Posted on 01/18/2004 12:54:51 PM PST by Theodore R.
GOP gaining ground in rural West Texas BY JOHN REYNOLDS AVALANCHE-JOURNAL
As a lifelong member of the Republican Party, Pat Cowan remembers well the times when GOP was practically a dirty word in West Texas.
Cowan, currently the chairwoman of the Hockley County Republican Party, was raised on a farm just west of what then was Reese Air Force Base.
Her father had been a Democrat until Eisenhower's run for the White House in 1952.
As Cowan recalls it, her father came home one day and said, "You know, those farmers up north have been voting Republican for years. Maybe they know something we don't know."
And that was that, Cowan said with a chuckle.
"When he said that, he meant our minds were made up," she said. "That was a big thing in our house."
Not long afterward, Cowan was trudging up the steps of her little yellow school bus wearing her "I Like Ike" button.
The button drew a lot of negative attention from a lot of people, including the school superintendent who gave her a lot of grief for backing the Republican, she said.
Cowan's loneliness as a member of the GOP likely is disappearing as the years go by, according to an analysis of voter trends conducted by The Avalanche-Journal.
The Republican Party al ready has achieved dominance at the state level. Republicans hold every elected statewide office and, with redrawn congressional districts, are poised to dominate the state delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In rural counties surrounding Lubbock County, more and more Republicans are seeking county-level offices.
The A-J found that in the 1990 and 1992 election cycle, 18 Republicans filed to run for the offices of sheriff, county judge, county clerk, county treasurer and county commissioner.
By the 2002 and 2004 election cycle, that number had jumped to 73.
Democrats still dominate the election lists for county-level offices, but their numbers appear to be declining. In 1990 alone, 139 Democrats filed for office. This year 75 have filed, a drop of 46 percent.
In rural West Texas, the conventional wisdom for decades has been, "If you want to win at the local level, you have to run as a Democrat," Cowan said.
Twelve years ago, that statement was true in Hockley County, she said.
However, when Cowan took over the party eight years ago, she started looking at general election figures and noticed the county was going Republican in the race for governor and president.
Her first big coup was persuading the county attorney, J.M. "Pat" Phelan, to switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.
When he won in 1996, he became the first Republican ever elected in the county, Cowan said.
"The Republicans have been around for a long time, but they have always felt outnumbered," she said. Phelan's victory, though, emboldened more Republicans to run.
In Hockley County this year, Republican candidates for sher iff and county commissioner outnumber Democratic candidates, 9 to 2.
"Once I got one or two coming my way," Cowan said, "I got more of them to switch parties. Basically, this county is 62 percent Republican. I felt like I had to open my people's eyes to what was going on."
Phelan by no means was the last to switch parties in the region. Floyd County Attorney Lex Herrington announced he's running as a Republican this year.
In addition, after nearly 19 years as Hale and Swisher County District Attorney, running repeatedly as a Democrat, Terry McEachern is seeking re-election this year as a Republican.
The move, he said, reflects a swing in political views of the population he serves, but he stopped short of saying that his political philosophy is aligned with that of the Republican Party.
"I thought that (Republicans') views more correctly reflect at the present time the views of the majority of the population within the counties," McEachern said.
He faces two Republicans, Plainview City Attorney Wally Hatch and private attorney Hollis Browning, also of Plain view, in the March 9 primary.
One Democrat, Eric Willard, also a Plainview attorney in private practice, has tossed his hat into the ring for the district attorney slot.
He attributes the swing from Democrat to Republican philosophies in West Texas to events and trends in the na tional political arena, including perjury by President Bill Clinton about his relationship with a White House intern.
Also, Willard said, Texans support President Bush.
"I think it's just the time," Willard said. "George is there."
Garza County Sheriff Kenneth Ratke, a 12-year incumbent, said his decision to switch the (D) behind his name to an (R) boiled down to personal beliefs.
Philosophically, the modern Republican Party fits in with the West Texas mind-set better, he said.
Producing a copy of the party's platform, he said, "These views and issues coincide with the views of West Texas."
On a personal level, "I was taught as a young boy that I didn't need anybody helping me," he said. "My uncles believed that you give somebody a job, pay them a decent wage and they'll be OK."
Both Ratke and Cowan expect the trend toward more local Republican candidates to continue.
Republicans are specifically targeting the office of sheriff, Ratke said, because sheriff's elections generally attract the largest voter turnout.
Cowan said she's found a couple of good candidates to run for sheriff and is actively targeting the last non-Repub lican county commissioner precinct.
"And I think we can win it," she said.
john.reynolds@lubbockonline.com 766-8725
p.christine.smith@lubbockonline.com 766-8754
Cool.
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