Political Wave In Texas

Dear Friend,

I wanted to give you a quick update on my race for County Commissioner here in Fort Bend County. These are incredibly exciting times to be a Democrat in Texas, especially here in Fort Bend County. Right here in Tom DeLay’s old stomping grounds we’ve seen an unbelievable explosion in Democratic turnout. In the early voting period, more than twice as many ballots have been cast in the Democratic primary than in the Republican primary.

This is great news and shows just how far this county and this country have come since I launched my challenge against Tom DeLay in 2003. At the time DeLay was described as “the most powerful man in Washington” and mockingly told waiters in restaurants “I AM the federal government.” When we started that campaign it was written off as a fool’s errand. Now we know it was one of the early pebbles that have triggered an avalanche of political changes.

Please click here to contribute so we can finish the campaign for change we started in 2003/2004.

As I emailed you before, I’m running against an entrenched and corrupt local Republican official. This time I’m challenging Fort Bend County Commissioner Tom Stavinoha. I realize that for many of you around the country this race will seem pretty minor in the big scheme of things but here’s why it matters:

Fort Bend County is trending Democratic. This is huge. For twenty years, Fort Bend County has been one of the suburban strongholds of the Texas GOP that has brought us George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, John Cornyn, Karl Rove, Dick Armey, and Enron. I am one of several Democrats running strong races for local offices in Fort Bend County. If we win, we will have severly weakened the old corrupt Republican machine in its lair.

As exciting as the news is, the deluge of new primary voters has severely complicated my efforts to secure the Democratic nomination in the Commissioner’s race. There are five candidates running for the nomination and my targeted voter outreach efforts are frankly swamped by the flood of new voters — most of whom appear on no voter file and therefore can’t be reached by my campaign.

As a result I’ve had to change my tactics and have dramatically increased my voter contact programs — direct mail, phone calls, volunteer outreach and blockwalking. I’m confident I’ll secure the win on Tuesday, but your financial support will dramatically improve my chances in case there is a run-off or in the general election.

Please click here to contribute so we can finish the campaign for change we started in 2003/2004.

Keep fighting!

Richard Morrison

Posted on March 3, 2008 | Return to the In the News Archive