TDP Chair Gilberto Hinojosa Responds To Gov. Perry's Rejection Of Medicaid Funding

Texas Democratic Party State Chair Gilberto Hinojosa today responded to the Gov.

Perry's letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reaffirming his opposition to the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Perry said in his letter, "I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the Obama care power grab. Neither a 'state' exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under this program would result in better 'patient protection' or in more 'affordable care.' They would only make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care. "

Hinojosa said in a statement posted on the TDP website:

Rick Perry is refusing $112 billion in health care money for uninsured Texans for three reasons. First, it doesn’t allow for kickbacks to his political donors. Second, he needs to feed his radical right wing base some red meat. And third … oh heck, he forgot the third.

Now we know why the Texas Republican platform calls for an end to teaching critical thinking skills. Any thinking makes it obvious that Perry’s bullheaded refusal of funding to expand Medicaid is wrong for Texas and deadly for Texans. Rick Perry is playing cute while a teenager never makes it to prom, a father never gets to walk his daughter down the aisle, children are dying from the lack of simple preventative care, and a mother won’t live to see her children to adulthood.

Perry’s decision will cost lives, and it will cost Texans and local governments much needed dollars in a tight economy.

Texans have to wonder how many lives and how much of your money Rick Perry is willing to sacrifice for his political career.

Texas is in 51st place among the 50 states – we are even behind Washington, DC – in delivery of health care to its citizens. But, Rick Perry is turning down these funds, because he believes that Texans know what’s best. Texans do, but their career Republican politicians don’t.

Texas Republicans, including David Dewhurst, Greg Abbott, and Joe Straus hide under the bed in fear of the Tea Party's irrational wrath if they speak up. Texans will continue to die far before their time while Rick Perry and the Republican Party pander to people who applaud the thought of watching people die in pain at the emergency room door.

Enough is enough. Politicians who call themselves “pro-life” while blithely turning down money to help the living need a swift kick to the rear end and a ticket out of the State of Texas. Help Texas Democrats get this message out.

Observer: Perry’s Titanic Blunder

by Eileen Smith @ The Observer

... In an interview Monday on Fox News, Perry was caught off-guard by a hard-hitting question posed by one of the many interchangeable female blond newscasters there: “If part of your goal is to keep the federal government out of the lives of Texans, then why give them that power?” Perry responded by not responding, saying only that Medicaid is a failed program and increasing enrollment is “like adding 1,000 people to the Titanic.”

... But where Perry really got it wrong in the Fox interview was his assertion that “every Texan has health care in this state from the standpoint of being able to have access to healthcare.” That’s like saying that every Texan has food in this state from the standpoint of being able to have access to the grocery store. It doesn’t mean the more than six million Texans who are uninsured can actually afford it. And who but our governor has access to experimental adult stem cell spinal infusions? According to a new study released by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, Texas ranks dead last in health care services and delivery. Texas Medicaid is also one of the most limited and strictest programs in the country. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission projects that the state would actually see a net gain of $70 billion over five years if it expanded its Medicaid program. That sounds like some sort of trick.

In the end it looks like Perry would rather go down with the ship than work with the federal government on health care. And he’s taking millions of uninsured Texans down with him.

Read the full story @ The Observer.

The GOP’s Crime Against Voters

There is no public policy justification for a voter ID law. Voter impersonation at the polls - the only type of fraud that could be addressed by a voter ID law - is virtually non-existent. Despite spending millions on a 2005-2006 voter fraud crusade, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott did not find or prosecute one case of voter impersonation. A national five-year effort by the Bush Justice Department netted only 86 prosecutions from 2001 to 2006.

A 2006 study by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice found that 18 percent of Americans age 65 and over did not have a photo ID. In Texas, even the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute admit that 37 percent of Texans over the age of 80 do not have a driver's license. The same study found that up to 25 percent of African Americans do not have a government-issued photo ID.

