vote" that is nothing more than kicking evangelical 20-somethings from the church to the booths once every two years. The outreach needs to be year-round and encompass many other kinds of young people from the gen-x and millennial age groups. I hope that this kind of approach gets copied by the GOP in Austin and around the state in the next few years. I feel that the amount of effort going into the national debate on the "real conservatives versus RINOs" talk is a huge and divise waste that should be focused on the real issue: building up the next generation of center-right voters in the country.
Fort Bend GOP Communications Committee Meeting, Sugar Land, 10/8/09
After I became the interim Communications Director for the FBYRs people from the local GOP were nice enough to invite me to the meeting for their parallel committee, which conveniently meets near where I live. I saw several familiar faces, and the meeting was exactly what I expected, which is to say simultaneously very boring and very informative. It really makes you appreciate how many people put in how many hours year-round just to prepare for something as basic as a local race (the mind boggles at the logistics of a state-wide or nation-wide race).
During the meeting I got to see a lot of discussions revolving around basic political communication issues such as newsletters, advertising fees for candidates, e-mail lists, precinct chairs, etc. What struck me almost as a paradox was that, after a lot of talk and work from the committee members specializing in different areas of the party's communication outreach, several people emphasized the fact that no county party in the state is really going to swing more than 1-2% in an election. There is really an inverse relationship with the amount of effort that a local party puts in to the result in terms of turn-out, which is frustrating in a way yet also strangely preferable to what I see in some parliamentary democracies and semi-developed democracies. At least in our situation, the vast majority of turn-out and a candidate's success in a local election or a run for Congress are in the candidate's own hands. I like this a lot more than what you see in Russia where local bosses run everything behind the scenes, or in Germany where the party basically drops candidates into regional slots, pays for all the races, and hands them 95% of what they stand for via the national platform. For me personally, it's extremely important that candidates can run as individuals and are responsible directly to the constituents rather than to local bigwigs or a national political apparatus, which is sadly the case in many if not most democracies in the world (heck, just look at Japan).
Fort Bend Young Republicans Meeting with State Representative Charlie Howard, Fuddrucker's Sugar Land, 10/13/09
My State Representative, Charlie Howard, was nice enough to come to our YR meeting to talk to us about the proposed amendments to the state constitution in the ballot in early November. I'd been getting his e-mail updates for a while while I was a student at UT-Austin and liked what I saw, so I was pretty excited to finally meet him and learn a little bit more about who represented me in the Texas House. Of course, I also wanted to know more about him because 1) I've worked in the capitol office of a state rep before and 2) as always, I wanted to hustle for a full-time legislative job. Sadly he had no openings (our government not meeting all that often is great for the state but bad for me getting a job!), but the evening talk about the amendments and the debates that the attendees got into were much, much more interesting than expected.
Charlie has been our state rep for over sixteen years and has particularly done a ton of work on bringing education to our county and improving it on a state level. He was also active on the push for a lot of the state amendments, and has been very busy the last few months on educating people about them, clearing up falsehoods that have been getting into people's e-mail boxes, and handing out materials spelling out the for and against arguments for each amendment. I liked this quite a bit, since it's exactly what I get in the mail from Switzerland- every Swiss voter gets a ballot every so often mailed to him or her, with all important issues (some from petitions) that are up for a vote summarized and with the arguments from the for/against camps as well as the government's position provided for the citizen to study. This means that almost all important decisions in the country are made directly by the voters, who can and frequently do overrule the governent after educating themselves on the issues and coming to a decision. Considering how important some of the state amendments were, and how huge of a fan I am of Switzerland's people-power system, I wish more people voted for this sort of stuff. It would be great if I could see an increase in turn-out percentage for state issues during my lifetime.
As already mentioned, all of the amendments passed, including #4- the only amendment Charlie said was really controversial, and the only one where he refused to give away his personal position. We had a nice debate about it amongst ourselves during the meeting that de-railed us for a while, something that happened to me again several times at the end of October when I talked about the amendment with other young people and students online. I'd originally planned on writing a big article for RHT just on amendment #4 and the desperate need for more tier-1 universities in Texas, but the long story short is that I think Texas is going to become the most important state in America and the national leader (as well as political bellwether) within the next decade. That kind of growth and job-creation is not sustainable without a higher education infrastructure, and more tier-1 universities (and a much improved state education system in general) are crucial to ensuring that our growth is not powered simply by low-end jobs that can easily move out of the state again. We're currently far from it, but UTD, UH, Texas Tech, etc. are going to have to improve massively in terms of education, student capacity, standards, reputation, etc. if we want Texas to permanently cement its position at the head of the pack and gain more international exposure and recognition. I don't know if this push on research funds will be enough, but it's a good start.
