Collab Session For Establishing Affiliate Points Of Contact

A

Anastasia Wilford

SLEC Member
It wasn't lost on me during convention that there is an appetite for membership to have some sort of point of contact on SLEC, and a person they can rely on to bring their needs to the body and relay the state of the Party back to them.

With that in mind, I intend to write a motion that would do just that, but would like to hear other people's ideas on how they think that could/should look.

I've dropped a poll in the #slec Discord channel to get an idea of when is best for my fellow SLEC members, and when that gets decided, I'll reply to this post with a public link for members to join and share their input as well.

This is informal, so no pressure if the date/time doesn't work for you. I'm planning to post the motion here for final review before proposing it as a motion.
 
Spit the counties equally and assign them to slec reps (less than 4 now) and as a new counties are affiliated we just rotate them to slec reps. This would probably be the best way
 
Sounfs like regional reps without clearly defined regions. Would be kind of weird, you could be a rep living in a county that belongs to another rep. Not horrible, just weird
 
As I said on the discord, I am wondering what problem we are trying to solve. I am ok with predicting problems or lessons learned from experience but I would like it on the table as we are organizing, keeping in mind that we could possibly have a completely different 16 members from 16 different areas of Texas, in 2 years
 
Dave Marino said:
Sounfs like regional reps without clearly defined regions. Would be kind of weird, you could be a rep living in a county that belongs to another rep. Not horrible, just weird
Click to expand...
I think it would make sense to assign counties that reps live in to those reps.

But to the larger issue. I talked to alot of delegates that were apprehensive about the 12 reps because they would lose the direct representation. I think that limiting it to 12 was the right move, but also having those 12 represent certain counties helps relieve some of the concerns delegates raised
 
Kind of going back and forth on discord and here 🙂 This should make for a good discussion, glad Anastasia is setting it up. Whatever we do we need to clearly define what problem we are solving. If it is "representation" what does that really mean and why can't the 16 of us represent the whole delegation. Problem arises, we bring it to the board, we discuss and develop a coarse of action. Beauty of having a small board is the ability to quickly come together and develop solutions.
 
I think some counties would rather have a point of contact on slec that they can reach out to personally. While remaining at-large, so that we represent all of the counties in Texas, having a dedicated person to ping instead of shotgunning questions each time may give them that personal touch.

It also keeps all of us accountable instead of just letting one rep answer all the questions while others may only pop in from time to time.
 
Nathan Polsky said:
I think some counties would rather have a point of contact on slec that they can reach out to personally. While remaining at-large, so that we represent all of the counties in Texas, having a dedicated person to ping instead of shotgunning questions each time may give them that personal touch.

It also keeps all of us accountable instead of just letting one rep answer all the questions while others may only pop in from time to time.
Click to expand...
I worry that if we randomly assign reps we will end up answering the question "why does some guy in El Paso represent me in Tyler." If we rope it into El Paso represents West Texas, then we are back into regional representation and we end up voting for regional reps instead of at large.
 
Dave Marino said:
I worry that if we randomly assign reps we will end up answering the question "why does some guy in El Paso represent me in Tyler." If we rope it into El Paso represents West Texas, then we are back into regional representation and we end up voting for regional reps instead of at large.
Click to expand...
That's why we have to be clear that we don't "represent" just a few counties.
 
My original plan was to have one rep on SLEC for every two counties, with the largest representing their own.
In this case, I think having some SLEC reps representing one adjacent county and their own, and others representing two and their own.
Ideally, the ones representing districts with larger number of members would represent fewer districts.
 
I think there is a need for clearly defined communication channels for counties. They should have a point person on SLEC to contact as opposed to just any SLEC rep. So maybe we do a little of both, we have specific reps assigned to counties for point of contact but we keep representation state wide and the responsibility of all At Large reps.
 
Dave's made some good observations and asked some good questions that as far as I can tell haven't really been addressed yet, so I'm going to pile on and expand on Dave's comments with some of my own.

The convention body approved the proposal for 12 at-large members. The Bylaws Committee minority report proposed a reduced-size regional representation plan; it was voted down by the body. The majority report proposing at-large delegates was adopted by a healthy 2/3 majority. What I'd like to see here is a good faith effort to implement the will of the convention body before we pre-emptively try to revert this thing to some kind of apportioned representation.

Not that apportioned representation worked that great for the past ten years. This seems to be a case of an abstract idea of how things 'should' work clashing with practical observations of how things actually work. Or don't.

It is possible for SLEC to occasionally spend a great deal of time rearranging furniture in a way that doesn't actually change much of any importance (ask me how I know...😉). Before we continue the discussion re all the different ways we could arrange direct representation, let's please back up and be sure we understand what problem we're trying to solve here.

Some years ago a previous SLEC said "just having a County Coordinator on staff isn't enough, we need to create a department of people who can recruit county chairs and help build our organization and its leadership from the ground up". So we stood up an Affiliate Support Department whose specific area of responsibility is supporting our county affiliates. And from my POV the current ASD has been doing a pretty good job of that. What I've seen so far is that the ASD is making more support available than most counties know what to do with. To the extent that individual county leaders reach out to SLEC members for help, the main help we could give them would be to refer them over to ASD!

It's not clear to me yet what support a county's leadership would need that would not be available through the ASD. That brings us to the questions around 'representation': what that actually means in this context, and why direct representation is being assumed as necessary for each county. What kinds of questions are we expected to answer that ASD couldn't answer? What kinds of comments or complaints are we supposed to hear that ASD couldn't hear?

