March 19, 2024 • 27 mins
Welcome to another enlightening episode of Conversations from the Hill Country, hosted by Adam West. In this episode, we sit down with Michelle LoweSolis, an executive committee member for the state Democratic Party in Senate District 25 and co-chair for the Bexar County Democratic Communications Committee.
With extensive experience and a 36-year background in the Department of Defense, Michelle brings precious insights into unified messaging for the party and many more themes closely tied to the realm of politics. Listen as she sheds light on her sterling service with the U.S. Air Force, her experience during the 9/11 Pentagon attacks, and the multiple threats she recognizes facing the nation.
Our esteemed guest provides a deep dive into her work with the Democratic Party, initiatives to establish strong ties across counties in Senate District 25, and the bold ambition of converting Texas into democratic terrain. They pinpoint the significance of effective communication in channeling updates and the necessity of united messaging for garnering public interest and communicating the power of their vote.
We shift the focus onto the ever-critical women's rights scene and discuss the worrisome voter turnout numbers in Texas. Our guest offers invaluable insights into these existing problems and bring forward hopeful solutions anchored in responsible action. This inspiring conversation concludes by underlining the vital role of voting in enacting change and molding a brighter future for all families, concluding with an exploration of the guests’ unified messaging campaign, 'Your Family, Your Future, Your Vote.'
This episode promises insider's knowledge about politics, disruption, democracy, and a promising future for Texas. Tune in now and be a part of this compelling discourse.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:14):
Family, your future, your vote. Conversations from the Hill Country. I'm Adam West.
Today we talk with Michelle Loselis about her 36-year background with the Department of Defense.
She is a state Democratic Party executive committee member for Senate District
25 and co-chair for the Bexar County Democratic Communications Committee.
(00:34):
We talk about her background, unified messaging for the party,
and a whole litany of related topics.
Do you want to talk a little bit about your background?
Yeah, I spent probably 15 years in Pentagon.
Whoa, I'm impressed. Yeah, we... Rush with greatness, ladies and gentlemen.
I was there on 9-11. Oh, my God.
(00:57):
Michelle Loselis, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?
I'm doing excellent. Thank you so much. Oh, thanks for being here.
You have got quite the impressive resume, quite the bio, and an extensive,
extensive background with the U.S. Air Force. First of all, thank you for your service.
It was my pleasure. I so, so enjoyed my 36 years of, you know,
(01:20):
supporting the men and women who defend our nation. That was really what it was all about for me.
You know, I know I was there on 9-11. I know we have real, real threats.
You were actually at the Pentagon. I was in the Pentagon. Wow.
That must have been pretty scary. It was actually Very scary.
You know, I always thought that
the threats that we face as a nation were external to the United States.
(01:45):
As did probably every citizen of the United States.
And I was working out of the Pentagon on January 6th when I realized that there
was nothing that I could do in the position that I had that would make a difference
in what I was seeing on January 6th.
And so my husband and I, we determined, you know, pretty much that day that
we were going to retire and come back to San Antonio, which is our home and
(02:09):
and, you know, really fight for democracy.
Could not do that in my position, but we've been doing ever since we've returned.
All right. Well, that's terrific. We appreciate all your all your work in that regard.
So now you are working with the state Democratic Party. Is that correct? That is correct.
I got elected. I was I was pretty exciting. I had the whole election and I've
(02:30):
been doing that a little less than a year, but I'm enjoying it.
All right. And are you finding it a little more difficult than you would have
anticipated originally or or not? You know, the work itself as a state Democratic
executive committee member is whatever you want to make of it, really.
I think there are people that make a lot of it, and I try to make a lot of it
(02:53):
because I want to make those connections with all of the counties that are in Senate District 25.
Because I think that's really the only way we're going to make a difference
and turn Texas into a democratic state. And that's my goal.
Well, how did you, after leaving the military, how did you decide to get involved in politics?
I knew that when we came back that we were going to do that.
(03:13):
And I had no idea how to start.
Absolutely no idea how to start. So my school district, it's the Northeast Independent
School District, was in the process of implementing a book ban.
If you remember Representative Matt Krause's list of 800 books,
they were about to go through all of those books and take them off the shelf.
(03:35):
And so I went to a school board, and as it turned out, I was sitting right next
to somebody who was very active with Mothers Against Greg Abbott.
And we got along quite well, and I thought to myself, Mothers Against Greg Abbott,
that's something I could probably deal with.
That's the only MAGA I can get by. That's right. Right.
And so we exchanged information and I became a pretty much a full time volunteer
(04:00):
with Mothers Against Greg Abbott.
That was back in January of 22.
All right. And started off doing communications work for putting press releases
together because at that point she was releasing all of her ads.
This is Nancy Thompson, the founder. And then, you know, slowly but surely started
to become much more engaged with, you know, candidate webinars.
(04:23):
I ran the endorsement board for the candidates this primary.
Last year, I did the, I led the Texas legislative team.
We did a report card, mother's report card for all 180 Texas legislatures in
the Texas House and in the Texas Senate.
First one ever. So really and truly have kind of become the political director
(04:43):
for Mothers Against Greg Abbott.
