Reply #11: Here is how the system works re counties in Texas

[Melissa G]

David Van Os posted this on another list I read. I doubt he would mind my reposting it here.
Here is his explanation below...
"
Armstong, Hansford, and Roberts are the 3 counties in Texas that as of now don't have Democratic county chairs. They are all in the upper Panhandle. So they didn't have Democratic primaries because there was nobody to hold one. In general elections the Democratic vote typically ranges from about 12% to about 22% in those counties. (As of 2006 there were about 7 or 8 counties that didn't have Democratic county chairs, but the palpable changing of the tide has led Democrats to come out in several of them and volunteer to serve as county chairs and organize a local Democratic party. For example, there is now a Democratic county chair in Ochiltree county for the first time in about 15 years, and Ochiltree County held a Democratic primary this year for the first time since then.)

There is an even greater number of rural West Texas and rural South Texas counties that don't have Republican county chairs, with some of them being Democratic counties in national and statewide elections and others being Republican counties in national and statewide elections. To explain more, an interesting quirk about rural Texas is that, outside of South Texas, in both eastern and western rural counties, there are quite a few counties where the last top-ticket Democrat that carried them was Jimmy Carter in 1976, but where the offices of county government are still held 100% by Democrats just like they have been ever since Reconstruction ended in 1877. It is just long, deep tradition. In county government offices, everybody runs in the Democratic primary and the elections are decided in the Democratic primary - even though the majority of the voters are Republican voters for the purposes of everything above the level of county government.

But in most rural South Texas counties, the huge majority of voters are simply Democrats period, for all purposes, and there is nobody to run as a Republican because no Republican could possibly get elected to anything.

David Van Os"