Harris County Leadership Challenge

I've been told these stats come from the Republican Party of Texas...

Of the 254 counties in Texas:

Republicans gained votes in 140 counties with 2,438,604 registered voters
Democrats gained votes in 114 counties with 11,136,458 registered voters.

The 50 fastest growing Republican counties in Texas have a total of 637,694 registered voters
The 50 fastest growing Democratic counties have a total of 8,959,881 registered voters.

(h/t Future of the HCRP)

That's pretty daunting.

And the largest county in Texas, and one of the largest counties in the country, and one of the only "red" urban counties, is Harris County, the epicenter of it all. This year, Harris County suffered tremendous losses in countywide races. The damage was not total devastation, as happened to Dallas county just a few years ago. But one more bad election cycle will put Harris firmly in the "blue" category.

Today, Ed Hubbard openly challenged current HCRP chair Jared Woodfill: Either offer a plan for turning the trend around in Harris county and winning in 2009 and 2010, or step down and let another person with an actual plan lead. It's unclear whether Woodfill plans to respond to this challenge or ignore it, but rumors around political circles say Jared isn't going anywhere. One party insider told me Jared has stated privately that he has $500,000 to throw at any challengers to beat them back.

That's nice.

I bet there are some candidates who would have preferred a little piece of that $500,000 to help them in their campaigns this fall.

No matter what happens with the leadership, no matter who leads the party in the coming years, one thing is clear. The Harris County Republican Party has a lot of work to do if its goal is to continue to elect Republicans to office. Right now, the prospects aren't looking so good.