Along the way, got very involved with the Bexar County Democrats and the co-chair of communications.
Communications, I think you're going to see, is something that I'm very, very passionate about.
I think we've got to make sure that people know what's going on.
You're right about that. Yeah.
And so I wanted to take kind of a little step up and look around,
(05:08):
not just stay within Bexar County, because I know it is critical.
You know, one of the things that we share as Central Texans is some really bad
candidates or elected officials, right?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we share Chip Roy. We share Donna Campbell.
We in Bexar County can't make that change by ourselves.
(05:30):
So it's really important that we partner with counties like Comel County,
like Kendall County, Guadalupe, Hayes, et cetera, so that we can work together
to make a change for the betterment of Texas.
Well, that leads me to ask you, what comprises District 25?
So it is part of Bexar County. It's kind of the north part of Bexar County.
(05:51):
All of Comel, all of Kendall, part of Guadalupe County, all of Hayes, all of Blanco.
And part of Travis County. So it's a fairly large area. Yeah, it sure is.
Okay. What are your duties? And I know you covered a lot of that about communications,
but what specifically are your duties as the co-chair of the communications
(06:12):
committee in Bexar then?
So we put out a regular newsletter just to let folks know what's going on.
We put out a voter's guide.
We started off providing a platform for our candidates.
It's called KDEM. It's a YouTube station.
So every month we pull in either candidates or elected officials and we have them come in.
(06:35):
And if they're a candidate, they share their pitch. They tell us who they are
and why they're running.
And we put two to three minute videos out both on YouTube and on TikTok.
Really excited about it. It started in September. We started it in September
and we've probably got 100 videos out there so far. Wow.
What's the web address? Where can we find that? It actually is KDEMBearCounty. OK, perfect.
(06:59):
KDEMBearCounty. We've got it on, like I said, YouTube and TikTok.
Very, very, very excited about doing it because that's one of the things that
I think we need to do as Democrats is make sure that we're providing the best
platform we can for our candidates and making sure that, you know, we share that.
So as we get those videos together.
We send them out in our newsletter. Right. We put them out on our on our on our Web page.
(07:23):
So it's really about it's about making sure that we provide the best light that
we can for our candidates so that they've got the best look forward to win.
OK, so that goes hand in hand with supporting candidates on a local level. Absolutely.
Absolutely. And and we pulled in some candidates from our surrounding counties.
Again, we cannot win all of these elections by ourselves in Bexar County.
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It is critically important that we bring in candidates from Kendall County,
candidates from Comal County. We brought in Mary Fox.
She was actually one of the candidates who just garnered applause after she
finished her pitch. It was so passionate.
We brought in Dwayne Hanley. He's running for House District 19.
(08:08):
He's the second candidate that we had that just got applause at the end because
they're so passionate about, you know, know, what they're doing and why it's
so important for them to stand up and run in an area where it's going to be
very difficult for them to win.
And we talk a lot about how Texas, you know, has a reputation as a red state,
but it's really more of a non-voting state, right? It really is a non-voting state.
(08:33):
This was probably one of the most eye-opening things for me.
It worked really, really hard for the November 2022 midterms.
You know, I did block clockwalking, phone banking, text banking,
postcards, did a lot of work.
And so really disappointed with the results of the November 2022 midterms.
Extraordinarily disappointed. We reelected some really bad elected officials,
(08:56):
Governor Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, what the heck.
And so I went and looked about what were the results, right? And so we've got
You know, 21.8 million Texans who are of voting age.
And of those 21.8 million Texans, 17.6 million have registered to vote.
(09:20):
That's 80 percent. And that's really pretty decent, right? Right.
But in reality, what's the percentage that actually turns out?
It's less than half. Yeah, it is. So we had 8.1 million who actually showed
up to vote, 9.5 million. So more than half did not come out to vote.
And this was a really very consequential election, right?
(09:41):
It was Rob Elementary hadn't happened six months prior.
You know, we had the grid failure.
We had women had lost our right to self-determination.
There were so many things that people could have grabbed onto and said,
you know, I'm really very passionate about this. I need to come out to vote.
And yet only 44 percent came out to vote. That's sad.
(10:04):
It is. It really is. And when you talk about some of those specific issues like
the women's women's issues, that is probably forefront on a lot of the Democratic
strategy this time around. Right. It certainly is.
You've seen what's happened in other states, in red states like Kansas, in Ohio, in Kentucky.
(10:25):
Abortion rights, women's rights have risen to the top.
They've put it into their constitutions.
They got a Democratic governor elected in Kentucky because he ran on that issue.
So it really is an important issue that the Texas Democratic Party in January,
in fact, on, you know, the 51st anniversary of Roe reaffirmed a resolution on
(10:51):
women's reproductive rights in Texas.
You know, it's it's critically important.
There's just so much that's I could talk about Kate Cox.
Yeah. You know, if Kate Cox can't get an abortion in the state of Texas.
No one can get an abortion in the state of Texas. So that's,
I think, kind of where we're at.
(11:11):
That's a shame. And then to take it to the next level, where they're trying
to basically deputizing ordinary citizens to turn people in that might be leaving a state,
leaving the state to get the reproductive health care they need. That's outrageous.
