Taylor County Republican party leaders offer 'Call to Action' at courthouse

Brian Bethel
Abilene Reporter-News

Members of the Taylor County Republican Party gathered Tuesday morning outside the Taylor County Courthouse to reiterate their desire that remaining items on a series of eight legislative priorities, including voting rights, be enacted.

Taylor County Republicans face the American flag at the Taylor County Courthouse and recite the Pledge of Allegiance as a statue honoring U.S. military service members stands before them Tuesday. The group had gathered to hear county party chairman Chris Carnahan admonish the actions of Democratic politicians in the state and to encourage their own party's actions.

Chris Carnohan, the county chairman, standing in the shade of statues of a silver eagle and an American soldier, explained a "Call to Action," a document unanimously adopted about a week ago by local officers and the party's executive committee.

Fewer than three dozen people attended.

Priorities laid out

The eight priorities, adopted in 2020, are:

►Election integrity, requiring citizenship verification of each over and felony penalties for Election Code violations that "threaten election integrity."

►Religious freedom, restoring the "rights of individuals, organizations and businesses to exercise their sincerely-held religious beliefs by prohibiting local ordinances, state laws or executive orders that violate those rights."

►Children and gender modification, abolishing certain practices for minors including intervention to prevent natural progression of puberty, administration of opposite sex hormones and performance of any type of gender reassignment surgery.

►Abolition of abortion, "ensuring the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization."

►Constitutional Carry, restoring legal Texas firearm owners' rights to carry openly or concealed without a permit, while maintaining the option of a permit for reciprocity purposes.

►Monument protection, making "all monuments or markers in our state protected by law from being removed, defaced, destroyed or otherwise dishonored."

In particular, specific protection should be given to the Alamo Cenotaph, "which shall not be removed from its current location off the Alamo Battlefield footprint."

►School choice for all, empowering parents and guardians to "choose from public, private, charter, or homeschool options for their children's education using tax credits or exemptions without government restraint or intrusion."

►A ban on taxpayer-funded lobbying.

Carrying on

The only clear victory so far on that list has been in constitutional carry, Carnohan said, is an item on Texas Republicans' "wish list" for many years.

It passed even after some said there were not sufficient votes, Carnohan said.

"The moral to that little story is (that) every time someone stands up, it may give someone else the bravery or the fortitude that they need to stand up," he said. "And we don't listen to people in Texas telling us to sit down and shut up. We don't go for that kind of treatment.

"We're allowed to voice our feelings and our thoughts and our preferences to our leadership."

Voting rights are at issue in the special session called by Gov. Greg Abbott about a month ago, Carnohan said.

Special consideration

At the will of the governor, more special sessions could be called, the "Call" says, likely necessary, since "all matters currently pending before the special session are stymied by the intentional breaking of quorum by Texas Democrat members of the Texas Legislature."

Chris Carnahan, the chairman for the Taylor County Republican Party, speaks during a gathering of about 30 people outside the Taylor County Courthouse on Tuesday.

Calling those actions a "disrespectful obstruction of the lawful legislative process," the statement says "other matters of less importance, including those submitted by Texas Democrats," were approved and enacted during the recent legislative session.

"None of those lesser issues should have been considered, much less passed, before those included in the Republican legislative priorities," the "Call to Action" states.

Making a statement

None of the Republican priorities are "illegal, immoral, or worst of all, even fattening," Carnohan quipped, and the intent is not to "hurt anybody's rights or privileges, unless they're an illegal alien in our country who wants to vote like they're a legal citizen."

"We're not asking anybody who has the right to vote to be deprived of that right," Carnohan told supporters.

"I want that to be the clear understanding of everybody here," he said. "We're not asking for anything unfair, or illegal, or anything we wouldn't submit to voluntarily go along with ourselves."

He reiterated the party wants "everybody to vote."

"We have no problem with a legal citizen stepping into a voting booth and voicing their preference. We're fine with that. We're happy with that."

But what it does not want, he said, is "somebody who's not authorized or somebody who's already voted to do it over again."

"If you're not a citizen, if you're not a citizen of this state, we don't want you voting at all," he said. "We don't want you getting an absentee ballot that you requested or maybe didn't request. Maybe you found it (in) the apartment mailbox where you're now living. We don't want you to open up that ballot addressed to Joe Blow who's long gone."

Such limits, Carnohan said, are not "unreasonable."

"We think that's what a fair election system should be based upon," he said.

Establishing identity

Identification is required for a variety of common tasks, he said, from buying liquor and cigarettes to getting on an airplane, whether public or private, to buying a firearm, getting a job or opening a library or bank account, Carnhohan said.

"And so there's something racial about Texas Republicans asking that you prove yourself a legitimate, bona fide citizen of this state before you're given a ballot and allowed to vote with or against us?" he said. "We think that's very reasonable. And that's what we're asking for."

Carnohan said that implied that Democrats "who fled the state of Texas want to get the votes of people who are maybe not authorized to vote."

"That may tie in with the border situation that our vice president (has) done such a crackerjack job of handling," he said.

Standing up

Carnohan praised party members who showed up to participate  in Tuesday's event.

"By your standing up, you're showing them what we want them to do," he said. "We want them to stand up. We want them to carry out our wishes. They're not there to please their fellow legislators. ... Their job is to please us."

Odds are, Carnohan said, Abbott will call another special session, as he has promised.

"We want our Legislature and our governor and all the executive branch to do all they can to see that our will and our wishes are carried out," he said.

Brian Bethel covers city and county government and general news for the Abilene Reporter-News.  If you appreciate locally driven news, you can support local journalists with a digital subscription to ReporterNews.com