Odus Evbagharu
When Odus Evbagharu, a 28-year-old legislative staffer and campaign organizer, took the reins of the Harris County Democratic Party Sunday evening, he inherited a party that stands on some of its firmest footing in years, despite several defeats in 2020 that disappointed local Democrats.
Evbagharu succeeds former chair Lillie Schechter, who won the position in March 2017, months after Democrats had swept every countywide race and delivered Harris County to Hillary Clinton by 12 points. It was a massive swing from the 2014 midterms, when it was Republicans who swept the countywide slate, but also one that leaned heavily on deep-pocketed political donors and grass-roots activity by groups such as the Texas Organizing Project, amid lackluster fundraising from the party itself.
Now, Evbagharu is taking over a party that has taken in more than $2.2 million since the start of 2018 — double the amount raised during the last comparable three-year period from 2014 to 2016 — and overseen countywide sweeps in 2018 and 2020, too. Democrats also gained control of Harris County Commissioners Court under Schechter.
“We have a robust thing going down here,” Evbagharu said Monday. “Lillie did a good job of building a great foundation. Now it’s our job to build on top of it.”
Harris County Democrats, however, still are smarting from a number of 2020 losses in local elections they had cast as battleground races, including several contests for the Legislature and Congress, along with an open commissioners court seat race. Evbagharu attributed the Democrats’ underperformance in part to their reluctance to campaign in person during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I think what went awry was, we didn’t block walk,” Evbagharu said. “And I don’t want to oversimplify it, I don’t want to say there weren’t other factors. We’ve got to do better with our messaging, and our data’s got to be better as a party. I’m not afraid to say that out loud — polling accuracy, targeting, who we talk to and not just making assumptions.”
We talked about some of this stuff (and some of the stuff later in the story that I’ll get to in a minute) when I interviewed Odus a couple of weeks ago. I trust him to have a clear view of the data and to have a plan to shore up weaknesses and build on strengths. To whatever extent that the lack of Democratic blockwalking hurt last year – everyone agrees it did, it’s putting a number on it that’s hard – that will not be an issue in 2022. There will be new challenges, and who knows what the Trump Factor will be, and we will just have to try to figure them out and make a plan.
Evbagharu said the party’s strong position, relative to the one inherited by Schechter, means he can be more proactive in sharing resources and information with local Democratic parties in surrounding counties, some of which have made electoral gains in recent elections. He said he also hopes to attract a state or national Democratic Party convention to Harris County, a goal that could become easier if more of the Houston region becomes bluer.
“It’s great that Harris County’s always at the forefront, but we need Montgomery County, we need to at least cut margins there,” Evbagharu said. “We need Galveston County, we need Brazoria, we need Waller, we need Fort Bend, which is turning blue if not already blue. We need southeast Texas to be strong.”
Evbagharu said he also wants the party to be more aggressive in lobbying elected officials — including Democrats — on policy and issues, a role that traditionally has been left to activists and advocacy groups instead of the formal party apparatus. During the most recent legislative session, lawmakers passed “the greatest hits of the red meat Tea Party Republican whatever,” he said, arguing that the local Democratic Party has a stronger role to play.
“We have to make it a habit to engage our electeds in D.C., in Austin, here in Houston at county Commissioners Court, City Hall and school boards,” Evbagharu said. “…We have to do a better job of getting in there and fighting.”
Renée Cross, senior director of the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston, said she was not aware of the Harris County Democratic Party ever making a concerted effort to share resources with other local parties. And the last time the party took a more aggressive on policy came under Sue Schechter, Lillie Schechter’s mother, who chaired the party in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Until now, Democrats were not in much of a position to do that, Cross said.
“If you’re the party that’s trying to gain power, all your emphasis is on getting those folks elected,” Cross said. “You just don’t have the luxury of lobbying, necessarily, if your party’s out of power.”
Still, county Democrats’ hold on power is far from ironclad as the 2022 elections approach, Cross said. For one, they will have mobilize enthusiasm without former president Donald Trump in office, and Democrats’ lineup of statewide candidates remains uncertain.
“There’s a big target sitting in the White House now, which we haven’t had in four years. Republicans are certainly going to go after Preisident Biden and VP Harris, so Odus is going to have to combat that continually,” Cross said. “…And there’s no doubt that part of the success in Harris County in 2018 was part of Beto (O’Rourke) being at the top of the ticket. It was the star power of Beto that really helped turn out the vote. And I think without that, Democrats have a really tough road ahead.”
We talked about some of this stuff too. I have been an advocate for better regional coordination – it’s not just in our interest from a statewide perspective, we will also have various offices (Congress, SBOE, State Senate, appellate courts) that cross county lines and need a bigger-than-Harris response. There may be a risk of overextending ourselves, but I can’t see any good reason to not at least be talking to our neighbors.
I respectfully disagree with Professor Cross – Beto surely gets some credit for 2018, but you know who was coordinating the HCDP combined campaign that year? Odus Evbagharu, that’s who. Look, Dems have proven their ability to win in high-turnout Presidential years since 2008. We won in a high-turnout off year in 2018, and I concede that until we win again in an off year there’s room to be skeptical. I would just point out a couple of things in rebuttal. One is that Dems have built a big edge in voter registration over the years, and we’re still very good at doing that work. Two, the shift in the Trump years of college-educated Anglo voters into the Democratic column has been profound – here again I will say that Mitt Romney got 60% of the vote in HD134 in 2012, while Joe Biden got and equivalent amount in 2020. National data shows no sign of this reversing or even slowing down, and what’s more these are very reliable voters. When I say that the climate is very different now, these things are a part of that.
We don’t know what the national climate will be like, and we don’t know what Joe Biden’s approval numbers will be. If they’re in the tank, then hell yeah we have problems. Dems either have to ensure that they don’t have a turnout problem in 2022, or they have to show they can still win in Harris County in a lower turnout environment. Bear in mind, there are risks for the Republicans too. They own any future blackouts due to weather, that’s for sure. Donald Trump is not going to sit by quietly, Ken Paxton could get arrested by the FBI, the reconstituted January 6 commission will be producing reports into next year – there’s lots of things that can go wrong for the GOP as well. I am pretty reasonably optimistic about 2022, at least from a Harris County perspective. Ask me again in a year and we’ll see if that has held up.