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, women are more than twice as likely as men not to have a driver's license. In fact, one of every five senior women does not have a license. Also, a woman's name and address on a photo ID might not match those on the voter list due to name changes related to marriage, divorce and other factors. The Texas Department of Vital Statistics reports an average 200,000 marriages and divorces in Texas each year, after which it can take up to two months to get a new ID. Now, the Federal Real I.D. Act, that turns state driver's licenses into a national identity card, adds additional barriers for everyone, particularly women of every age, to obtain or renew their driver's license.

For many seniors, disabled veterans, and hourly workers, getting a state-issued photo ID is not only costly and time-consuming, it is also difficult if not impractical to get to the forms and information needed to get an ID from agencies with limited locations and hours. Many disable vets and elderly Texans already have difficulty getting to the polls, and forcing vets and seniors who don't have a photo ID to gather documents and jump bureaucratic hurdles to get one before voting is unwarranted and insulting because no one impersonates a voter at the polls.

Nonpartisan academic studies show photo ID laws discourage turnout. An academic study of the 2004 presidential election conducted for the bipartisan Federal Election Assistance Commission found that states with voter ID laws had an overall turnout reduction of 3 percent, a figure that reached 5.7 percent among African Americans and 10 percent among Hispanics. Former Texas Republican Party political director Royal Masset estimated that a photo ID requirement would reduce Democratic turnout in Texas by 3 percent. That is a lot Texans who would be denied the right to vote in Texas!

By Eugene Robinson, WaPo

Spare us any more hooey about “preventing fraud” and “protecting the integrity of the ballot box.”

The Republican-led crusade for voter ID laws has been revealed as a cynical ploy to disenfranchise as many likely Democratic voters as possible, with poor people and minorities the main targets.

Recent developments in Pennsylvania — one of more than a dozen states where voting rights are under siege — should be enough to erase any lingering doubt: The GOP is trying to pull off an unconscionable crime.

Late last month, the majority leader of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Mike Turzai, was addressing a meeting of the Republican State Committee. He must have felt at ease among friends because he spoke a bit too frankly.

Ticking off a list of recent accomplishments by the GOP-controlled Legislature, he mentioned the new law forcing voters to show a photo ID at the polls. Said Turzai, with more than a hint of triumph: “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania — done.”

That’s not even slightly ambiguous. The Democratic presidential candidate has won Pennsylvania in every election since 1992.

But now the top Republican in the Pennsylvania House is boasting that, because of the new voter ID law, Mitt Romney will defy history and capture the state’s 20 electoral votes in November.

Why on earth would Turzai imagine such a result? After all, the law applies to all voters, regardless of party affiliation. It is ostensibly meant only to safeguard the electoral process and eliminate fraud. Why would a neutral law have such partisan impact?

Thanks to figures released last week by state officials, we know the answer. It turns out that 758,939 registered Pennsylvania voters do not have the most easily obtained and widely used photo ID, a state driver’s license. That’s an incredible 9.2 percent of the registered electorate.

Most of the voters without driver’s licenses live in urban areas — which just happen to be places where poor people and minorities tend to live. More than 185,000 of these voters without licenses, about one-fourth of the total, live in Philadelphia — which just happens to be a Democratic stronghold where African Americans are a plurality.

Read the full story @ Washington Post.

More:

• The GOP War on Voting

Gov. Perry Says He Will Continue To Shift Uninsured Health Care Costs To The Insured

Gov. Perry's office today sent a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reaffirming his opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

Perry said in his letter, "I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the Obama care power grab. Neither a 'state' exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under this program would result in better 'patient protection' or in more 'affordable care.' They would only make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care. "

If Gov. Perry has his way, Texas will neither expand Medicaid nor establish a health care insurance exchange, two major provisions of the Affordable Care Act. When the Supreme Court upheld the insurance mandate provision of the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act, which the GOP calls "Obamacare," the court also ruled that states may decline to extend Medicaid coverage to 17 million Americans with incomes below 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $14,856 for an individual this year.

