Congratulations and best of luck to Kristy Noble, the new Chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party.
Dallas businesswoman Kristy Noble was sworn in Thursday morning as the new chairwoman of the Dallas County Democratic Party.
Noble, 50, emerged victorious after hours of voting in a five-person race to replace Carol Donovan, who announced in May that she was resigning after six years as chairwoman of the party.
She promised to bolster her party’s machinery and help Texas Democrats win statewide races, something the state party hasn’t done since 1994. But Dallas County Democrats have dominated local politics, though Noble says there are still opportunities for improvement.
“There is still room to increase the Democratic turnout in Dallas County, specifically in some of the gerrymandered safe districts,” Noble told The News on Thursday. “We have room to get more Democrats out to vote in areas that are primarily Democrat voting. We just have to have more focus on those areas, and there are still legislative seats that are not blue in Dallas County”.
During Donovan’s term Democrats wiped out all but two Republican statehouse members with districts entirely in Dallas County — University Park’s Morgan Meyer and Garland’s Angie Chen Button. Both Republican lawmakers will be targets for Democrats in 2022.
And Noble said Dallas County could play a pivotal role in flipping Texas from red to blue.
“If we’re going to really push to turn Texas blue, which is ultimate goal, we need every representative out of Dallas County to be a Democrat.”
Noble is co-founder of the Funky East Dallas Democrats, one of the most active political clubs in Dallas County. She beat several candidates in an in-person/virtual election to win the seat. Now she’ll complete Donovan’s unexpired term.
As we know, Harris County will be selecting a new Democratic Party Chair as well – our meeting to do so is scheduled for June 27. I’m supporting Odus Evbagharu for that position. He’s the current Chief of Staff for State Rep. Jon Rosenthal and a former HCDP staffer, leading the 2018 coordinated campaign as Communications Director. Dallas and Harris are in similar places as mostly Democratic counties – we’ve both done a tremendous job increasing Democratic turnout and getting a lot of people elected, but there are still worlds to conquer, and we’re going to need to do more of the same to really put the state in play. I think a key role that the big urban counties can play is in working with their close neighbors to build infrastructure there as well, both to help further the blue evolution of similar places and to stem the losses in the places where Republicans are ascendant. Both Harris and Dallas can do better increasing turnout in their own base areas – I’ve said many times that what has transformed Harris was the huge growth in Democratic voting in formerly deep red areas, and that is largely true for Dallas, but more of an effort needs to be put into maximizing the engagement in our traditional homes as well. I get the sense that the people who need to understand this do so, and I’m optimistic for the future. Welcome aboard, Kristy Noble.
As the former chair of the Montgomery County Democratic Party (I stepped down to run for District Judge), the biggest issues that I had with Lillie Schechter as the Harris County chair is that she NEVER contacted any of the other local party chairs (and yes, it was discussed amongst the other chairs) with regards to any coordination, especially in those areas where we had common interests. We worked closely with the Spring and Kingwood Democratic clubs quite often, and obviously with The Woodlands Dem Club (one of their primary founders is the precinct chair for precinct in The Woodlands in Harris County). But no County level communication (I gave up after several attempts).
I hope that this changes with the new administration, especially since I expect we will be sharing three congressional districts with Harris County.
Oh, and I know we disagree on how to analyze voting patterns in deep red counties, but I would hardly call the MCRP “ascendant” even though Trump’s gross margin up here was greater than anywhere else.
Also, you did a dive into Brazoria County, where there were no local Dems running for county offices. Why don’t you rip on us a little up here in Tea Party land?
Dems are still working hard in Dallas, but there’s more work to do in the new developments in inner Dallas and the burbs in west, south, and eastern part of the county. Still have a ton of vacant seats to fill or zombie precinct chairs.
Dallas needs to hit Travis County turnout for statewide Dems to have a chance. If Harris could ever get there it would be game over for the GOP.
Noble could be the GOP’s worst nightmare if she can ramp up what she’s been able to do in East Dallas and the eastern suburbs, and help export it to Collin, Kaufman, Ellis, and Rockwall. Tall order but I bet she’s up to the task.