It is outrageous. And it's Orwellian, you know?
(11:31):
Yeah, exactly. And there's probably, I don't know the number of counties exactly,
but I said Llano County, Amarillo, Lubbock, Cochran County.
So there's at least four or five counties who have gone through and implemented that travel ban.
You know, and I don't know if that's just for Republicans, if that's just really
feel-good legislation.
(11:52):
Because how are you going to really enforce that? Exactly.
People are going to be driving through.
Yeah, what are you going to do? Stop every car over that has a woman?
Excuse me, are you pregnant? You know, that's ridiculous.
Okay. Well, one of the ways that you are and we as a Democratic Party are trying
to get people more involved is through unified messaging.
(12:13):
So let's talk a little bit about that. You know, I think it's extraordinarily
important that we do talk about that. You know, one of the things that...
Has this being the state democratic
executive committee member for this area has enabled
me to do is really meet a lot of great democrats in
counties like comal county i had the
(12:34):
opportunity to come and speak to one of the clubs there i
met stacy osborne who's who does communications
for the democrats of comal county i'd already met becky shimmick we got together
and we we said wouldn't it'd be great if we could get together and leverage
the work that we're all doing to come up with a message that really resonates
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with people in growing areas like Comel County,
so kind of suburban, exurban, still rural,
Bexar County, and other areas.
You know, one of the things that is really important is how fast Comel County,
Hayes County are growing, right?
They're They're the number one and number two fastest growing counties in the
(13:18):
country, right? This area is growing by leaps and bounds.
So how do we start to capture people? How do we start to make them understand
that their vote really does matter?
Because so many times if I'm registering, particularly on college campuses,
you know, they'll just say, no, no, no, my vote doesn't matter.
If four million of those nine and a half million people, just half of them,
(13:41):
came out to vote, we might have had a different outcome in the November 2022 midterms.
So votes do matter. It really does.
It could change the direction of the state. And if it changes the direction
of the state, it changes the direction of this country.
So incredibly important.
So Stacey, Becky and I started to contact some other of the counties to see
(14:06):
if they also wanted to get involved. So Guadalupe County got involved.
Milda Scott, wonderful person. Kendall County, Laura Bray, the chair, is involved.
We got Sherry Scott from Hayes County to be involved.
Rob Clifford, my communications co-chair, is also involved. So we've got Bexar
County as well. And we started to.
(14:26):
We knew the first thing that we needed to do was some research, right?
And I had run across a really deeply researched, both qualitatively and quantitatively,
through surveys, through focus groups, information on messaging.
And it's called the Winning Jobs Narrative.
I ran across it last summer. It was it was eye opening and it was something
(14:49):
that I wanted to share with this group so that we could kind of digest it and
then see how we could move forward together using it.
Because, again, hundreds of thousands of surveys and, you know,
thousands of focus groups were really behind all of this research.
And so they took a look at it and we agreed we were going to start to base our
research on this. And one of the things that this research shows is that the
(15:14):
Democratic Party is losing the working class. And it's not just the white working class.
It is across all ethnicities. So they show in 2012, 67 percent of people of
color in the working class affiliated with the Democratic Party.
In 2020, that had dropped to 48 percent.
(15:35):
So less than half of the working class. This should be our base.
That's absolutely right. And so, you know, one of the things that the researchers
were able to pull out of this data is that
And no surprise, the number one issue is the economy, right? Yeah.
But what was a surprise is they don't really associate the Democratic Party
with the economy and doing well with the economy.
(16:00):
The research showed that they believe that Democrats are here to help the poor
and the working class doesn't consider themselves to be poor.
They affiliate or at least associate more with the Republicans when they were asked, who's for me?
That information was the Republicans because they think the Republicans respect
(16:20):
and value hard work, which is just an irony, right?
I mean, it's just. Yeah, yeah. I've never understood that myself.
You know, when you look at history, in fact, I just read something yesterday,
and I can't give you the exact figures, but it showed a graph of under Democratic
administrations versus Republican administrations.
(16:40):
The economy always does better.
Under the Democrats. Under the Democrats. Absolutely.
Despite, you know, mixed messaging or... And I really think that's part of the issue. Right.
Because the messaging on the Republican side is is is consistent.
We do good on the economy. We're stronger for, you know, American defense.
And I'm not sure if that's an accurate statement anymore or not.
(17:04):
But and of course, the border.
Right. I mean, you could almost like list them off because they're there. They're so consistent.
And when you talk about economics, you know, trickle down economics is not really effective.
And it hasn't been for for over 40 years. Right. Right. Right. Absolutely.
So you mentioned people not showing up and feeling like their vote just doesn't matter.
(17:24):
Well, talk about because I personally have had a hard time in the past understanding
how the Electoral College works.
How does a state elect or party get electors who will ultimately.
Make that decision or certify, you know, because there was the whole thing about
the fake electors and yada, yada. Yeah.
(17:45):
So we're going to actually start that, kick that process off.
I mean, are the electors in each party, they ideally, the majority vote in the
state is who that they should cast their votes for. Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely. Absolutely. So at the Texas Democratic Convention,
which is going to be in June of this year, we're actually going to be electing
(18:09):
those electors that if, you know, Biden takes Texas,
those electors would go to Austin and sign the certificate of election.