If Texas declines the federal funding to implement the Medicaid expansion program, up to 2 million Texans will remain uninsured, seeking care in emergency rooms, shifting costs to the privately insured and increasing uncompensated care costs to health care providers. According to a report published by Texas' Republican state Comptroller, Susan Combs, the state’s uncompensated acute-care hospital expenses (emergency room and other urgent care) totaled $460 per resident in 2006, not including uncompensated costs incurred by charitable clinics or physicians. The U.S. average for such costs was $287.57. The uncompensated care problem in Texas is exacerbated by the fact that uninsured individuals often delay seeking medical care, allowing their health problems to become more serious. By the time such individuals do seek treatment, their conditions may be much more costly to treat, driving uncompensated costs even higher. It is estimated the annual costs of such uncompensated care to run in excess of $10 billion.

By refusing to participate in federal Medicaid expansion, Perry, and the Republican controlled state legislature, will force local taxpayers to pay for otherwise uncompensated care provided hospitals, which will hike hospital district taxes. Health insurance premiums, for those lucky enough to have insurance, will increase, too. The Texas Hospital Association estimates that annual health premiums for an average Texas family are $1,551 higher due to the added costs of covering the uninsured.

Texas Voter Photo I.D. Federal Trial Opening Arguments Today

The Texas Voter Photo I.D. case currently before the federal Washington D.C. Circuit Court took another step forward today as the three judge panel heard opening arguments in the trial.

The three judge panel will decide whether Texas can enforce its year-old voter photo I.D. law, which the U.S. Department of Justice contends will prevent over 600,000 registered Latino and African-American voters from casting a ballot in the November General Election.

Originally set to go into effect on January 1, 2012, the Texas Photo I.D. law would require voters to present one of a limited selection of government issued photo I.D. to election Judges in order to qualify to vote. The accepted forms of currently dated photo identification are: Department of Public Safety issued Texas driver's license, Texas election I.D., or personal identification card; Texas concealed handgun license; U.S. military I.D. card; U.S. citizenship certificate; or U.S. passport.

Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department or a federal court is required to pre-clear laws affecting voters before they go into effect in jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination -- and that includes Texas.

In March, the U.S. Justice Department Civil Rights Division refused to clear the Texas law, known as Senate Bill 14 (SB 14), saying Texas officials had failed to prove that it wouldn’t adversely affect minorities. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed suit against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice in the Washington D.C. Circuit Court to have the state’s controversial voter photo I.D. law implemented without further delay.

Under federal law, lawsuits seeking so-called “pre-clearance” of changes to voting procedures in all of seven mostly Southern states and parts of nine others, are heard by three-judge panels composed of two district court judges and an appeals court judge. D.C. Circuit Judge David Tatel and District Court Judges Rosemary Collyer and Robert Wilkins were impaneled to hear the Texas photo ID case.

(click here to read a full summary of case through early June 2012.)

As the trial got under way in a packed courtroom, DOJ trial attorney Elizabeth Westfall said in her opening argument that the federal government will show racial motivation in Texas’ passage of the law.

Republicans Raise Your Prices, Bail Out Unprofitable Electricity Companies

By Jack Ternan

Do you think you should pay more for electricity so that large Republican donors can stay in business? Your state government does.

In 2007, TXU was purchased in a $45 billion leveraged buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Goldman Sachs, and other New York investors and was renamed Energy Future Holdings (EFH). EFH bet on coal powering our future. Unfortunately, the company now faces bankruptcy because cheap natural gas has rendered coal power plants unprofitable.

Fortunately for EFH, Republican leaders believe free market discipline only applies to the middle class and the poor. Rather than letting polluting plants close at a loss to Goldman Sachs, the Public Utility Commission (PUC) of Texas recently voted to raise the price cap on wholesale electricity by 50 percent. Starting in August, electricity generators will be able to charge $4,500 per megawatt hour instead of $3,000. According to the Texas Industrial Energy Consumers’ assessment, this change will cost consumers an additional $4.5-$4.7 billion per year on electricity costs.

