Now that the 2015 election season is (thankfully) behind us I would like to remind my conservative friends of something that often gets overlooked.
The movement to elect a conservative Mayor in 2019 (maybe, lawsuit pending) should already be in the works.
There should be groups vetting candidates and any interested candidate should already be talking to the money men, measuring support and starting to craft ideas for the local audience.
There should be active conservative responses to progressive policy (including, why it's bad and why it will effect Houstonians negatively. I would submit that those responses be, primarily, submitted by only a handful of people. I can think of three offhand, Jim Noteware, Jay Wall and Charles Bain. Those three should be the mouthpiece of conservative ideology in Houston until the next candidate is found.
It's important that whomever is determined to be "the" conservative candidate is identified, and out in front of the public, early and often. One of the mistakes of the Bill King campaign, is that he didn't do anything other than write a Chron.com op/ed (hidden behind a paywall) to introduce himself as a candidate. As such he went into the race with almost zero name-ID and a huge mountain to climb.
There are several other things that need to happen, local messaging, outreach to minority communities etc. but the first thing is finding a candidate and building a media presence. It's going to take more than just showing up during the election period with a "We're ready to help you" message to ultimately convince skeptical urban communities that Republicans mean what they say.
Already Tea Party, and other conservative, groups have dismissed local issues and are screaming about Obama again. Empower Texas has moved on to demonizing Straus. In the interim they took their eye off the ball and Annise Parker appointed her partner to a TIRZ in a stunning display of patronage.
A conservative movement serious about winning election should have been all over this
They weren't, and the leadership vacuum expands.