OK, so that goes to the Congress and on January 6th. So state electors, then it's one group.
It's not a Republican group of electors and then a Democratic group of electors. It is.
(18:32):
There is a Democratic group of electors. Those are the ones that we will be
electing in June for the at the Texas Democratic Convention.
OK, so when the majority says says Joe Biden, but then they're on the Republican
side, they're saying Donald Trump.
It's just once the official election results are in, if Joe Biden is the winner,
(18:53):
the electors that are are elected at the Texas Democratic Convention will be the ones.
OK, yes, will be the ones that go to Austin to certify the results.
OK. And if, you know, the Republican wins and the Republicans that are elected
in the Republican convention will go to Austin to certify the results.
(19:14):
So, in effect, that really is popular vote victory, because a lot of people
say, well, despite you winning a popular vote, you could still lose an election,
which never made sense to me.
You still can lose an election. Yeah. A lot of people say that,
you know, we should abolish the electoral college and just go straight popular vote.
And I think that makes a lot of sense. In some ways it does.
(19:36):
But the representative breakdown, I suppose, of how you have a large state like
Wyoming, maybe that doesn't have as large of a population as New York State or California or Texas,
sometimes it's a little hard for people to grasp how that system actually works. Yeah.
No, but I think you're spot on.
I mean, we know that every election other than, I want to say it's 2004.
(20:01):
You know, this century, right, since the 2000s, the Democrats have won the popular vote.
The only election where we did not win the popular vote is the George W.
Bush-John Kerry election. Yeah.
But as you know, you know, George W. Bush won the Electoral College in 2000.
(20:21):
And of course, Trump won the Electoral College in 2016.
Yes. Despite losing by three million.
Yeah. Which, yeah, well, whatever. It is what it is, I suppose.
And the bottom line is your vote does matter.
It does. It absolutely does matter. And, you know, that is how presidential
elections are done. But, you know, for Senate, U.S.
(20:47):
Senate, it is it's a statewide vote for railroad commissioner.
It's a statewide vote for Texas Supreme Court and the Criminal Court of Appeals.
Those are statewide votes. And so if we can get out, you know,
people talk about gerrymandering and, you know, messing with districts and making
it so that districts can't be won because they've been gerrymandered.
(21:10):
So there are plenty of elections that are statewide elections that you can't gerrymander.
If we can just get the vote out, we could get a U.S. senator.
We could get a railroad commissioner.
We could get Texas Supreme Court justices. We could we could win the governorship in 2026.
We could beat Dan Patrick in 2026. Sure.
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There's a lot of races that we could win if we get out the vote that have nothing
to do with gerrymandering or the Electoral College.
Well, that's good to know. You know, I like to I like to have that optimism in there.
Yeah, but it's about getting out the vote. You know, one of the things,
and I want to go a little bit back to the unified messaging,
(21:54):
you know, and really back to the fact that we are still, you know,
a non-voting state, right?
There are five and a half million Latino voters that are registered,
but 52% of those Latino registered voters have voted zero times in the last three cycles. Wow. Wow.
In November 22, the midterm election, 75% of 18 to 30-year-olds didn't go to the polls.
(22:23):
You're kidding. That's terrible. That's a lot of kids.
Yeah. This is their future, right? So that's where we kind of landed, right?
We knew that we needed to appeal to those non-voters. The non-voters,
when you look at that nine and a half million, there's a lot of those that are
(22:43):
Latino voters and there's a lot of them that are young voters.
Yeah. So that's our focus. How do we start to appeal to Latino and young voters?
And so one of the things, again, back to that research that is so important
and that came up in a lot of the focus groups with Latinos, it had to do with hard work.
Hard work, very, very important. And hard work for hard work's sake?
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No. No. But what does hard work, what is the benefit of hard work, right?
Benefit of hard work is you can provide for your family.
It gives you a sense of personal responsibility, independence.
Agency, right? Freedom. But that's not all.
If you can also provide for your family, you can also contribute to your community.
(23:26):
And so really and truly kind of one of those aspirational things where not only
are you with hard work able to provide for your family, but you're also able
to contribute to community.
So we took that aspirational feeling, but we also knew that we couldn't be talking
about us, right? We couldn't be talking about Democrats.
(23:47):
We had to be talking about those folks. We had to be talking about you, right?
It had to be about you. Not about us. It It had to be about you because it's
important for you to feel like it's important to vote.
It's important to vote because it's about you. It's about your family and it's about your future.
Absolutely. And so that's where we came down.
(24:08):
You know, both in Spanish and in English, your family.
Your future, your vote. We ended on your vote so that you knew why it was important to vote.
It was important to vote because of your family and your future. That's the bottom line.
Without the vote, nothing will change. Nothing will change.
You know, you want good roads, vote.
(24:29):
If you want good public schools, vote. You know, there's just so many ways that
we could riff off of that, your family, your future, your vote.
We have it in Spanish. So it's tu familia, tu futuro, tu voto, right? right?
For the young folks, we took off your family because that's really wasn't where they're at, right?
