One word inspires the Convention of States Texas team this year: "engagement."
Many COS Texas leaders are participating in the party process. Last week, they engaged with the Republican Party of Texas. This coming week COS Texas will work with the Democratic Party of Texas.
That's because liberty is for all Americans.
Many Convention of States leaders from across the state served as delegates, alternates, and guests to the Texas GOP Convention last week in San Antonio.
Michael Deffendall, Regional Captain for Senate District 26, served as SD26 Caucus Chair. COS supporters Warrington Austerman and David Westbrook served as the SD19 and SD26 platform committee reps respectively.
It turned out that we needed their support, because anti-constitutional factions within the Republican Party of Texas made multiple attempts to remove the pro-Article V plank and replace it with a rescission plank!
The COS Texas team showed up, spoke up, and defeated those anti-constitutional rescission efforts.
One "neutral" observer posted this on social media:
"Today's testimony shows that the COS organization is still a powerful lobbying force in Texas, and any attempt to rescind will not pass in 2019, and therefore would be wasted activist effort...
"Twelve people testified tonight in front of the committee. Ten were for COS and 2 were in favor of rescission. And that was in front of a committee that was NOT going to do anything about COS this time."
COS Texas Co-Directors Tamara Colbert and Paul Hodson kept watch on the platform committee late into the evening Wednesday to ensure the members removed the rescission plank from the platform.
The team was also afforded the opportunity to reunite with some of our favorite COS legislative champions and endorsers.
The convention offered several exciting experiences to delegates, including heated floor debates over the election of a State Chairperson. In the end, James Dickey was re-elected to the position and opponent Cindy Asche went down in “ashes,” to quote one delegate.
Alma Jackson was elected as Vice Chair. The crowd of 9,000 delegates were treated to speeches by Governor Greg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz, and many other GOP office holders. U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush received boos from the delegation, which hopefully will make them sit up and take notice.
There were also many events happening in and around the convention. COS leaders met in front of the Alamo for photos on Thursday evening. Some of our group attended events with Governor Abbott, Empower Texans Torchbearers, luncheons, and a gala event to wrap up the convention.
COS Delegate Wally Thompson, District Captain from HD76 in El Paso, observed:
“Last week, there were about 9000 citizen delegates to the 2018 Texas Republican Party Convention in San Antonio and they submitted over 3400 resolutions for the 2018 planks. This is the way self governance is supposed to function. Citizen input goes to State representatives. The resolutions were voted on after they were whittled down to some 324 by the Resolutions and Platform Committee, removing duplicates, voting on which of conflicting resolutions to accept, etc. Democracy in action. For example when talking to our legislators about Convention of States we can quote an actual vote, 76% of those 9000 delegates favor the Convention of States project and voted to reaffirm past approvals.”
Another COS delegate noted, “My SREC committeewoman asked me to share thoughts with all of ‘my’ COS folks. Just sayin’ - she’s begun to believe we are a force to be reckoned with!”
Convention of States also manned a booth in the exhibits area. We spoke to hundreds of people, and many of them signed our petition.
New COS supporter, Kylee Rogers of Alpine goes "Instagram Live" with Paul Hodson and Tamara Colbert
