Hard Hitting Conservative Commentary by Gary M. Polland

Volume XXIII Number 7 – May 22, 2024


Thoughts This Fortnight

The following is an insightful and realistic look at the state of the Republican Party of Texas, by Matt Mackowiak. Matt Mackowiak is the Travis County GOP chairman and President of Potomac Strategy Group. He has helped elect five members of Congress, served in senior roles for two U.S. Senators and a Governor, and worked in White House Advance in 2005. His widely read newsletter Must Read Texas has 90,000 subscribers and receives 40,000+ views a day. He lives in Austin with his wife Amy and their two dogs, Hope and Harry.

Mackowiak is an announced candidate for Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. The race for RPT Chair will be decided by Republican delegates at this week’s state convention in San Antonio. TCR believes Mackowiak has the combination of experience and vision necessary to turn around an ailing RPT and to make it once again a vibrant and effective force in electing Republican candidates and advancing the conservative agenda.


Why RPT Slept

The biggest, reddest state in the country is wholly unprepared
for the most consequential presidential election in 50 years.

By Matt Mackowiak
Friday, May 17, 2024

There’s a common misconception that Texas is a deep red state, and that it always has been and it always will be.

Texas was a reliably blue state as recently as the 1990 statewide election, which was the last time Democrats swept the statewide elections in Texas.

Due in large part to a sweeping shift engineered by Karl Rove and led by Kay Bailey Hutchison and Rick Perry, in 1990 Republicans won TWO statewide races of consequence: Treasurer (KBH) and Agriculture Commissioner (Perry). It was a sea change in Texas politics that began an uninterrupted era of dominance that has not been cut into since. The era of dominance birthed the Texas Model, which has made Texas the unstoppable economic engine envied by every state and nation on the planet.

In 1993, when Democrat Lloyd Bentsen resigned the U.S. Senate seat to become President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, the top Republican statewide official (KBH) ran for U.S. Senate in the special election and won, following that by winning both the primary and the general in 1994. She won again in 2000 and 2006. The future was here.

Beginning in 1994, Republicans began a string of consecutive statewide election victories that would make Nebraska blush. From 1994 to today, Democrats have not won a SINGLE statewide race in Texas. Read that again. Not one.

Not U.S. Senate, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller (previously called Treasurer), Land Commissioner, Agriculture Commissioner, Railroad Commissioner (3 seats, not 1), Supreme Court or Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Want to know the combined record of Democrats in statewide races since 1998? 0–132.

Flash forward to today.

Texas remains a Republican state, with GOP majorities in the Teas House and Senate and all statewide offices.

The highest profile scare the GOP has had was in 2018, when Beto O’Rourke came 2.6% from defeating incumbent Ted Cruz, mostly due to Beto raising $100M in hard money in what was a very good year nationally for Democrats. On his behalf, more money was spent in favor of Beto in 2018 than any U.S. Senate race in history at the time.

This year, there are a host of competitive races at the statewide level, including President, U.S. Senate (Cruz vs. Colin Allred), Supreme Court (incumbent John Devine won his primary by less than 1%) and Railroad Commissioner (Christi Craddick will face an onslaught of left wing environmental money). The size of the majority in the Texas House is at stake, as are as many as three contested Congressional seats, Court of Appeals majorities in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, and other key races.

The Republican Party of Texas (RPT) is in the worst shape in the modern era.

Here are the undeniable facts:

> RPT currently has 5 full time paid staff (they should have 40 right now)

> RPT does not register new voters (and hasn’t for at least five years) despite the fact that 1,000 people move to Texas every day

> As of one week ago, RPT was $500,000 short of its minimum budget for the State Convention (which begins May 23 in San Antonio)

> RPT needs a minimum of $1.5M for Victory (the coordinated campaign to get out the vote). They have raised $200,000 and the Victory chair resigned this week in frustration (which has never happened before).

The cold reality is that RPT is inexplicably and unacceptably unprepared for the most important election in our lifetime. It does not have to be this way.

A serious state party with serious people running it would raise $5M in new money, hire 35 more staff, partner with our nominees, statewide officials, county parties, clubs and auxiliaries, register new voters, unify the party and work to win as many races as possible this fall. And then in January work constructively and collaboratively to pass as much of the RPT platform and legislative priorities as possible.

One thing is abundantly clear: It is time for change at RPT. President Donald Trump needs it. Senator Ted Cruz needs it. Texas needs it. America needs it.

The time is now.

It is for this reason that on May 17 I announced my candidacy to be Republican Party of Texas chairman — to save Texas.

We need President Trump to win Texas by the largest margin possible, to ensure Sen. Ted Cruz is re-elected and that all of our targeted races perform well.