So it's your future, your vote.
(24:50):
You know, we're, we've got signs.
We've got all of the graphics around it. We're very excited about the reception
that we got. We unveiled it at the Comal County Boot Camp.
And it was just, it was, it was a really great event for us to be able to unveil our messaging.
Very well received. It's been very well received, you know, really across across
(25:11):
the Hill Country, because Kendall County, Guadalupe County, Comal County.
Blanco County, and there's another one, you know, have agreed to purchase signs
so they can put them out and about and we can see, you know,
your family, your future, your vote, vote Democratic in 2024,
you know, across the Hill Country.
And I'm really excited about that. All right. Well, great. Well,
let's let's pound that message home.
(25:32):
Speaking as someone that's worked in radio for a long time, they used to tell
us that a person needs to hear a message at least three times.
Oh, seven times? I was going to say three times because like when you're driving
in your car, for example, with a radio commercial, you hear it,
you don't pay attention.
The second time, you might perk up a little bit. By the third time,
you should be basically remembering the message.
(25:56):
So what are the other four then?
You mentioned seven. That's how I always heard. And maybe it's just harder headed.
We're harder headed in the Air Force. Well, that's true. Maybe so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we could get into a whole debate about one branch of the military versus
another. But that's another podcast.
But all right, Michelle, how can we get a hold of the party?
(26:17):
How can listeners get more information or, you know, find you guys?
You mentioned your web address before, right? Right. Yes, we're at actually
all of the graphics, all of the the communications is actually on the Comel
County Democratic website.
We're on YouTube and TikTok and at KDEM Bear County.
(26:38):
Both both channels are KDEM Bear County. Both channels, you can find about 100 videos.
OK, that's a great way to get to know the candidates. It is.
It's a fantastic way. We've got both railroad commissioner candidates on there,
which is, you know, if you want to know, you know, we've got Mary Fox out there.
We've got Dwayne Hanley, who's running for House District 19.
(27:00):
We've got a lot of candidates out there. So please come and subscribe.
We'd love to have you. All right. Well, Michelle Loselis, thank you so much
for stopping by and spending some time with us.
We are certainly trying to help get the message out. My pleasure.
And we'll talk again soon.
Excellent. Thank you so much. Your family, your future, your vote.
Conversations from the Hill Country is a production of the Kamal County Democratic Party Precinct 204.
(27:25):
Precinct Chair and Podcast Director, Teresa Patrick.
Deputy Chair and Podcast Executive Producer, Donna Kelter. Music provided by John Mullane.
Online at j-o-n-m-u-l-l-a-n-e dot bandcamp dot com.
We welcome your comments. I'm Adam West.
Music.
Music.
(00:14):
Family, your future, your vote. Conversations from the Hill Country. I'm Adam West.
Today we talk with Michelle Loselis about her 36-year background with the Department of Defense.
She is a state Democratic Party executive committee member for Senate District
25 and co-chair for the Bexar County Democratic Communications Committee.
(00:34):
We talk about her background, unified messaging for the party,
and a whole litany of related topics.
Do you want to talk a little bit about your background?
Yeah, I spent probably 15 years in Pentagon.
Whoa, I'm impressed. Yeah, we... Rush with greatness, ladies and gentlemen.
I was there on 9-11. Oh, my God.
(00:57):
Michelle Loselis, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?
I'm doing excellent. Thank you so much. Oh, thanks for being here.
You have got quite the impressive resume, quite the bio, and an extensive,
extensive background with the U.S. Air Force. First of all, thank you for your service.
It was my pleasure. I so, so enjoyed my 36 years of, you know,
(01:20):
supporting the men and women who defend our nation. That was really what it was all about for me.
You know, I know I was there on 9-11. I know we have real, real threats.
You were actually at the Pentagon. I was in the Pentagon. Wow.
That must have been pretty scary. It was actually Very scary.
You know, I always thought that
the threats that we face as a nation were external to the United States.
(01:45):
As did probably every citizen of the United States.
And I was working out of the Pentagon on January 6th when I realized that there
was nothing that I could do in the position that I had that would make a difference
in what I was seeing on January 6th.
And so my husband and I, we determined, you know, pretty much that day that
we were going to retire and come back to San Antonio, which is our home and
(02:09):
and, you know, really fight for democracy.
Could not do that in my position, but we've been doing ever since we've returned.
All right. Well, that's terrific. We appreciate all your all your work in that regard.
So now you are working with the state Democratic Party. Is that correct? That is correct.
I got elected. I was I was pretty exciting. I had the whole election and I've
(02:30):
been doing that a little less than a year, but I'm enjoying it.
All right. And are you finding it a little more difficult than you would have
anticipated originally or or not? You know, the work itself as a state Democratic
executive committee member is whatever you want to make of it, really.
I think there are people that make a lot of it, and I try to make a lot of it
(02:53):
because I want to make those connections with all of the counties that are in Senate District 25.
Because I think that's really the only way we're going to make a difference
and turn Texas into a democratic state. And that's my goal.
Well, how did you, after leaving the military, how did you decide to get involved in politics?
I knew that when we came back that we were going to do that.
