Note to Maxey: Get your facts straight. A sorta rebuttal

[johncoby2]

This is the type of crap I was hoping to avoid. Glen should have known better and should have been a better candidate.



Statement By District 3 SDEC Member Dennis Teal

Dear Fellow Democrats;

I found the letter we all just received from Glen Maxey disingenuous and seriously misleading.

Glen has been deeply involved in Texas Party affairs for decades. He has chaired the Resolutions Committee at the State Convention on many occasions and has been involved in rewriting our Party rules. Therefore, as an established Party leader, Mr. Maxey should have known the following facts about the Texas Democratic Party rules.

Contrary to the implication of his letter, both the March and April meetings of the SDEC are not "hastily called" but are statutory meetings required and set by law. In fact, Mr. Maxey was in Galveston at the last SDEC meeting when the location of the March meeting was set.

Further, Mr. Maxey's statement that instead of calling an election Chairman Soechting could just turn over the post to the Vice Chair until the Convention simply ignores Art.III, D.1. (k) of the Texas Democratic Party Rules which states, "When a vacancy occurs in any of {the Democratic Party Officers} between State Conventions, a majority of the SDEC shall elect a successor…When an interim vacancy in the office of the State Chair is filled by the SDEC, the term of office shall be for the duration of the unexpired term."

I strongly object to a candidate for Chairman of our Party who knows the Rules well enough to participate in writing them, but who deliberately misrepresents what is required by those Rules and State Election Law to mislead fellow Democrats while attempting to further his campaign.

An open democratic vote by the SDEC does not disenfranchise any Texas Democrat and is not contrary to the Texas Democratic Party Rules.  Nor does this legal action of the SDEC prevent the Delegates at the Democratic State Convention from exercising their full democratic voting rights.

Mr. Maxey says he isn't running for Chair at the SDEC meeting because he wants to wait for the judgment of the convention. However, Mr. Maxey has told people privately that he thinks the individual who is State Chair at the Convention will be at a disadvantage as that individual will have to both campaign and preside while Maxey will only have to campaign. Therefore I would suggest he isn't running at the SDEC because he thinks not running is to his advantage.

I want a Chairman who doesn't try to hide his Party experience and expertise or feign ignorance of the Rules as a ploy to get votes. Real reform and progress won't come from deception or posturing.

That is why I am supporting the only candidate who has been saying the same thing since he started: Boyd Richie.

Your Fellow Democrat,
Dennis Teal

For more information, please contact Peck Young @ 512-422-8191

Pol. adv. pd. for by Boyd Richie, 1307 Roanoake, Graham, TX 76450

[sonias]

1. "Glen should have been a better candidate"

John, let's not talk about Glen in the past tense. He's not dead and the election in June is far from over. Richie is playing the politics game as much as Maxey. As much as I like Dennis Teal, this doesn't convince me not to vote for Glen. Teal says Glen has been saying "yada, yada, yada" privately. Glen says Boyd Richie and Charles Soechting are making backroom deals. This is a lot like the Bell/Gammage fight. It's called a contested election. I like what one poster on BOR said, imagine that the person elected on April 22nd was not a candidate for the state party chair. That would level the field. Elect someone not running for the state party chair on April 22nd to fill the remaining term. So that way, they have no personal stake in the race.

Here's what I want to know. Teal says "That is why I am supporting the only candidate who has been saying the same thing since he started: Boyd Richie."

Fair enough, so what is it that Richie is saying? What is his plan for the party? What issues will he champion? How will he grow the party? How will he bring in more people to the party?

There is an excellent questionnaire for all candidates that South Texas Chisme is asking the candidates to respond to. I want to read all their answers. Crispini has a thread about it too.
http://stxc.blogspot.com/2006/03/party-chair-questionnaire.html

Sonia

[Glen Maxey]

3. South Texas Chisme Candidate Survey

All,

I have submitted my survey to South Texas Chisme for their review. I am appreciative of them taking the lead with a survey that all candidates can choose to answer.

Feel free to send me an email at [e-mail] anytime. I'll do my best to get to it in a timely manner. Thanks.

Glen Maxey

[sonias]

4. Welcome to DU & he Texas forum Glen!

Despite all the recent ruckus, we're a good crew. A good Democracy has debate and dissent at its core. Welcome to the debate.
:hi:

Sonia

[johncoby2]

5. I'm with Muse! Ignore the pettiness in the damn party.

And come to District 22 and block walk with us.

We hit 1400 homes last weekend. They intend to do it again this weekend in Sugarland and Clear Lake.

If you have the urge to bitch, whine, or send "us" vs "them" emails, then you need some real work to do.

If getting elected is so damn important to someone, then I motion to give them the damn position, a big *&^%$ trophy, a nametag the size of a posterboard, and let's move on.


In fact it is time for me to begin ignoring this crap.