Saving Texas is worth the sacrifice. I hope you will join me in this urgent mission.


Mackowiak Press Release

For Immediate Release
May 20, 2024

Media Contact: Matt Mackowiak
[email protected]

RPT Chair Candidate Matt Mackowiak Releases Detailed Election Integrity Plan

Gold Standard Election Integrity Effort Will Be Up and Running in 60 Days

AUSTIN, TX — Travis County GOP chairman and active candidate for Texas GOP chair Matt Mackowiak today released a comprehensive Election Integrity plan that he will begin implementing on Day One after he is elected chair at the Republican Party of Texas convention May 23-25 in San Antonio.

“We should make it easy to legally vote, and impossible to illegally vote, and Texas has existing state laws to do that,” said Mackowiak. “It is the job of the Republican Party of Texas to protect our general election candidates by ensuring state laws are followed and actively litigating to protect our rights and election integrity. No other RPT chair candidate has released a detailed, comprehensive, actionable election integrity plan. This will be an urgent priority when I am elected chair.”

Mackowiak commits to executing the following plan for Election Integrity:

  • Raise $1M to fund the effort

  • Announce a leadership team to include leading election law expert Chris Gober and former 3rd Court of Appeals Judge Mike Toth as co-chairs

    • Gober will build the substantive election law policies

    • Toth will lead the recruitment, training, and management of our volunteer army of election lawyers

  • Seek bicameral agreement to urgently pass the SAFE Act in a Special Session to ensure no illegal alien can vote illegally in 2024

    • Counties can give social security numbers to illegal aliens and without this law, they may be able to vote in 2024

    • This bill passed the Texas Senate in 2023, but it did not receive a vote in the Texas House

    • There may be a solution through the Texas Secretary of State’s office, which we will urgently explore

  • Recruit enough volunteer lawyers to cover all 254 counties for early voting through election day to advise candidates, election workers, and local party officials, and immediately respond to election law complaints

  • Recruit thousands of pollwatchers, pollworkers, and election judges and alternates to cover as much of the state as possible

“There is too much distrust in our election process, so I look forward to playing a significant role in reforming Texas’s election laws and building a sustainable election integrity program that helps guarantee the fair and transparent elections that Texans deserve,” said Chris Gober, CEO of the Gober Group.

“No issue is more crucial than securing safe and fair elections,” said Mike Toth, former Justice, Texas Third Court of Appeals. “Without election integrity, our political system is fundamentally broken. I am proud to be a part of the solution for Texans, who want their voice to count and their voice to be heard.”

“I am proud to have released the only comprehensive election integrity plan of the candidates running for RPT chair,” said Mackowiak. “We have a highly credible leadership team that will hit the ground running. We will partner with the Trump campaign and the RNC’s excellent Texas state director for election integrity Valerie McConahay who we have spoken with and believe is doing great work currently that we can build on. Most election law violations are one of three things: Mail Ballot fraud, illegal voting, or voter assistance fraud. We will focus our resources in these specific areas.”

Mackowiak has taken election integrity seriously in his seven years leading the Travis County GOP, taking steps to support and demand recounts in close races, suing the County Clerk to force action and negotiation, and securing the hand counting of mail ballots in the March 2024 primary for the first time ever. In the joint primary contract for Travis County, Mackowiak also secured these important victories:

  • Travis County Elections will provide configuration reports with a summary of ballots cast for each vote center for both early vote and election day

  • This increases transparency of the early vote tabulation and enables auditability of all election results

  • Travis County Elections will provide Cast Vote Record (CVR) results report by polling location (previously they were only provided by precinct and countywide)

  • This also increases transparency of the early vote tabulation and enables auditability of all election results (without individual vote location results in countywide voting, a true audit was previously impossible)

  • Travis County Elections will provide ballot style reports to verify that Travis County does not have the same issues that Williamson County had with voters being given the wrong ballot

  • This increases our ability to monitor accuracy of the election process

  • Pending a Secretary of State office decision, Travis County Elections will add a redundant process for voter check in with a paper roster as backup, in case the e-poll books have problems as they did previously in Dallas County

  • Additionally, TCRP worked with the Secretary of State’s office to develop an improved hand counting method that will increase the speed and accuracy of hand counting (which will now occur for mail ballots)

“As your next Texas GOP chair, we will make Election Integrity an urgent priority, and I look forward to working with Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and the Texas Legislature in this area. We will not let illegal voting threaten our state’s future.”

Due to the outstanding work of Attorney General Paxton and his team in 2020, leading up to the election Texas won all statewide election-related lawsuits and prevented proposed state law violations like Harris County mailing one million unsolicited mail ballots, and ballot harvesting.

Learn more about our campaign at: makeRPTgreatagain.com.

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