by BRAD ROLLINS
State Rep. Patrick M. Rose, a San Marcos Democrat, welcomed Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, a San Antonio Republican, to a fundraising reception last week at a Driftwood winery.
The $100-a-person event was closed to the press but people who attended estimated a crowd of at least a couple hundred. Fewer than a dozen Republicans protested alongside FM 150 outside the venue’s gate, including supporters of Jason Isaac, a Dripping Springs Republican who is running against Rose in the November general election.
“We must rid our party of all the ‘RINOs’ such as Straus, who compromise while in their positions,” said San Marcos-area GOP precinct chair Naomi Narvaiz, employing a dismissive acronym for “Republican In Name Only.”
Acknowledging outrage from local Republican Party loyalists, Hays County GOP Chair Kent “Bud” Wymore said, “Of course, Republicans are disappointed.”
“The two big, important things leading up to an election like this are party unity and party morale. This definitely is the kind of thing that can hurt party unity and party morale,” Wymore said, repeating what he said he told Straus in a telephone conversation last week. “What we have to do now is look to November and make sure we have a unified party and that spirits are high.”
Skewered by a handful of right-leaning political blogs, Straus publicly downplayed his appearance at the Rose event as a “courtesy” to a House colleague. A spokesperson for Straus told Dallas Morning News reporter Robert T. Garrett, “If he’s asked by an incumbent and it’s in the Austin area and he can go, he goes.”
Rose has a history of working across the aisle with Republican Speakers of the House. He was an ally of former Speaker Tom Craddick from 2002 until 2006 when he seconded Craddick’s nomination on the house floor at the start of the session but had joined his detractors by adjournment. Early in 2008, Rose emerged as one of 85 legislators pledged to Straus in the speaker’s race.
Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of conservative PAC Empower Texans, told Garrett that Straus’ visit for Rose could damage Straus’ relationship with less moderate Republican legislators of whom Sullivan said, “It probably means he’s going to have to go to greater lengths to assure them that as speaker, he’s with them – because they’re going to be pretty critical.”
The obvious winner in the ruckus is undoubtedly Rose, who survives in Republican-leaning District 45 by pointing to bipartisan credentials as “a testament to my ability to bring people together to find difficult solutions to the problems facing us,” to use his words from a candidate debate earlier this year.
In his three re-election bids since 2004, Rose has won an average of 58 percent of the vote, although those who still think he’s beatable point out that two of those cycles, 2006 and 2008, were Democratic Party years in Hays County.
In 2008, Republican Matt B. Young did not win a single Hays County voting box, though those in which he came closest lie in Commissioner Precinct 4 where Rose grew up and resided until he decamped this year to San Marcos.