Overall, I'd like to see us using a more organic and natural style of collaboration and leadership. Every policy decision we make, every behavior we try to legislate and enforce, will at best only ratify something that could've happened naturally, and more typically will interfere with a free market's delivery of better solutions. My suggestion would be that we compile a list of the new SLEC membership with at minimum our SLEC email addresses, and then maybe phone numbers also for those who are willing to provide them. Make that list available to every county CEC, and invite them to call anyone on that list they prefer if they feel that they need to reach out to a SLEC member. Each of our members should be able to answer questions from individuals or connect that person to someone who can. We'll end up building a robust relationship network based on personal knowledge and trust, instead of being based on 'official' assignments.

We are not a legislative body; we don't make laws and try to run other people's lives. We are an executive board responsible for the health and success of an organization. Not everyone needs access to the executive board in this or any other organization. We need to see ourselves as a board of 16 at-large members and officers 'representing' primarily the will of the 100+ delegates who (a) set up this structure, and (b) elected us as individuals to populate it. We need to focus on strategy and goals for growing this party and winning elections.

I'm holding off the bigger matters until after national for the sake of our delegates; for now we just need to get through the initial organizational meeting. But come June, we'll have some serious strategic work to do. Let's give the at-large structure a real chance, and then see what needs tweaking, if anything.
 
As a follow-up, I knew Kenneth had also made some good points on Discord, but didn't find the conversation in the channels where I looked for it. Ginny remembered that it was in the #ask-slec channel, though, and I found the conversation there (scroll back to 4/17/26). Kenneth, Dave, Jacob, and Matt weighed in there, for anyone who missed that.
 
I’ve been thinking about this since the original post here on the SLEC Forum. I, too, heard many concerns about representation regarding the new, down-sized SLEC.

Bottom line: I don’t think we need to try to fit our new body in an old box. I am not in favor of regional reps. My solution is to send out an email to every active member of LPTexas informing them of the new path we are taking, include a list of everyone’s name and contact information, and let them know they can contact any one of us at any time. If they reach out to one of us and that person does not get back to them, they have other options.

Some SLEC reps might get contacted more than others but before I address that, I have a question for us to consider: how many phone calls or emails do we actually think we will get? Many of you have served multiple terms on SLEC already. How many of you had someone in your district reach out to you and ask you about how things are going or had a question about the budget or a suggestion on how to grow the Party?

I’m asking because I think At Large means At Large. We have an Affiliate Department that talks to county chairs on the regular. Hopefully, those chairs are paying attention to the people in their county and to what is going on at the state level so that they can be the first line of contact. That said, sending the email out to all members gives folks who may not be in touch with their county chair a way to reach out to us directly.

I do care about the people who are concerned that they won’t have representation. But if we are doing our job, I honestly think all counties will have the opportunity to be heard and seen in a way that makes them feel included in the process.

We just need a little grace to make sure we have our seat belts secured and doors latched before we put the pedal to the metal.

Let’s give this new way of doing things a real shot without trying to “do it like we’ve always done it”. I volunteer to write the email and to mention that they can reach out to me specifically. I’m not worried about carrying any extra weight because until we get this thing up to speed, I really don’t think it will be that much. If I’m wrong about that, I’m confident that I can reach out to y’all as a group and ask for some assistance.

I’m excited about where we are headed and the road ahead…
 
I don't see that specific SLEC reps should be assigned to different counties. All our contact info should be up on the website, and members can contact whichever rep they are comfortable contacting about an issue, and that person can address it and/or bring it up to the entire body.
 
Traditionally, staff doesn't engage in the political activity of the party. That is a role reserved for SLEC members. This is where I suspect there will end up being a deficit...a place there has been a deficit for a long time in most districts in previous terms.

I like Ginny's idea of sending the contact information of all SLEC members to all known affiliated members. However, I think it would be a good idea for SLEC to communicate outwardly what items SLEC will be considering, and what actions SLEC has taken. There are numerous mechanisms by which this can happen. I figure we can discuss those on the call. My intent is to take the most supported/most implementable idea and make a motion to the body. If we pass it, that's great, and if we don't, I will have done my best to fulfill the wishes of those people who supported the proposal on the grounds that I would bring forth a motion to establish some sort of representative structure, and I hope their concerns won't be founded (I have faith this committee can address those concerns whether it's this method or another).

Calendar Appointment: https://calendar.app.google/pYAHWQuqUTdaLPxR8

Google Meet Details:
SLEC Point of Contact Collab Session
Monday, April 27 · 7:00 – 8:30pm
Time zone: America/Chicago
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/uog-qqwk-qge
 
I volunteer as Tribute. Again.

I agree that there is a need for outward communication. My suggestion is that someone (myself) write a “Here’s what’s going on with SLEC” section for our monthly LPTexas newsletter. Because it is new addition to the newsletter, I would encourage folks to read the newsletter in that email I proposed letting everyone know who we are and how they can contact us (see my previous post for deets). I’m also willing to call every affiliated county chair to remind them to check their email for our newsletter and to check in on Discord and the Forum for more, real-time updates. And just to add some extra momentum, I can create a social media post with the same, introductory vibe and pass it on to our Comms Dept to share far and wide.

With all that, I believe that people will feel like they are represented, we are accessible, and that we are working to keep them informed.

I look forward to the call to talk about this some more and have a plan of action. LFG!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top