According to PUC Commissioner Kenneth Anderson, who abstained from voting, increasing prices this summer will allow power companies to “cart away money, not in wheelbarrows, but in Mack Trucks.”

EFH knows how to grease the wheels of Republican government. Its affiliated PACs have given more than $6.3 million to lawmakers between October 2007 and May 2012. My opponent, Ken Paxton, has received more than $7,000 from them. Buying politicians is cheap compared to facing the consequences of bad business decisions, and this latest Republican bailout will ensure that Texas’ pay to play politics continues.

So what does this latest outrage mean for you?

It means that fixed contract you’ve signed with your retail electricity provider might not be “fixed.” It means that by 2013, when the price cap is expected to be between $7,500 and $9,000, you’ll be dishing out more money for electricity than you ever have before. And it means that you will be bailing out New York bankers who pollute your air while you do it.

The misplaced priorities of the Republican leadership are evil. Republican officials are willing to fleece you upwards of $4.5 billion ($9 billion over two years) to bail out EFH and its out-of-state owners. At the same time, they claim to be completely unable to find the $5.4 billion (over two years) needed to avoid firing teachers, closing schools, and cutting financial aid to college students. Here in Texas Senate District 8, we need leaders that will stand up for the priorities of all Texans, not out-of-state donors.

Jack Ternan is the Democratic Candidate for Senate District 8. To email Jack - click here.

Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4 1776.
The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

NPR: Reading The Declaration Of Independence Aloud

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Happy Birthday America!

Musician Keb Mo visited the White House earlier this year and performed a rendition of "America the Beautiful". Enjoy some great scenes of America and the President set to this classic song - in celebration of Independence Day.

The Terrifying Texas GOP Platform

From Forbes by John T. Harvey

. . . I am so distressed by the 2012 platform released by the Texas Republican Party that I find it impossible not to comment. While I am hardly in agreement with everything forwarded by the Democrats (and have taken aim at President Obama on a number of occasions, especially with respect to his desire to balance the federal budget), it is difficult to believe that what the Republicans put together during their convention in Fort Worth was even written in the 21st century. It is anything but pragmatic.

The GOP Platform (available here) has already made headlines with the portion that opposes the “teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills” and “critical thinking skills.” Although a partial retraction followed, this was in terms of the wording, not the general meaning.

It appears that their fear is that these “focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

. . . Another disturbing feature of the document is that while they “urge the Legislature to direct expenditures to academics as the first priority,” they also contend that “Since data is (sic) clear that additional money does not translate into educational achievement, and higher education costs are out of control, we support reducing taxpayer funding to all levels of education institutions.”

Not only is the second statement inconsistent with the first (not to mention rather frightening), it isn’t true. The implications of the data are far from clear. In point of fact, economists have found that–not surprisingly–it matters how the money is spent (see here for a survey of the relevant literature). For example, reducing class sizes and adding remedial help appear to be particularly cost effective. Thus, contrary to the Texas GOP’s assertion, there are programs that both add to costs AND increase educational achievement.

. . . The economic policies recommended by the document are equally impractical and ill-considered. Bearing in mind that the fundamental problem faced in an advanced capitalist economy is insufficient demand to generate employment for all those willing to work (see Why Do Recessions Happen?), the following recommendations would operate to make this problem even worse:

• We urge state and federal legislators to reduce spending.
• We urge Congress to adopt balanced budgets by cutting spending and not increasing tax rates.
• We recommend repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, with the goal of abolishing the I.R.S and replacing it with a national sales tax collected by the States. In the interim we urge the income tax be changed to a flatter, broader, lower tax with only minimal exemptions such as home mortgage interest deductions.
• We favor abolishing the capital gains tax.
• State Tax Reform – We encourage: Abolishing property taxes…Shifting the tax burden to a consumption-based tax

The first two would directly reduce the demand for goods and services, thus causing contraction and unemployment, while the last three would create a much more regressive tax system that shifted the burden onto the sector of the economy that would otherwise generate the highest level of demand per dollar of income: the poor and middle class (the top 20% of Americans spend 62% of their income, as compared to 87% for the rest).