(03:13):
And I had no idea how to start.
Absolutely no idea how to start. So my school district, it's the Northeast Independent
School District, was in the process of implementing a book ban.
If you remember Representative Matt Krause's list of 800 books,
they were about to go through all of those books and take them off the shelf.
(03:35):
And so I went to a school board, and as it turned out, I was sitting right next
to somebody who was very active with Mothers Against Greg Abbott.
And we got along quite well, and I thought to myself, Mothers Against Greg Abbott,
that's something I could probably deal with.
That's the only MAGA I can get by. That's right. Right.
And so we exchanged information and I became a pretty much a full time volunteer
(04:00):
with Mothers Against Greg Abbott.
That was back in January of 22.
All right. And started off doing communications work for putting press releases
together because at that point she was releasing all of her ads.
This is Nancy Thompson, the founder. And then, you know, slowly but surely started
to become much more engaged with, you know, candidate webinars.
(04:23):
I ran the endorsement board for the candidates this primary.
Last year, I did the, I led the Texas legislative team.
We did a report card, mother's report card for all 180 Texas legislatures in
the Texas House and in the Texas Senate.
First one ever. So really and truly have kind of become the political director
(04:43):
for Mothers Against Greg Abbott.
Along the way, got very involved with the Bexar County Democrats and the co-chair of communications.
Communications, I think you're going to see, is something that I'm very, very passionate about.
I think we've got to make sure that people know what's going on.
You're right about that. Yeah.
And so I wanted to take kind of a little step up and look around,
(05:08):
not just stay within Bexar County, because I know it is critical.
You know, one of the things that we share as Central Texans is some really bad
candidates or elected officials, right?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we share Chip Roy. We share Donna Campbell.
We in Bexar County can't make that change by ourselves.
(05:30):
So it's really important that we partner with counties like Comel County,
like Kendall County, Guadalupe, Hayes, et cetera, so that we can work together
to make a change for the betterment of Texas.
Well, that leads me to ask you, what comprises District 25?
So it is part of Bexar County. It's kind of the north part of Bexar County.
(05:51):
All of Comel, all of Kendall, part of Guadalupe County, all of Hayes, all of Blanco.
And part of Travis County. So it's a fairly large area. Yeah, it sure is.
Okay. What are your duties? And I know you covered a lot of that about communications,
but what specifically are your duties as the co-chair of the communications
(06:12):
committee in Bexar then?
So we put out a regular newsletter just to let folks know what's going on.
We put out a voter's guide.
We started off providing a platform for our candidates.
It's called KDEM. It's a YouTube station.
So every month we pull in either candidates or elected officials and we have them come in.
(06:35):
And if they're a candidate, they share their pitch. They tell us who they are
and why they're running.
And we put two to three minute videos out both on YouTube and on TikTok.
Really excited about it. It started in September. We started it in September
and we've probably got 100 videos out there so far. Wow.
What's the web address? Where can we find that? It actually is KDEMBearCounty. OK, perfect.
(06:59):
KDEMBearCounty. We've got it on, like I said, YouTube and TikTok.
Very, very, very excited about doing it because that's one of the things that
I think we need to do as Democrats is make sure that we're providing the best
platform we can for our candidates and making sure that, you know, we share that.
So as we get those videos together.
We send them out in our newsletter. Right. We put them out on our on our on our Web page.
(07:23):
So it's really about it's about making sure that we provide the best light that
we can for our candidates so that they've got the best look forward to win.
OK, so that goes hand in hand with supporting candidates on a local level. Absolutely.
Absolutely. And and we pulled in some candidates from our surrounding counties.
Again, we cannot win all of these elections by ourselves in Bexar County.
(07:47):
It is critically important that we bring in candidates from Kendall County,
candidates from Comal County. We brought in Mary Fox.
She was actually one of the candidates who just garnered applause after she
finished her pitch. It was so passionate.
We brought in Dwayne Hanley. He's running for House District 19.
(08:08):
He's the second candidate that we had that just got applause at the end because
they're so passionate about, you know, know, what they're doing and why it's
so important for them to stand up and run in an area where it's going to be
very difficult for them to win.
And we talk a lot about how Texas, you know, has a reputation as a red state,
but it's really more of a non-voting state, right? It really is a non-voting state.
(08:33):
This was probably one of the most eye-opening things for me.
It worked really, really hard for the November 2022 midterms.
You know, I did block clockwalking, phone banking, text banking,
postcards, did a lot of work.
And so really disappointed with the results of the November 2022 midterms.
Extraordinarily disappointed. We reelected some really bad elected officials,
(08:56):
Governor Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, what the heck.
And so I went and looked about what were the results, right? And so we've got
You know, 21.8 million Texans who are of voting age.
And of those 21.8 million Texans, 17.6 million have registered to vote.
(09:20):
That's 80 percent. And that's really pretty decent, right? Right.
But in reality, what's the percentage that actually turns out?
It's less than half. Yeah, it is. So we had 8.1 million who actually showed
up to vote, 9.5 million. So more than half did not come out to vote.
And this was a really very consequential election, right?
(09:41):
It was Rob Elementary hadn't happened six months prior.
