Funny How "No Ideological Seats" Only Applies To One Ideology
The Permanent Rules Committee voted yes on a Progressive Caucus SDEC seat. Now the old guard wants it gone before the floor ever sees it.
Some of you have asked where I am this week. I’m not in Corpus Christi. I wanted to be, but the childcare math didn’t work out, so I’m covering this one from home. The convention technically kicks off tomorrow. Let’s talk about what’s already happened.
We talked about the Resolution Committee yesterday. Today, we have to talk about the Rules Committee.
Here’s the rundown of what the committee took up and what they recommend:
To adopt:
Fairness in the State Nominations Committee’s agenda ordering for party officials
Eligibility to vote on a county chair vacancy
CEC Oath of Affiliation only as required by law
Mail ballot for county chair
No random tiebreakers
Deadline to file for county chair
1Convention tracker clarification
Texas Progressive Caucus SDEC Seat (Rule 1015)
Remote participation in State Convention
Clarifying rules about county party bylaws
Liability transparency in the TDP
Operating budget amendment transparency
Support for debt authorization and safeguards
Ongoing financial transparency and reporting
Moving the county convention date
Allowing standing rules to carry over into the next term briefly
Correcting the name of the TDP Rules to TDP Bylaws
Clarifying the rules about removal
Strengthening the TDP’s commitment to a harassment-free environment
To not adopt:
Precinct chairs appointed by CEC
SDEC committee chairs confirmed by membership
Requirement for State Convention delegates to sign the HFE pledge
Listing standing committees of the SDEC and removal of committee officers and members
Increasing non-statutory member representation on the SDEC
Clarifying duties of SDEC executive officers, directing the SDEC to assign duties, and creating an Operations Oversight Special Committee
Most of it is housekeeping, financial transparency, bylaw cleanup, and removing a coin-flip tiebreaker nobody liked. Worth knowing, not worth losing sleep over.
Rule 1015 is different. The Texas Progressive Caucus SDEC Seat rule is the one I need YOU actually to pay attention to.
What Rule 1015 does.
Rule 1015 adds a TXPC-designated seat to the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDEC), in the same way the party already seats representatives from groups such as the Texas Environmental Democrats, the Hispanic Caucus, Stonewall Democrats, and the Texas AFL-CIO. The committee looked at it and voted to adopt it. Straightforward. This wasn’t some fringe ask that snuck through on a slow afternoon. Texas Progressive Caucus has been building toward this for over a year, with members submitting and organizing around this exact rule across county conventions all spring.
The fight that’s coming.
Here’s where it gets ugly. The word on the street is that a petition is already circulating, or about to, from a bloc of old-guard moderates who want this rule struck down before it ever gets a vote. Their argument, as I understand it, is that the SDEC shouldn’t have “ideological” caucus seats.
Ideological?
The SDEC already has an ideological seat. Several of them. The Texas Environmental Democrats hold one. That’s an ideological commitment, a seat reserved specifically for people organized around environmental policy. The Texas AFL-CIO functions in much the same way for labor. Nobody is circulating a petition to strip those seats because nobody actually objects to the ideology behind them. So, in reality, they object to whose ideology gets a chair at the table.
That’s a power objection dressed up as a process objection. And it’s worth naming, because that’s exactly the kind of move that gets dressed up as a reasonable-sounding parliamentary concern right up until the vote. This is the rabid middle trying to take back the progress “the people” have made over the last several years.
Why this seat matters.
The Texas Progressive Caucus is no longer a theoretical bloc. It’s the largest caucus in the party and the fastest-growing one. Unlike many people who show up at the convention to give speeches and then disappear for two years, TXPC has actually been doing the unglamorous organizing work in between. Events. GOTV infrastructure. Recruiting people to run for SDEC and precinct chair seats that would otherwise sit empty. If you’ve been to a county convention in the last cycle, there’s a decent chance you’ve stood next to a TXPC member doing the work nobody else volunteered for.
A caucus that’s grown that fast and contributed that much to actual party functioning has earned a seat at the table that decides how the party functions. This is not a radical proposition. That’s literally the same logic that got every other caucus seat on the SDEC in the first place.
If you’re a delegate in Corpus Christi this week and this rule comes up for a vote, either in committee report or off a floor petition, vote yes on 1015, or on an SDEC seat for the Progressive Caucus (however it’s worded).
If you see signatures going around for a petition to strip it, you know what to do. Pretend you’re a cat and hiss at them.
There’s a version of this fight that plays out at every convention, in every party, forever.
The people who already have a seat decide, after the fact, that new seats are somehow less legitimate than the ones they’re sitting in. It never has anything to do with process. It’s always about who gets to be in the room.
TXPC earned this seat the same way every other caucus on the SDEC earned theirs. By organizing, by showing up, and by doing the work. Don’t let a petition dressed up in procedural language take that away before the convention even gets started.
I’ll be watching the floor vote from here. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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