Chapter 5: Political Parties

Why Political Parties Matter

Two parallel developments

  • Domination of the Republican Party in Texas

  • The state’s growing minority population; which is increasingly Latino

Texas has largely been a one-party state: first Democratic, then Republican

The internal diversity within political parties

The future will be shaped by how parties are organized, how candidates are selected, and the role of partisanship

The Role of Political Parties in Texas Politics

Political Parties

  • Help candidates win election

  • Assist voters in making their choices

  • Raise money for campaigns and help “get out the vote”

  • Organize the government if their party wins the election

An important function of parties in Texas is to provide a label under which candidates run and with which voters identify

  • Each party develops a party platform from which voters can get a better sense of what the party stands for

Texas parties in the national context

  • States differ in the strength of the political parties

  • States political parties have less power

  • “All politics is local”

  • Local issues are usually not ideological in nature

  • Partisan polarization is becoming more pronounced in the Texas legislature

    • Compromise has become increasingly difficult

Public attitudes about parties

  • Political socialization occurs in our early years

  • Agents of socialization: parents, religious leaders, teachers, other

  • We are also influenced by our geographical environment

For many people, partisan affiliation is important when deciding how to vote

  • Texans are increasingly identifying as independent

  • Swing voters may ultimately decide elections

The contemporary Republican Party in Texas

  • Texas Republicans are experiencing major division within the party

  • Republicans hold all major statewide elected offices, but the party has not always been so powerful

  • Before 1994, Democrats held many statewide offices

  • The Texas Republican Party diminished in strength during Donald Trump’s term in office

  • The tightness of the 2018 election and recent trends might suggest that Democrats can crack Republican dominance in the future

The Contemporary Democratic Party in Texas

  • Texas Democrats have been consigned to minority status since the early 2000s

  • Texas Democrats today would be classified as liberal

    • The party’s base is made up of African Americans, Latinos, and white liberals in urban areas

  • Of the 11 Democrats representing Texas in Congress, 8 are Latino or African American

Democratic and Republican Party organization

  • Texas does not have party registration

  • Voters may vote in either primary

  • Candidates must win either

    • A majority of the primary vote

    • A runoff between the two highest vote getters

  • Parties in Texas are organized at the precinct, county, and state levels

  • In each election precinct, a precinct chair is elected in the party primary

  • Also elected in the primary, the county chair heads of the county executive committee, which is composed of the chair and the precinct chairs

  • At the state level, a state executive committee includes a state chair and a vice chair

  • Precinct conventions send delegates to the county convention and may submit resolutions for the party platform

  • The country conventions (or in urban areas, district conventions) then elect delegates to the state convention

Third parties in Texas

  • The two parties in power make it difficult for third parties to thrive, and third-party candidates rarely win

  • Third parties and candidates do, however, emerge

    • The Grange and Populist movements

    • States’ Rights Party, or Dixiecrats

    • George Wallace and segregation

    • The civil rights movement and La Raza Unida

    • The Libertarian Party

    • The 2006 election for governor

  • Why don’t people vote for third parties?

    • Texas employs a “first past the post,” single-member district electoral system

  • Some other countries use a system of proportional representation, a multimember district system that allows each political party representation in proportion to its percentage of the total vote

5.2

Texas’s History as a One-Party State

After the Civil War, Texas entered an era of one-party rule that lasted over a century

  • The real election was the Democratic primary

  • Republicans frequently did not run any candidate at all for many offices

  • Many counties had no Republican Party at all

By about the mid-1940s, a split between liberal and conservative Democrats developed in response to New Deal and civil rights policies

  • The Shivercrat movement of the 1950s and a strengthening pattern of presidential Republicanism signaled coming change

The era of conservative Democrats

  • Democrats were conservative on fiscal and racial issues

  • The Republican Party was initially started in Illinois as an antislavery party

  • Many southern Democrats were elected to Congress and gained seniority in the Democratic-controlled Congress

The growth of the Republican Party

  • Reagan’s election in 1980 marked a significant change in how Texans began to vote, not only in presidential elections, but also in state elections

  • At the end of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush years, Texas became a Republican state, not only in presidential elections, but also in state races

  • In 1999, every statewide elected official was Republican

  • In the 2019 Texas legislature, 19 out of 31 senators and 83 out of 150 representatives were Republican

  • In 2019, both U.S. senators and 23 of the 36 House members from Texas were Republican