Life As a Green Politician in Texas Here are two things every Texas voter needs to know, regardless of party affiliation. I don't often resort to ALL CAPS, but...
1. THERE IS NO DANGER OF SPOILING A DEMOCRAT'S CHANCES IN A STATEWIDE RACE IN TEXAS BY VOTING GREEN! 2. THIS ALSO APPLIES TO PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS: NO DEMOCRAT IS GOING TO WIN TEXAS'S 40 ELECTORAL VOTES!
Most registered voters in America are either unaware or vaguely aware that something called the Green Party exists. Most would not be able to name the Greens' 2012 and 2016 Presidential nominee: Dr. Jill Stein of Massachusetts, In both of her runs for the presidency, I had the great fortune of hanging out with Dr. Stein for a few days, including at the 2016 Presidential Nominating Convention in Houston.
In 2012, I was fairly confident that Dr. Stein would take about 2% of the vote in Texas, and I might get something close to that; several polls backed up my assumption. What does it say about Texas and 2012 that she received only about 0.30% statewide while I received 0.86% running for the Senate?
There are dozens of possible answers, some of them even plausible: Texas progressives may have actually believed that President Obama had a chance to win Texas, and decided that voting for him rather than a third-party candidate would actually make a difference. Most of the answers come down to this, though: how uninformed, under-informed, misinformed, or just plain deluded our electorate has been.
But It's Not The Voters' Fault The US Media Machine is built to keep voters in the dark. We get more information than we can process every day, but only a small fraction of that information is useful. Also, both major parties have become so appalling that most voters express their political preference by not voting at all: witness the 33% turnout in Harris County and Texas in November 2014.
The major task of a Green Party activist is finding people ready, willing, and able to vote their hopes rather than their fears. This is especially true In Texas, where we do not register by party, so you can't go to the Tax Assessor-Collector's office and buy a list of registered Greens. You'd be amazed how difficult it is to turn pissed-off adults into Green regulars, to get people to channel their anger into preserving the future.
In this state, Republican dominance officially began in 1994. There was a sixteen year transitional phase after a century of one-party rule by Southern Democrats, during which a lot of those Democrats jumped to the GOP. (Molly Ivins would call them "Tory Democrats"—Lloyd Bentsen and Bob Bullock were two who didn't jump.) The Democratic Party in Texas has become a chihuahua nipping at the heels of the Republican juggernaut. Statewide, Republicans beat Democrats by 60-40 margins, or at least 55-45, in most general elections.