Fort Bend County Tea Party Call to Action Rally, Sugar Land Town Center/City Hall, 10/17/09
I finally got to go to the long-awaited Tea Party rally right here in Sugar Land. The turn-out was bigger than I expected, and there was a wide variety of ages on display. It had a family picnic atmosphere, with a lot of young couples bringing their kids along (and a couple of them carried some really great signs). There were booths set up with political materials, links to other Tea Party movements, books from the main speaker, educational pamphlets, etc. The weather was just beautiful (a trend that seems to be continuing in November), and I hope this sort of local activism becomes a permanent part of life in Fort Bend and around the country.
I didn't stick around to see Termite Watkins speak, but I did get to hear everything that Tea Party activist James Ives had to say. I recorded almost his entire speech for Red Hot Texans and uploaded it to YouTube, which you can view right below. Although I found some of the things that James had to say a little over-dramatic (a common trait with Tea Party rhetoric and events all over the country), his overall message was spot-on. It's really wonderful to see average citizens and their families take national issues into their own hands and voice opposition to the kind of "I'm an expert, I know best, let me remake the country into XYZ based on my preferences" mentality that permeates the ivory towers, liberal groups, and (although I hate to use this overdone phrase) Washington establishment of this country. When you have a country as large (in terms of geography as well as population) as the United States, you end up with a lot of think-tanks that try to address national problems from the top-down (such as issues with health care, taxation, collegiate education, and so on). Although this is sometimes a necessary evil, there are a lot of times when a small handful of people try to make decisions for the entire country just because they can and not because they should (although they themselves might think that's the case). Since these groups and individuals are located near the nexus of federal legislation (either geographically or politically or both), they can really more or less enact any kind of changes they deem fit on the behalf of everyone else. Since the Congress regularly beats the hell out of the 10th Amendment like it owes them money (national highway funds lolwut), there is really no modern alternative or opposition to this current decision-making process. The Tea Parties are really the first exception to this since maybe the civil rights movement, in that they have achieved the same difficult but crucial paradox of existing simultaneously as a local movement and a national presence. Although I don't think the Tea Parties are yet as important as they claim to be, I think they have the potential to live up to the hype if they can establish themselves as a more broad-based and permanent counter-weight of populism as a part of an equilibrium against the kind of elitist power-brokering that has run the day-to-day business for most of America since about the middle of the 19th century. We might not be an agrarian and loosely confederated country of local farmers and merchants anymore, but I'll go ahead and agree with the Tea Party people that we have moved too far in the opposite direction. Of course, as a Swiss citizen and a Texan I'm heavily biased in terms of local and state empowerment, but I think (with a few exceptions) that power is best when it is concreted as close to home as possible.
One final thought on the Tea Parties and the future of the movement: although I mentioned that the ages were pretty diverse, the rally I saw (and many on TV) were overwhelmingly Caucasian. At the end of the day, with demographics and globalization and whatnot being what they are, the tea is soon going to run out of steam if the only guy showing up to the party is Whitey McCrackerpants. Now, there's nothing wrong with white people (some of my best friends are white people!), but you can't build a national and enduring movement on just one issue or one segment of the population. If in a year or two the Tea Parties are just seen as White People Angry About Taxes, they're never going to get off the ground as much as they could. Like I said, the movement really needs to get to the core of the ideological battle here, which is about local/individual control versus group/elite decision-making. It's ultimately about power and which level of legislation occurs at what level of government (and what direction it goes in, of course). If this movement needs expands beyond the current UHC debate or taxes, it's going to fade out eventually. The Tea Parties need to expand to take in other populist issues and voter demographics across the country. I'm not sure yet exactly how I would do this if I were a leader in the movement, but I do think a good place to start would be to look at the situations where the Tea Party organizations have already intersected with the sort of struggle I've described. Take, for example, the California water struggle between enviornmentalists, politicians, and ordinary consumers and farmers. The anti-government/Tea Party movement got a chance to step in and shine on an issue that is hugely important to Hispanics in the region, and brought a lot of them out to share their voices and their signs. I think the key to success for the Tea Parties is going to be whether or not the leaders in place in local areas across the country are capable of adepting to comunity needs and regional issues that pit minorities against the government or liberal elites. For example, if I were in charge of the Houston Tea Parties, I would eventually try to expand the movement and the organization into the issue of private charter schools like the KIPP program, which are hugely succesful and popular with minorities but hated by the Democratic Party and their allies in the Teacher's Unions.
