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The Purpling of Texas? Blame Arrogance, Dallas GOP Leader Says

Two weeks out from the 2018 midterms and state GOP groups are weighing in on what led to the purpling of many parts of Texas. One Republican party leader says the state’s conservatives might want to look in the mirror.

"We were arrogant, that’s what we were," says Karen Porter, vice chairwoman of the Dallas County Republican Party. She says Republicans lost their once-near-total grip on Texas because they went into the race believing that Texas is and ever will be a red state. And that "arrogance" could not withstand a charged-up Democrat base that simply made a better effort from the ground up.

"The reason we lost so often, we had a meeting last night, is, we were outmatched in a lot of these down-ballot races," Porter says. "We were out-funded. Cruz didn’t have the money O’Rourke had, and he also didn’t have the grassroots organization."

Porter says that even though she is a Republican party official, even she got text messages from the Beto O’Rourke campaign. Many of her fellow county GOP colleagues also got visits from O’Rourke supporters going door-to-door. Meanwhile, she didn’t even see so much as yard signs for Republican candidates until way too late in the game.

"When I asked people “What was Beto’s message?” no one could relly tell me," she says. "So it wasn’t his message, it was that we did not have the network and the infrasctructure to build that campaign and to win it."

The underlying reason Republicans lost so much this year, she says, is because the party was measuring itself against how well it did compared to itself in 2014, not how organized and loaded for bear Democrats were.

"If we want to be a red state, well, we’d better start acting like we want to be one, and start fighting for it. And stop assuming that it’s ours, and how dare someone try to change that."

Scott Morgan has been an award-winning journalist since 2001. His work has appeared in several newspapers and magazines as well as online. He has also been an editor, freelancer, speaker, writing teacher, author, and podcaster.