Why did Texas have a Primary AND Caucuses?

[Ken Burch]

Who came up with that combo, and what were they thinking?

[theredpen]

1. Texas was a Republic once...

The "two-step" process was based on the political primary system from the Republic. I forget when it was reinstated.

The primaries measure popular opinion, but the caucuses measure grass-roots support. Going to a caucus requires more involvement than voting does. Some people at caucuses become delegates.

That's basically the difference between primaries and caucuses. They each measure a different type of support for a candidate; in that respect it is cool that the TDP has a mixture of both.

[Ken Burch]

2. Thanks for the historical background.

n/t.

[Gman]

3. All these years and I did not know that

would you know of a link somewhere so I could find out the details? That's interesting to me.

[theredpen]

4. I couldn't find a great link

But the Handbook of Texas Online has a lot of information. This might be a good start: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/DD/wad1.html

The summary is that from independence in 1836 until about 1960, the Democratic Party was the party in Texas. Opposition parties played a role, but after 1905, there weren't any, just internal Democratic factions. This was not the Democratic Party we have today — it was intensely racist and corrupt (there's a party like that today... I forget what it's called... starts with an "R"...)

Anyway, the Democratic nomination process involved a combination of primaries and caucuses, but this combination was routinely "tweaked" to favor some faction or another. The reason why the Republicans aren't saddled with all the rules and regulations is that the Democratic Party was the only political party in Texas from 1905-1960, so the laws governing Democratic nominations were essentially the laws governing the selection of the winners. Thus, the regulations were specifically applied to the Democratic Party, but were optional for minority parties.

One purpose for the system was to exclude blacks. Although blacks could not be legally excluded from the general election, the Democratic Party in Texas managed to exclude them from the primaries for many years. Because there was no opposition, black voting in the general election was irrelevant.

Now that I've learned even more about the history of the TDP, I'm feeling like this complex system should be abolished just to repudiate its origins. Still, it does seem to have some utility in today's world.

[Gman]

5. Many thanks!

[theredpen]

6. Always happy to help out a fellow Mercernary. Go Lee!