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...