You know, we had the grid failure.
We had women had lost our right to self-determination.
There were so many things that people could have grabbed onto and said,
you know, I'm really very passionate about this. I need to come out to vote.
And yet only 44 percent came out to vote. That's sad.
(10:04):
It is. It really is. And when you talk about some of those specific issues like
the women's women's issues, that is probably forefront on a lot of the Democratic
strategy this time around. Right. It certainly is.
You've seen what's happened in other states, in red states like Kansas, in Ohio, in Kentucky.
(10:25):
Abortion rights, women's rights have risen to the top.
They've put it into their constitutions.
They got a Democratic governor elected in Kentucky because he ran on that issue.
So it really is an important issue that the Texas Democratic Party in January,
in fact, on, you know, the 51st anniversary of Roe reaffirmed a resolution on
(10:51):
women's reproductive rights in Texas.
You know, it's it's critically important.
There's just so much that's I could talk about Kate Cox.
Yeah. You know, if Kate Cox can't get an abortion in the state of Texas.
No one can get an abortion in the state of Texas. So that's,
I think, kind of where we're at.
(11:11):
That's a shame. And then to take it to the next level, where they're trying
to basically deputizing ordinary citizens to turn people in that might be leaving a state,
leaving the state to get the reproductive health care they need. That's outrageous.
It is outrageous. And it's Orwellian, you know?
(11:31):
Yeah, exactly. And there's probably, I don't know the number of counties exactly,
but I said Llano County, Amarillo, Lubbock, Cochran County.
So there's at least four or five counties who have gone through and implemented that travel ban.
You know, and I don't know if that's just for Republicans, if that's just really
feel-good legislation.
(11:52):
Because how are you going to really enforce that? Exactly.
People are going to be driving through.
Yeah, what are you going to do? Stop every car over that has a woman?
Excuse me, are you pregnant? You know, that's ridiculous.
Okay. Well, one of the ways that you are and we as a Democratic Party are trying
to get people more involved is through unified messaging.
(12:13):
So let's talk a little bit about that. You know, I think it's extraordinarily
important that we do talk about that. You know, one of the things that...
Has this being the state democratic
executive committee member for this area has enabled
me to do is really meet a lot of great democrats in
counties like comal county i had the
(12:34):
opportunity to come and speak to one of the clubs there i
met stacy osborne who's who does communications
for the democrats of comal county i'd already met becky shimmick we got together
and we we said wouldn't it'd be great if we could get together and leverage
the work that we're all doing to come up with a message that really resonates
(12:56):
with people in growing areas like Comel County,
so kind of suburban, exurban, still rural,
Bexar County, and other areas.
You know, one of the things that is really important is how fast Comel County,
Hayes County are growing, right?
They're They're the number one and number two fastest growing counties in the
(13:18):
country, right? This area is growing by leaps and bounds.
So how do we start to capture people? How do we start to make them understand
that their vote really does matter?
Because so many times if I'm registering, particularly on college campuses,
you know, they'll just say, no, no, no, my vote doesn't matter.
If four million of those nine and a half million people, just half of them,
(13:41):
came out to vote, we might have had a different outcome in the November 2022 midterms.
So votes do matter. It really does.
It could change the direction of the state. And if it changes the direction
of the state, it changes the direction of this country.
So incredibly important.
So Stacey, Becky and I started to contact some other of the counties to see
(14:06):
if they also wanted to get involved. So Guadalupe County got involved.
Milda Scott, wonderful person. Kendall County, Laura Bray, the chair, is involved.
We got Sherry Scott from Hayes County to be involved.
Rob Clifford, my communications co-chair, is also involved. So we've got Bexar
County as well. And we started to.
(14:26):
We knew the first thing that we needed to do was some research, right?
And I had run across a really deeply researched, both qualitatively and quantitatively,
through surveys, through focus groups, information on messaging.
And it's called the Winning Jobs Narrative.
I ran across it last summer. It was it was eye opening and it was something
(14:49):
that I wanted to share with this group so that we could kind of digest it and
then see how we could move forward together using it.
Because, again, hundreds of thousands of surveys and, you know,
thousands of focus groups were really behind all of this research.
And so they took a look at it and we agreed we were going to start to base our
research on this. And one of the things that this research shows is that the
(15:14):
Democratic Party is losing the working class. And it's not just the white working class.
It is across all ethnicities. So they show in 2012, 67 percent of people of
color in the working class affiliated with the Democratic Party.
In 2020, that had dropped to 48 percent.
(15:35):
So less than half of the working class. This should be our base.
That's absolutely right. And so, you know, one of the things that the researchers
were able to pull out of this data is that
And no surprise, the number one issue is the economy, right? Yeah.
But what was a surprise is they don't really associate the Democratic Party
with the economy and doing well with the economy.
(16:00):
The research showed that they believe that Democrats are here to help the poor
and the working class doesn't consider themselves to be poor.
They affiliate or at least associate more with the Republicans when they were asked, who's for me?
That information was the Republicans because they think the Republicans respect
(16:20):
and value hard work, which is just an irony, right?
I mean, it's just. Yeah, yeah. I've never understood that myself.
