POLLAND: We Need a Time-Out in National Politics

Who Won Why and Harris County goes Purple By Gary Polland Texas Insider Report: HOUSTON Texas It was a tough night. After the most expensive Presidential Campaign in history Barack Obama survived and was re-elected. In Texas the GOP on balance had a good night but lost some key races: Quico Canseco in Congressional Dist. 23 Dr. Mark Shelton in State Senate Dist. 10 as well as a handful of State House races.   Credit the power of incumbency the strong support from the major media outlets and the $100 million dollars worth of negative campaigning for most of the Obama victory. It is hoped President Obama this time will be the President he promised last time which was to unify the nation and to put aside petty partisan differences. The problems this country faces in regards to the economy taxes runaway government spending massive youth unemployment and under employment and growing threats to our nation from a nuclear armed Iran and a resurgent Al-Qaeda require immediate cooperative efforts to deal with them successfully. We dont have the luxury of putting these problems off for another four years. So we need a time-out in national politics - the 2016 and 2018 campaigns can wait awhile - and the President and the divided Congress need to focus on doing their jobs and not running for their jobs because this country doesnt have the time to be diverted from the critical tasks ahead. Our countrys future depends on it and so by the way does our childrens future. Looking across the country What sticks out is the loss of U.S. Senate seats we should have won in Indiana and Missouri where Romney won handily but our candidates were just too stupid to win. We must do a better job of nominating smart qualified candidates or we will continue to lose races we shouldnt. The race for the White House was close but we came up short. Our thoughts today on why?

1. Hurricane Sandy
2. Forgetting ObamaCare as an issue
3. Not taking on the President regarding the Benghazi massacre and
4. Obamas campaign accusing Republicans of a war on women worked ... we lost the womens vote by 10!

At the end of the day the nation is closely divided and there are more of them than us. But also remember with a shift of 355000 votes in key states we would have won and Obama is down almost 10 million votes from 2008. Welcome To Purple County Texas aka Harris County Harris County Republicans had a disappointing election. A reprise of 2008 with a straight ticket pull of almost 70 as TCR projected. The margin for error is low with such a strong straight ticket vote and the Democrats won the straight vote by about 2700 votes. Romney lost the county by 600 votes. So what happened to the rest of our ticket? Ted Cruz won the county by around 18000 votes totaling 581197. But there was a drop off from there for the GOP in contested races with Democrats. Further down the ballot thank goodness Mike Anderson won a closer than it should have been race for District Attorney (given the choice he deserved 99 of the vote) but we lost the County Attorney and Sheriff races. Sarah Davis won an expensive race for State Representative in a moderately conservative District 134. We lost a close race for Ken Leglers Representative seat with Daniel Pineda falling 1600 votes short. The judiciary GOP team suffered a tough night losing most of the races by anywhere from a few thousand to over 30000. There are a handful of judicial survivors mostly our women: Elizabeth Ray Debra Ibarra Mayfield Theresa Chang Rene Magee Kristin Guiney Stacey Bond; and some men: Ryan Patrick Tad Halbach Ken Wise Brock Thomas and Mark Kent Ellis. So we did better than in 2008 but we did not perform at the level we should have given the quality of candidates and the money available. Clearly going forward we have our work cut out for us. We must do a better job of adding to our coalition and bringing out our voters. 2014 now shapes up as a critical election where a strong top of the ticket a reconstructed victory program better and more diverse candidate recruitment and the ending of a tendency among some of our elected officials to engage in the circular firing squad as occurred this year in the general election because of some alleged dissatisfaction with our nominees. If we dont get our act together we are on the road to being what we are in big city races a significant part of a winning coalition but we cant get to victory without other groups assisting. Gary Polland a long-time conservative and Republican spokesman fund-raiser and leader who completed three terms as the Harris County Republican Chairman is publisher of the Texas Conservative Review. Polland was described as the most successful county Chairman in America by Human Events at the time.