. . . Note, too, that the second point above (regarding balanced budgets) is based on a false premise, i.e., that the federal government is budget constrained (see The Big Danger in Cutting the Deficit). ...The Texas Republican Party Platform also argues that, in contradiction to my last blog post (The Real Job Creators: Consumers), lower business taxes and deregulation will solve our jobs problem. This is false. What we really need is increased demand, which comes via consumers.

. . . This is not to say that there are not portions of the Texas Republican Party Platform that are perfectly reasonable. There are. But, by and large, it reads as if it were written in another age and in ignorance of the social, economic, and scientific evidence of the past half century. Let there be no mistake about it: the Texas Republican Party Platform is terrifying. Were its recommendations implemented, the US would resemble a third-world country with a cheap, uneducated workforce and a massive gap between rich and poor. Unemployment would be rampant, growth stagnant, and answers few and far between thanks to the systematic repression of higher order and critical thinking.

Read the full story @ Forbes.

Read the Texas Democratic platform and its comparison to the Republican platform after the "more" jump:

Supreme Court Affirms 'Citizens United' Unlimited Billionaire Political Payola

The Washington Post

The Supreme Court has struck down a Montana ban on corporate political money, ruling 5 to 4 that the controversial 2010 Citizens United ruling applies to state and local elections.

The court broke in American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock along the same lines as in the original Citizens United case, when the court ruled that corporate money is speech and thus corporations can spend unlimited amounts on elections.

“The question presented in this case is whether the holding of Citizens United applies to the Montana state law,” the majority wrote. “There can be no serious doubt that it does.”

No arguments were heard; it was a summary reversal. “To the extent that there was any doubt from the original Citizens United decision broadly applies to state and local laws, that doubt is now gone,” said Marc Elias, a Democratic campaign lawyer. “To whatever extent that door was open a crack, that door is now closed.”

A 1912 Montana law barred direct corporate contributions to political parties and candidates — a response to the election interference of “copper kings.” Mark Twain wrote of one such mining giant in 1907, Sen. William Clark (D), “He is said to have bought legislatures and judges as other men buy food and raiment. By his example he has so excused and so sweetened corruption that in Montana it no longer has an offensive smell.” The state supreme court upheld that ban late last year in spite of Citizens United, saying Montana’s history of “rough contests for political and economic domination” gave the state a “unique and compelling interests” in limiting corporate influence on elections.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer wanted the Montana case heard, arguing that Citizens United should get new scrutiny in the light of its effect on campaign finance. In his original decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy argued that independent campaign expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Ginsberg argued that the Montana case was an opportunity to reconsider “in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance.” But today’s ruling shows that the five justices who supported the original ruling have not budged.

Read the full article @ The Washington Post.

Supreme Court Upholds Key Part Of Arizona Anti-Latino Immigratant Law

The Supreme Court today upheld the "papers please" part of Arizona's illegal immigrant law in a 5-3 decision that allows police officers to ask about immigration status during stops.

The "papers please" part of the law, which never went into effect because of court challenges, can be immediately enforced in Arizona. Other parts of the law, including a provision that made it a state crime for illegal immigrants to seek work, will remain blocked, as the justices affirmed the federal government's supremacy over immigration policy.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court's swing vote, wrote the opinion, and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. Conservative Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas partially dissented, saying the entire law or most of the law should have been upheld.

In the opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote that the federal government's "power to determine immigration policy is well settled." But he also sympathized with Arizona's burden in dealing with illegal immigrants.

"Arizona bears many of the consequences of unlawful im­migration," he wrote. "Hundreds of thousands of deportable aliens are apprehended in Arizona each year."

However, the justices found that Arizona cannot mete out their own state punishments for federal immigration crimes.

"Arizona may have under­standable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that process continues, but the State may not pursue policies that undermine federal law," Kennedy writes in the opinion's conclusion.

Police immigration checks are allowed, however, only because state police would simply flag federal authorities, when the identify illegal immigrants.