But hey, that's just me. Who cares what a twenty-three year-old has to say?
Anyway, enjoy the video!
Red Hot Texans Video: Fort Bend County Tea Party Call to Action Rally at Sugar Land Town Center 9/17/09
Fort Bend GOP Grand Old Picnic, Duhacsek Park Sugar Land, 10/18/09
The GOPicnic took place on another beautiful day in Sugar Land, as kids, giant Uncle Sams, and every politician in Texas (or so it felt) showed up at the park a little bit northwest of the regional airport. I arrived about halfway through, just late enough for them to run out of utensils for the free food and for the candy bars I stole from the children's tent to have melted into soggy extinction. Again I saw a Republican presence that was a nice mix of young families/new county arrivals with kids (who got to enjoy a lot of activities and entertainment set up for them), mid-aged professionals, and people had been in the county and the GOP for a long a time. I was amazed by the amount of people giving speeches- I had no idea how many people were running for how many positions. There were also a ton of people from outside the county whose massive districts included a PART of Fort Bend, and they all came streaming to the picnic. For a lot of those candidates we were at the very corner of the area they were running in, which only goes to show how important Fort Bend has become in recent years (our population just keeps growing). I'm very, very interested in seeing what happens to us in the re-districting effort.
Although I live just barely outside of her state senate district, I also enjoyed getting to see Joan Huffman talk. Other people also made some good comments, including one guy who said that Texas Monthly had recently predicted that Fort Bend was going to be the first big county in the state to turn blue (I haven't been able to find this online myself). Poor Charlie was still on crutches, and after the procession of long-winded sales pitches by some of the other candidates it was nice to see him keep his comments short and sweet and focused mainly on the upcoming amendments vote. I got to talk to him afterwords and he introduced me to his wife/campaign manager Jo, and she and I started up about trying to establish a sort of trial "Campaign Academy" type seminar/workshop series similar to what I've done before. I don't know yet how this is going to work or if it's going to get off the ground, but I'm happy to see that at least people are interested. The first step is going to be really growing the young conservative movement in the area, especially among the people that are college-age or moving back home after college. Jo invited me to come and be the official photographer for Charlie's big event at the aiport a few days later, and I happily signed on.
Breakfast Reception Honoring State Representative Charlie Howard, Sugar Land Regional Airport, 10/22/09
The day started off in the early morning darkness with massive amounts of rainfall battering people on the roads and as they stepped in/out of their cars, reminding me of the record pour when I went to the Hands off Texas! capitol rally (I guess the kids in the Obama song video were shimmying to a rain dance). Despite the terrible weather and my having to drive back to my house when I found out at the airport that I left my camera's battery in the wall-charger, there were a lot of people in attendance and I got to fill up with some good OJ and breakfast burritos. I'd never been inside the Sugar Land Regional Airport before, and really enjoyed getting to look around and to see the planes leaving and arriving on the tarmac past the reception area. My uncle Marc loves flying planes and we recently had one of his old teachers (who flies frequently to/from the Sugar Land airpot) and his wife at our place for dinner, so the timing seemed particularly good for me to check it out.
Apparently it's also rated the best regional airport in the country, and Charlie has had a lot to do with that. At the event he presented an award to the airport and also received an award, so between the breakfast burritos and all the honors flying about the morning atmosphere was very positive despite the rain. Friends and colleagues of Charlie's gave some short speeches about his work and personal convictions, and it really reinforced my initial impression of him as humble and hard-working above all else. I'm not very religious or evangelical myself, but with people like him you see how those kinds of convictions can affect an elected official in a pragmatic way and keep them grounded in the kind of work that they do. I think that's something that everyone in a constituency can appreciate.
