New Texas GOP Chair D'rinda Randall discusses her vision for unifying the party in time for the midterm election in November
Fresh off her recent election as Texas GOP Chair, D'rinda Randall told CBS News Texas she has a plan to unite her party before the midterms in November.
"The party is fractured. I'm not going to say that it's not," Randall told Jack Fink. "The infighting has been pretty high. But with the race that I just won, all I ran on was 'I have a plan, and I have a plan for the Republican Party of Texas to succeed. I have a plan for the midterms.'"
Randall said she wants to engage the young people who have gotten involved in politics.
"Since Charlie Kirk's assassination, we had 86,000 chapters of Turning Point that grew and prospered all over America and in Texas. It's the same way our youth are very engaged," she said. "But if we do not capture that, if they don't feel they have a partner, then they are going to go about their lives, and they're not going to be part of the party."
"I've got to make sure that I capitalize on that," Randall added. "Get them involved, and we have a back bench for Republicans that are coming up in the future. Having a direction, having a vision, having a product that everybody believes in, that's how you bring unity."
She unified the party in a big way during the State Republican convention in Houston recently. Randall, the party's Vice Chair, defeated Abraham George, the party chairman.
"We won by 80% of the vote. So that was historical for the Republican Party of Texas, and it's a mandate for me. It's also something that I've got to live up to," said Randall.
"All factions of the Republican Party voted for me. It was the grassroots, the far right - which I am - and it's the ones that are more moderate. They all said we've got to have a different direction because the midterms are right around the corner," she said.
The four most recent independent polls on the Texas Senate race show it's a dead heat between Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democratic State Representative James Talarico of Austin.
The average of those polls shows Paxton leads Talarico by 1.3 percentage points, 45.8% to 44.5%. One question Randall said she is facing is how to ensure Republicans who supported Senator John Cornyn in the contentious primary and runoff will turn out to vote for Paxton, rather than Talarico or staying home altogether.
"That's one of the questions that everybody is asking right now," said Randall. "Two weeks is a lifetime in politics. We've got until November to show everybody what Talarico is, what he wants to do for the state. His policies and his thinking are beyond anything I've ever heard, that Jesus is non-binary, and he's supposedly a pastor and all of these things. But it's also that he missed over 700 votes whenever he was in office. You have to look at his record. You have to look at his rhetoric because what he is saying in his rhetoric is what he wants to do in policy."
Randall said some Cornyn voters have already decided to back the Attorney General.
"I had a call today before I got here with Cornyn voters who are saying, 'Yes, we have to vote for Ken Paxton.' Paxton has had a tremendous record as Attorney General, and he was a senator [state]. So, we have to look at his successes. They are starting to see that Texas will fail if we have somebody like Talarico in there."
The party has been fighting to close its primaries, something Randall said she supports.
"The Democrat Party should never choose our elected officials in the Republican Party, just like we should never choose theirs," she said.
When asked if that happens, Randall said, "There's been a few races. David Covey, who's the Vice Chair, he ran against Dade Phelan (former Texas Speaker of the House), and when Dade looked like he was going to lose, he made a deal with Democrats, and 2,000 of them came over and voted. David only lost by 366 votes. The thing is, it's only Republicans who vote for me and vote for the Vice Chair. So, why, if it's good enough for the leadership to only have Republicans vote for us, then why can't we do that with every nominee?"
During the party's convention, Governor Greg Abbott announced his support for closing the Republican primaries.
Randall said, "I'm very excited to see that Governor Abbott is embracing it as well because I think that we really have a chance of making that happen."
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