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The Republican Party of Texas (RPT) is one of the two major political parties in the U.S. State of Texas. It is affiliated with the United States Republican Party. The State Chairman is Tom Mechler, an oil-and-gas executive from West Texas, and the Vice-Chairman is Amy Clark of Floresville. The RPT is headquartered in Downtown Austin. The RPT's mission is to promote a conservative philosophy of government by promoting conservative principles. The RPT is legally classified as a political action committee whose structure is determined by state law and by party rules not in conflict with state law. ==History== The Republican Party developed dramatically in Texas during Reconstruction after constitutional amendments freeing the slaves and giving suffrage to black males, as blacks joined the party that had ensured the end of slavery. African-American leaders, frequently men of mixed race who had been free and educated before the war, provided leadership in extending education and work opportunities to blacks after the war. They supported establishment of a public school system for the first time. Men such as William Madison McDonald in Fort Worth, Norris Wright Cuney in Galveston, and Henry Clay Ferguson worked for the black community and the state. In 1870, Edmund Davis was elected Governor, but was soundly defeated in 1874. In the year 1876, Republicans had made gradual gains in Texas, earning nearly one-third of the statewide vote and electing a small number of candidates to the State Legislature (including several African Americans). Democrats established legal racial segregation and disfranchisement. After the Reconstruction era, the Republican Party of Texas gradually lost power, and after the turn of the century, the "Lily Whites" pushed blacks out of power. The Democrats passed disfranchising laws near the turn of the century requiring poll taxes be paid prior to voter registration; together with the party establishing white primaries, black voting dropped dramatically, from more than 100,000 statewide in the 1890s, to 5,000 in 1906. Mexican Americans and poor whites were also adversely affected by such measures. For more than 100 years, the Republicans were a minority party in the state. Between the departing of Robert B. Hawley from his second U.S. House term in 1901 and the seating of Bruce Alger in 1954, the sole Republican to represent Texas in Congress was Harry M. Wurzbach, who served in the U.S. House for most of the 1920s and left office in 1931.〔Wurzbach's election and re-election as a Republican were something of an anomaly. He is the eponym honored in the Wurzbach Parkway in San Antonio.〕 The first Republican statewide primary was held in 1926, but drew only 15,239 voters. By contrast, the Democratic primary in the same year drew 821,234 voters, as disfranchisement was well established, and Texas was essentially a one-party, white-only voting state. Only two more Republican primaries were run in the next thirty-four years. In 1961, James A. Leonard, was the "first Executive Director of the Republican Party of Texas to emphasize the Party's new intention to become a force in state government." "In the dead of night," he moved the Party Headquarters from Houston to Austin" and "mobilized the Party's meager resources to support the candidacy of a 36-year-old Associate Professor of Government, John Tower, to fill Lyndon Johnson's vacant US Senate Seat." James A. Leonard "was an architect to John Tower's breakthrough 1961 Senate victory claim to Lyndon Johnson's (US) seat..." ''" in the special election after Johnson had been elected as vice-president with John F. Kennedy on the Democratic ticket.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=James A. Leonard,Texas State Republican Executive Committee Resolution 9/29/2013 )〕 John Tower served in this position until his retirement in 1985. African Americans had been mounting challenges to segregation and disfranchisement across the South to have their constitutional rights enforced. After Kennedy's assassination in 1963, President Lyndon Johnson urged passage of the civil rights legislation he had supported. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In reaction across the South, conservative whites began to realign with the Republican Party, while African Americans overwhelmingly registered with the Democratic Party, which was helping enforce their rights. In 1966, two Republicans were elected to the US House of Representatives, including future President George H.W. Bush, for the first time since Reconstruction. That same year, three Republicans were elected to the Texas House of Representatives, and the first Republican was elected to the Texas Senate in 39 years. By 1972, Texas Republicans increased their gains to 17 members of the Texas House and 3 members of the Texas Senate.〔 The true turning point for Texas Republicans occurred in the May 1976 primary, when Ronald Reagan defeated Gerald Ford by a two-to-one margin in the state's presidential primary. According to former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, due to Reagan's victory in the Texas primary, "the whole shape and nature of the state changed."〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Ronald Reagan: How he changed Texas Politics Forever )〕 104 years after the most recent previous Republican governor, Bill Clements eked out a narrow victory in November 1978. In 1984, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Phil Gramm led a GOP ticket that relied upon the RPT to provide a centralized network of communications. Throughout the rest of the decade, the total Republican vote continued to increase, and the party made large gains in both the state legislature and in local races.〔 Since 1994, every statewide elected office has been held by a Republican. Both houses of the Texas Legislature feature Republican majorities. After the 2010 elections, Republicans held a super-majority of 101 Republican representatives in the 150-member body.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=And Longtime Democrat Aaron Pena Makes It 101 )〕 After the 2014 elections, majority is now 98 of 150 in the House. In the Texas Senate, Republicans hold 20 of 31 seats post-2014 after holding 19 for the previous six years. Both houses are officially organized on a bi-partisan basis, with both Republicans and Democrats holding committee chairs. At the federal level, the Texas Congressional delegation is composed of 24 Republicans and 12 Democrats; both of its US Senators are Republican. The last time Texas was carried by a Democratic presidential candidate was in 1976. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Republican Party of Texas」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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