Fort Bend Republicans Choose Wallace in Straw Poll

The Fort Bend Republican Party Executive Committee (all precinct chairs) met tonight to choose their gang of four member. With 56 of 64 precinct chairs present, the vote was 37 for Terese Raia and 19 for Pat Hebert. After the meeting was adjourned, a straw vote was taken for the precinct chairs' preference for who Raia should vote for to replace Tom DeLay on the ballot. The results were:

David Wallace 20
Charlie Howard 13
Andy Meyers 7
Shelley Sekula-Gibbs 2
Tim Turner 1
Tom Campbell 1

That's all the votes. Note, Robert Talton: 0

The place was packed and the mood was festive. Sekula-Gibbs brought pizza and water bottles (with her name on them) and Wallace brought cheese, veggies and water bottles (same name thing.) Talton brought cookies. Sekula-Gibbs had supporters there pushing campaign literature into everyone's hand as they walked in. There were a lot of elected officials there and they were all introduced. Everyone from SREC members, to the county sheriff, to judges, to the usual suspects who are running for the Republican spot on the TX-22 ballot - Wallace, Sekula-Gibbs, Howard, Campbell, Meyers, Talton and Pat Baig.

The precinct chairs sat up front with a long row of tables dividing them and the observors. Oh, and a Fort Bend County Sheriff was there at the tables guarding the precinct chairs. In case I got crazy and attacked Gary Gillen, Party Chair, I guess.

Gillen read from a script. He said this group was following the same directions as Harris County. It sounds to me like Tina Benkiser, Texas Republican Party Chair, drew up some rules and all four counties are going to follow them. The whole process was very quick. Nominations for the gang of four member were taken from the floor. There were only the two. Each candidate was allowed to speak for two minutes.

Heber emphasized consensus and that she did not have a candidate in this race. She would vote for whomever the precinct chairs wished for her to vote for. Raia emphasized her years of experience in the Republican party and that she had worked on many of the candidates races. She emphasized her qualifications to make the hard decision. She would choose someone with strong conservative values. She promised to choose the person who could get elected, that being the most important thing. Does it sound to you like she is making the case that she would use her own best judgement and choose the candidate she thought was best? It did to me. But, then she turned right around and said she also was not committed to any candidate and would vote the precinct chairs wishes. ??

Slips of paper were passed out to the precinct chairs and as they voted, Robin Armstrong, Vice Chair of the Republican Party of Texas, arrived to great applause. He spoke for a minute while the voting was taking place. He talked about conservative values, the importance of the decision at hand and thanked the precinct chairs. A plastic U.S. postal service box was passed around to collect the votes. The same postal box that held the infamous surveys?

The votes were tallied and posted on a flip chart at the front of the room. Then, Gillen said that it was against the rules for the precinct chairs to discuss who they wanted Raia to vote for during the committee meeting, but after they adjourned, if they wished, they could mark the name down of the candidate they preferred on a piece of paper and those votes would be tallied. He emphasized that this vote would be non-binding on Raia.

They started passing around little slips of paper again, but Raia was PREPARED. She went to the podium, thanked everyone, including her opponent, Hebert, and said she had surveys with her. She asked everyone to fill one out so that she would know what kind of candidate they were looking for and also to put down the name of the person they wanted to see on the ballot.

Terese, are you voting the wishes of the precinct chairs or are you going to decide for yourself who YOU think is the best candidate? Which is it?

There was lots of visiting at the end (with a very deflated Sekula-Gibbs eating a piece of pizza at the back of the room). I overheard one man saying he didn't care who the gang of four chose, he'd vote for a cat if that's who they put up.

Sekula-Gibbs was wearing a red suit. Black heels.