Gaining a foothold in Texas

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Turning Texas Blue
By Josh Baugh, July 29, 2013

The brains behind Battleground Texas, the grassroots nonprofit created by Obama campaigners to turn Texas into a competitive state, dropped by the Express-News Monday to talk elections — from county commissioners’ races to federal campaigns — with the newspaper’s Editorial Board.

Jeremy Bird, founding partner of 270 Strategies, and Jenn Brown, the executive director of Battleground Texas, made it clear that the organization is here to stay, and they don’t necessarily have their eye on the 2014 elections. In fact, if a top-tier Democratic candidate — a la Wendy Davis or a Castro brother — decides to enter the fray, it would actually speed up the organization’s timeline. Bird and Brown describe their attempt to turn Texas blue as a slow, methodical marathon.

So anyone who’s expecting Texas to turn blue by 2014, or even become a battleground state, will be disappointed. Over the next several years, though, the group is expected to grow exponentially.

The Obama machine that overtook Florida wasn’t created in a day — or a single election cycle. We saw it last September firsthand. The level of involvement on the ground — from campaign staffers to volunteers who packed into field offices before fanning out to canvass vast neighborhoods — was functioning at an organizational level foreign to Texas.

That Florida machine that we saw in action last fall took six years to build. How long it will take to duplicate that machine in Texas — if it can even be done — remains to be seen. It’s clear, though, that the folks behind Battleground Texas have the passion and energy to see it through.

Their efforts are under way, and they’re honing in on competitive seats across the state and will push to register millions of would-be voters who currently aren’t on the rolls. They’ve definitely done their homework in crunching numbers and clearly defining their targets. The looming question that remains is how successful they’ll be in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to a statewide office since Bird played Little League baseball…
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