Republican Party Returns to Hudspeth County
A local Republican Party is returning to Hudspeth County.
Maria “Lupe” Dempsey has been appointed as the county’s party chair, and she said preparations are underway to conduct the Republican primary here, tentatively scheduled for March 1, 2016.
Dempsey said she had volunteered for the position because she thought it was critical to “give people a choice” and to “conduct our political process in the way it’s supposed to be done.”
While Hudspeth County voters have frequently favored Republican candidates for state and federal office – Mitt Romney received almost 55 percent of the Hudspeth County vote in the 2012 presidential election – the party has never secured a foothold in local politics. The county had no local Republican Party between 2004 and 2012, and only 11 people voted in the Republican primary in 2012. The local party dissolved again after that election.
Even as many county residents – and certainly some local officials who run as Democrats – identify with Republican positions, the local dominance of the Democratic Party appears as a holdover from an earlier era in Texas politics. The Democratic Party dominated state politics from the end of the Civil War until the beginning of the Civil Rights Era, in the 1960s.
With essentially a single-party system, the Democratic primary is typically the decisive election for local offices in Hudspeth County. Dempsey said she would like to change that – and she said she knows it could be a slow process. Unless local candidates begin to file as Republicans, voters who might want to weigh in on a Republican primary – such as the upcoming selection of the Republican presidential candidate – will have to choose between that vote and having a say in the election of county officers.
Dempsey said she is particularly interested in recruiting young county residents to enter the political process and seek public office as Republicans.