A Turnout Report from Rural Republican Texas- Gillespie County (+)
by: Karl-Thomas Musselman
Fri Feb 22, 2008 at 08:30 AM CST

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Gillespie County, in the good times, is 20% Democratic. It has had no Democratic candidates run for local office in decades (other than Daniel Boone for state rep which covers multiple counties. My father, a city councilman there, is the only (non-partisan) elected and open Democrat in town. We do have a great county chair in George Keller who has helped build the local organization from a half dozen people meeting in the backroom of Gatti's Pizza to regular meetings of about 40 active Democrats of a more diverse nature.

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This is what amazes me. I know Gillespie County and the average age of the Democratic primary voting electorate is probably 65+. These are folks who knew LBJ personally (who was the last Democrat to carry the county, in large part, because he brought the Chancellor of Germany to town before his election). According to the census, there are only about 70 African Americans that live there out of ~20,000 residents so it's whiter than Iowa & New Hampshire. And yet given all that, it was 80-6 Obama/Clinton in yesterday's meeting? I can't explain it. It's not normal.

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Democratic mail ballot requests were 37% of the total. That just doesn't happen. And this is even in the face of hotly contested GOP primary races- a 4 way contest for the open seat of county Tax Assessor-Collector and a contest for County Commissioner which normally pulls over all the Dems to vote in the GOP primary so they can decide their local elected officials.

Whole thing here:
http://www.burntorangereport.com/showDiary...