[sonias]

6. John you started this thread

It's not like we're not helping. We're doing our own footwork here. We have CD21 that we can pick up too. That's John Courage running against Lamar Smith - an excellent chance for a pick up from the repukes. We have HD47 which is in a runoff, that was a repuke controlled district which we intend to pick up as well. That runoff happens on April 11th.

Are you saying that Urbina-Jones and Richie are going to block walk with you in CD22?

While I can't commit to block walking CD22, you can check with the Lampson campaign - I've given him money. I've done what I can to promote him on this board and others. He's getting our support the best we can. John, we support your efforts in CD22 to get Nick Lampson elected. We're all doing our part to take back this state.

But I'm not going to forget that the state party chair is part of the equation - the part of our long term viability in this state. If you've made up your mind and want to put these threads on ignore, fine you're entitled to do that. Maybe the rest of us still want to debate that part though.

Sonia

[johncoby2]

7. You are right.

I did start the thread because I've had enough of the us vs them pettiness.

And my comments were directed directly at those who whine about the us vs them crap. I know many of us (and them) are working their butts off and to have someone running for office use such petty and incorrect arguments just adds to the difficulty in getting volunteers who are willing to work.

If it comes down to the us vs them, old guard vs new guard, at the state convention, I probably will resort back to the bar.

I am pissed about this and sometimes it unfortuantley spreads to others that I didnt mean to spread to.

So enough of my BS.

[muse]

8. just to make my point clear

I didn't like the way Richie and Maxey came out of the chute with initial communications that was more about finger pointing than substantive talk about positions about issues important to the future of the Party. They need to understand that there are a lot of us who are way more focued on getting things done RIGHT NOW and we don't have time for all of that.

None of that spoke to leadership to me.

[CoolOnion]

11. I don't like that kind of thing, either.

[muse]

2. I just want to know who is going to help us get Lampson and Bell elected

and who is going to get Texas turned blue the fastest. These guys (light bulb goes off in muse's head: why isn't there a woman running?) need to shut up with the whining and start talking fast about what matters. When they start talking about what I want to hear, I'll start listening. Until then, I have Tom DeLay in my sights and work to do for Nick Lampson on the ground right here in my neighborhood.

[NoPasaran]

9. While I too would love to see Texas turned blue posthaste

We aren't doing ourselves any favors by denying that the party is a mess. Our turnout in the primary sucked, partly because half the people in the state don't know or don't think our statewide candidates are relevant so they want to sign petitions either for a clown or a Repuke... and one of those people is the last guy we ran for governor! More than half of the people who did bother to vote either didn't know or didn't care who our viable candidate for US Senate is and opted instead for a dope who relies on name recognition from a long-dead dancer or a total non-entity whose website requested that people NOT send him any donations. Moreover it was clear from reading comments in this and other forums about precinct conventions that in many places there hardly seems to be any party structure to speak of.

Two years ago a lot of new, enthusiastic people came into the party. I think a lot of thought that just because of that fact 2006 was going to be a great year for us. But unfortunately there just are no shortcuts to rebuilding a political party. We're either going to fix things and modernize the party and become competitive again or else I think in a few more years there will essentially be no more Texas Democratic Party.

I'm glad you've got Tom DeLay in your sights. I've got Lamar Smith in mine. These are both winnable races for us in 2006 because of the work that done in 2004 showed that with hard work and enough money and good candidates Democrats could be competitive. But we've got to get the state party as a whole up and running if we're ever going to be serious about turning Texas Blue, not just pouring all our resources into a few battleground districts.

[johncoby2]

10. Exactly, but pissing people off doing it.............

"We're either going to fix things and modernize the party and become competitive again or else I think in a few more years there will essentially be no more Texas Democratic Party."

And that would be great, but pissing people off with the "out with the old, in with the new" attitude does nothing to help. In fact it hurts especially those of us who have both the new and the old working together to resolve the issues. Nothing like starting a fight between them.

[muse]

12. The points you bring up are why I am really disturbed

Nothing in anything Maxey has written leads me to believe he has the capabilities to be rebuild the party structure or to be a strong leader or be the public face for the party. He states outright that he is a behind the scenes worker and that disturbs me, if that is his main strong point. Fine. He should stay behind the scenes. His writing style is rambling. He says he doesn't like cocktail parties and the like. Well, I'm sorry, but that's part of the job. You gotta run with the people who have money and power to get things done at the highest level in this huge state and not just be able to organize the grassroots. I realize I'm reacting off of very little information, but this is the information Maxey is putting out there and I'm not super impressed.

What does Richie have to offer? I don't know. I haven't heard much about him at all.

Where I work, we went through a leadership change at the top last year and it was a grueling process on many different levels. But, because of what I saw at my own workplace last year, I can tell you that I am VERY unimpressed with what I am seeing with this leadership change at the top of our party right now. There are some very unprofessional things going on and a lot of things happening that say "lack of leadership" to me.

Those are my musings for now at this early stage in the game.