Charlie had joked at our YR meeting that his wife was more popular than he'd ever be. At least, I thought he was joking until I saw the aftermath of the breakfast reception: for every one or two people trying to talk to Charlie I saw a group of four or five people wanting to talk to Jo. It's really impressive how active she is and how she's made it her business to make sure her husband's re-election campaigns run smoothly. From the amount that Charlie has done for the district and how much I saw him running around (as much as you can on crutches) trying to talk to people about the amendment, I get the impression that this lives him more free to focus on what he really cares about, which are the nuts and bolts of the legislation that moves through our state house. When I run for office someday, I hope I have the same kind of support network helping me win my campaigns!
Fort Bend Young Republicans Constitution Ratification, Sugar Land, 10/27/09
Here you see Michelle Bloom, Secretary for the Fort Bend Young Republicans, signing our brand spankin' new constitution into effect. October was completely filled with emergency officer meetings every week as we poured over the constitutions for other YR chapters in Texas to see what we wanted in our own. One thing that's been repeatedly emphasized by everyone there is that we want to see this grow into an organization that has 200-800 members or more in the county, and we therefore had to set a lot of forward-looking groundwork and account for as many conceivable future issues that we could predict. This was especially true when it came to sending delegates to the annual convention of the state YR federation, and everything was made all the more difficult by the fact that our constitution had to be finished and signed in time for the state federation's deadline at the start of November. After a lot of late nights, clueless delivery drivers, Star Trek jokes, and some phone-conferencing, we met the crazy deadline and are now officially rolling. We changed our officer positions so that there are only four main, elected positions (those that the state organization requires). There are now also a number of appointed roles to oversee specific things like fundraising, and hopefully I'll get to continue in my role as Communications Director (and hopefully that will be easier to do once our online presence is completely organized and once we get the officer -> secretary -> communications director process really smoothly in terms of our organization's announcements). All in all after the first two months or so we have a lot to be proud of, and it's going to be much easier to make things happen in Fort Bend now that we've got the groundwork set up.
You can see all of my pictures from all of the events on my Facebook album, located here.
Of course, there are several things I missed in October- The Fort Bend Conservative Club hosted KBH (I *STILL* don't have a picture with her! Gah!) and the YRs had a meeting with Claver about political strategy. I did actually take a special trip up to Austin to attend the Students for Liberty Conference and recorded a video, but I'm holding off talking about that until I can write up a separate article about the Texas and national libertarian movements. Here's what's coming up in November...
As usual, please contact me if you would me to mention your organization's upcoming events!
Upcoming Grass-Roots Events and Planned RHT Coverage:
Foundation for Life Annual Banquet featuring Michelle Malkin
Make sure to click the Facebook "Become a Fan of Red Hot Texans" button in the top right corner!
October was awesome- let's see what the rest of 2009 brings.
Foundation for Life Annual Banquet featuring Michelle Malkin
Host: Foundation for LifeThe Republican Party of Fort Bend County Executive Committee Meeting
Date: Saturday, November 7, 2009
Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Marriot Sugar Land Hotel and Conference Center
Street: 16090 City Walk, Sugar Land, TX
City/Town: Sugar Land, TX
Tickets are $100 for individuals.
Link can be found here.
Host: Fort Bend GOPSpirit of Freedom Republican Women hosts Hannah Giles
Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Time: Evening
Location: Safari Texas (in the back)
Street: 11627 FM 1464 Rd (just north of SF Austin High School)
City/Town: Richmond TX
Host: Spirit of Freedom Republican WomenFort Bend County Young Republicans November Social Mixer
Type: Meetings - Club/Group Meeting
Date: Saturday, November 21, 2009
Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Location: Sugar Creek Country Club
Street: 420 Sugar Creek Blvd.
City/Town: Sugar Land, TX
Tickets are $45 for individuals.
I couldn't find the SFRW website so I uploaded the invitation here for anyone who wants to go.
Host: Fort Bend County Young RepublicansThat's it for now. Feel free to leave comments or questions about anything in this article, and be sure to check back in soon...I have a lot of cool stuff in store for visitors.
Date: Monday, November 23, 2009
Time: 6:30pm - 9:30pm
Location: T.G.I. Friday's
Street: 2515 Town Center Blvd
City/Town: Sugar Land, TX
Make sure to click the Facebook "Become a Fan of Red Hot Texans" button in the top right corner!
October was awesome- let's see what the rest of 2009 brings.
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