PUTTING VOTERS FIRST

Several years ago the Liberty County Democrats and the four elected commissioners along with County Judge Tookie Kirkham decided that they were going to redraw the lines that laid out the commissioner’s precincts in our county. The result signaled this group was more interested in politics and promoting the Democratic Party than what was good for our community.

The last time the census was taken and there was an opportunity for Democrats to play politics with our county, they did. As the County Chairman of the Republican Party at the time I warned the public that Commissioner Todd Fontenot and his fellow Democrats were up to no good. Unfortunately, we had no way of stopping this gerrymandering.

Rather than just sit down and shut up like I am sure they wanted all Republicans to do, we became part of the public debate. I invited the both State Republican Executive Committeemen (SREC) to observe the process that would end in a commissioner’s precinct that may help Fontenot at election time, but would hurt Liberty County taxpayers because of the problems with logistics and the extra expense it would cause. Melinda Fredericks was the first person in the SREC to participate in one of our redistricting meetings. She and I went the preliminary meetings for the public. Fredericks, who is now the Vice Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, agreed with our analysis and helped to try and stop the near dysfunctional changes in the redrawing of the lines. She and I even paid a personal visit to County Judge Kirkham as we asked for an explanation of how redrawing the lines would benefit Liberty County citizens. Kirkham responded the way he frequently did to questions that involved some kind of logic. He smiled and said that is what the people looking at that say we ought to do. He never addressed how it was good for our citizens.

After Mrs. Fredericks confirmed the whole thing was a political strategy, our other SREC representative for this Senate District accompanied me to a public meeting in Dayton. His name is Dr. David Teuscher and since then he has served as the top spokesman for orthopedic surgeons in the country. Dr. Teuscher was outraged when he looked at all of the information and Fontenot and company’s decisions. In the only meeting he attended on the subject, Teuscher rose during the meeting and asked told the commissioners that there was absolutely no way to justify they had drawn the new lines. The lines made Fontenot commissioner precinct cover Liberty and across the river in the area known as Old River. Similar to the response Fredericks received fro Kirkham, Teuscher’s questions were never answered satisfactorily.

The treason for that is simple. Anyone familiar with the map of this area would know it was being gerrymandered for political purposes by Fontenot and friends. I told Commissioner Fontenot that there would be a day when I brought this topic back up. I told him there would be a day when being a Democrat would not be enough to guarantee re-election. I told him it would be much easier to face the voters if he would simply do what was best for them. He didn’t do that and now I am fulfilling my promise to him to tell people about it.

Richard Pegues-
Three term County Chairman of the Liberty County Republican Party