It's no secret that Texas' political climate is largely dominated by Republicans. Yet this year's election showed Democrats gaining ground in the House for the first time in 30 years. Despite having the odds stacked against them, a few Democratic challengers tipped the political scales and won upsets through aggressive one-on-one campaigning.
Hubert Vo, a Democratic newcomer who had never run for office, succeeded in unseating 21-year veteran and chair of the House Appropriations Committee Talmadge Heflin in Harris County's District 149.
Mike Lavigne, chief of staff for the Texas Democratic Party, said Vo's campaign used a very advanced block-walking method that became available because of a new "voter file" the Democrats rolled out before this election season.
"This was more detailed and more organized than anything we have ever produced," Lavigne said. "It gave our candidates the ability to know where voters stood, and ended up being the key to a successful ground attack."
Lavigne said the system works by providing the candidates with demographic information on constituents in their districts. It rates people on a scale of 1 to 5 and tells the candidate where potential swing voters live.
While Vo went door-to-door meeting voters and encouraging them to get to the polls, Heflin took a less aggressive approach and was seen as lackadaisical by his friends, said Harvey Kronberg, editor of the Quorum Report, an online site that covers Texas politics.
"Ten days before the election, Heflin was out of his district campaigning for another candidate," Kronberg said.
Karen Loper, Vo's campaign manager, said that Speaker of the House Tom Craddick became increasingly concerned about the race toward the end of the campaign and held a fund-raiser on Heflin's behalf, which generated $200,000 that was used to air radio spots in the Harris County area. The effort was too little too late, as Vo took the election with a razor-thin margin of 31 votes.
Matt Wilson, political analyst for NBC, said the aggressive Democratic ground game also worked in Dallas, pointing to a wide array of judgeships and the newly elected Democratic Sheriff Lupe Valdez.
"The Democrats had very good ground mobilization, especially with the Hispanics. This proved to be a big key to all of the Democratic victories in Texas," Wilson said.
"Valdez is a Hispanic lesbian - this is not the usual profile of a Dallas sheriff," Wilson said. "She's not your typical Wyatt Earp."
Wilson said that in some races the Republicans were not as aggressive as the Democrats, and overall the Republicans where surprised by the Democratic "get out the vote" effort.
"This year Democrats defiantly got the better of the ground game," Wilson said.
Locally Mark Strama upset Republican incumbent Jack Stick in a slightly Republican leaning district. Again, a strong grass-roots attack came into play that succeeded in capturing enough swing voters to give the election to Strama by a margin of 556 votes.
"Strama broke new ground on voter identification," Kronberg said. "His campaign touched thousands of hands."
Kronberg said that Stick's ground game was "modest," and Strama's campaign will be "textbook" for future Democrats trying to win Republican districts.
Over the summer, Strama recruited 40 junior high and high school students for his "campaign academy." They spent part of their time listening to political guest speakers, and the rest of the time in the field registering people to vote.
"I told my academy that of the 55,000 registered voters in the district, 25,000 would automatically be against us and 24,000 would automatically be for us. Leaving us with 6,000 swing voters, 1,000 of which we would need to prevail," Strama said. "But if we could get 60,000 overall voters to the polls, we wouldn't need the 1,000 swing voters; approximately 64,000 turned out."
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