Since the passage of Arizona's "papers, please" law, likely voters in Arizona have shifted their support to Democratic candidates in a "very substantive way," according to analysis by Public Policy Polling. That shift is largely due to energized (and probably angry) Latino voters, say Tom Jensen, PPP's director:

ACLU Press Release:

Obama Courts Hispanic Vote At NALEO Conference

A week after signing an executive order that bars the deportation of young illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. before they were 16 and have graduated from high school, President Obama today made a direct appeal to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference in Orlando, Florida.

Obama addressed the conference of Latino officials, just a day after the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, addressed the conference. Without mentioning Romney by name, the President drew a sharp distinction with his challenger on immigration, reminding the crowd of Romney’s opposition to the DREAM Act, the legislation derailed by Congressional Republicans that is intended to put many illegal immigrant students and veterans on a path to citizenship:

"Your speaker from yesterday has a different view. In his speech, he said that when he makes a promise to you, he’ll keep it. Well, he has promised to veto the DREAM Act, and we should take him at his word. I'm just saying."

Pres. Obama speaking at the NALEO
Annual Conference
June 22, 2012

Asked by pollsters, Latino voters overwhelmingly support Pres. Obama. So much so, in fact, that if Republicans can't pull some of that support back to their own party, Mitt Romney's chances of winning in November are close to zero.

Republicans' callous and deeply unpopular rhetoric against Latinos has created a serious rift between Latino Americans and the GOP.

This has the potential to be a serious problem for Romney and other Republicans on the Texas ballot this November given the staggering statistic that Hispanics now account for 38 percent of the Texas population -- and nearly 4 million Texas Latinos can vote.

This is probably why Texas Republicans are desperate to have their voter photo I.D. law in effect for the November 2012 Presidential Election. Up to 40 percent of Latino American citizens already registered to vote in some Texas counties do not have one of the limited selection of government issued photo I.D.'s needed to vote under this law. As I personally heard so many Republican voters comment when they checked-in to vote early for the Texas Primary last month, "we need that voter photo I.D. law enforced to keep the wrong people from voting."

Still, Texas Latinos historically have been apathetic about voting. The percentage of Latinos who vote has actually dropped over the past eight years. In 2004, roughly 42 percent of Latinos went to the polls, but that number dropped to 38 percent in 2008, falling to 22 percent in the 2010 election.

The newly elected Texas Democratic Party Chairman, Gilberto Hinojosa, says that the flaw in the party’s strategy over the last several years has been its focus on so-called independent voters, when Democrats should be courting the state’s sleeping Latino demographic giant.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Hispanic turnout is where we’re getting beat,” Hinojosa says. “Anything you want to look at with regards to the Democratic Party, it comes down to that. We’ve got African-Americans, the LGBT community, Asians, women. The one that’s under-performing in greatest numbers and the one that makes up the greatest number of potential voters is the Hispanic community.”

Texas Democrats could learn, Hinojosa says, from California, Nevada and Colorado Democrats' successes in turning out Latino voters in the 2010 election.

In a year in which the Tea Party was killing everyone else, all three states had big Democratic wins due to Latino support. “Nevada spent a lot of money, but they had a focused strategy, and Harry Reid won because of the large Latino voter turnout.”

California has a similar Latino voting population to Texas, but it consistently turns out higher numbers at the polls. Census Bureau figures show that in California, nearly 60 percent of eligible Latinos turn out to vote. The national average is about 50 percent.

The Texas Democratic Party has already started Hispanic outreach programs, like the Promesa Project, that uses a combination of online and grassroots techniques to recruit young Latinos as the party’s messengers to their families, and social networks to get out the Latino vote this November.

Will the Texas Democratic Party's new Latino outreach emphasis pushed by Hinojosa, combined with Latino voters' overwhelming support of Pres. Obama, on top of Latino antipathy for the GOP boost Latino voter turnout back to 42 percent, or more, of that demographic group? We will find out on Election Day, November 6.