You know, when you look at history, in fact, I just read something yesterday,
and I can't give you the exact figures, but it showed a graph of under Democratic
administrations versus Republican administrations.
(16:40):
The economy always does better.
Under the Democrats. Under the Democrats. Absolutely.
Despite, you know, mixed messaging or... And I really think that's part of the issue. Right.
Because the messaging on the Republican side is is is consistent.
We do good on the economy. We're stronger for, you know, American defense.
And I'm not sure if that's an accurate statement anymore or not.
(17:04):
But and of course, the border.
Right. I mean, you could almost like list them off because they're there. They're so consistent.
And when you talk about economics, you know, trickle down economics is not really effective.
And it hasn't been for for over 40 years. Right. Right. Right. Absolutely.
So you mentioned people not showing up and feeling like their vote just doesn't matter.
(17:24):
Well, talk about because I personally have had a hard time in the past understanding
how the Electoral College works.
How does a state elect or party get electors who will ultimately.
Make that decision or certify, you know, because there was the whole thing about
the fake electors and yada, yada. Yeah.
(17:45):
So we're going to actually start that, kick that process off.
I mean, are the electors in each party, they ideally, the majority vote in the
state is who that they should cast their votes for. Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely. Absolutely. So at the Texas Democratic Convention,
which is going to be in June of this year, we're actually going to be electing
(18:09):
those electors that if, you know, Biden takes Texas,
those electors would go to Austin and sign the certificate of election.
OK, so that goes to the Congress and on January 6th. So state electors, then it's one group.
It's not a Republican group of electors and then a Democratic group of electors. It is.
(18:32):
There is a Democratic group of electors. Those are the ones that we will be
electing in June for the at the Texas Democratic Convention.
OK, so when the majority says says Joe Biden, but then they're on the Republican
side, they're saying Donald Trump.
It's just once the official election results are in, if Joe Biden is the winner,
(18:53):
the electors that are are elected at the Texas Democratic Convention will be the ones.
OK, yes, will be the ones that go to Austin to certify the results.
OK. And if, you know, the Republican wins and the Republicans that are elected
in the Republican convention will go to Austin to certify the results.
(19:14):
So, in effect, that really is popular vote victory, because a lot of people
say, well, despite you winning a popular vote, you could still lose an election,
which never made sense to me.
You still can lose an election. Yeah. A lot of people say that,
you know, we should abolish the electoral college and just go straight popular vote.
And I think that makes a lot of sense. In some ways it does.
(19:36):
But the representative breakdown, I suppose, of how you have a large state like
Wyoming, maybe that doesn't have as large of a population as New York State or California or Texas,
sometimes it's a little hard for people to grasp how that system actually works. Yeah.
No, but I think you're spot on.
I mean, we know that every election other than, I want to say it's 2004.
(20:01):
You know, this century, right, since the 2000s, the Democrats have won the popular vote.
The only election where we did not win the popular vote is the George W.
Bush-John Kerry election. Yeah.
But as you know, you know, George W. Bush won the Electoral College in 2000.
(20:21):
And of course, Trump won the Electoral College in 2016.
Yes. Despite losing by three million.
Yeah. Which, yeah, well, whatever. It is what it is, I suppose.
And the bottom line is your vote does matter.
It does. It absolutely does matter. And, you know, that is how presidential
elections are done. But, you know, for Senate, U.S.
(20:47):
Senate, it is it's a statewide vote for railroad commissioner.
It's a statewide vote for Texas Supreme Court and the Criminal Court of Appeals.
Those are statewide votes. And so if we can get out, you know,
people talk about gerrymandering and, you know, messing with districts and making
it so that districts can't be won because they've been gerrymandered.
(21:10):
So there are plenty of elections that are statewide elections that you can't gerrymander.
If we can just get the vote out, we could get a U.S. senator.
We could get a railroad commissioner.
We could get Texas Supreme Court justices. We could we could win the governorship in 2026.
We could beat Dan Patrick in 2026. Sure.
(21:32):
There's a lot of races that we could win if we get out the vote that have nothing
to do with gerrymandering or the Electoral College.
Well, that's good to know. You know, I like to I like to have that optimism in there.
Yeah, but it's about getting out the vote. You know, one of the things,
and I want to go a little bit back to the unified messaging,
(21:54):
you know, and really back to the fact that we are still, you know,
a non-voting state, right?
There are five and a half million Latino voters that are registered,
but 52% of those Latino registered voters have voted zero times in the last three cycles. Wow. Wow.
In November 22, the midterm election, 75% of 18 to 30-year-olds didn't go to the polls.
(22:23):
You're kidding. That's terrible. That's a lot of kids.
Yeah. This is their future, right? So that's where we kind of landed, right?
We knew that we needed to appeal to those non-voters. The non-voters,
when you look at that nine and a half million, there's a lot of those that are
(22:43):
Latino voters and there's a lot of them that are young voters.
Yeah. So that's our focus. How do we start to appeal to Latino and young voters?
And so one of the things, again, back to that research that is so important
and that came up in a lot of the focus groups with Latinos, it had to do with hard work.
Hard work, very, very important. And hard work for hard work's sake?
(23:06):
No. No. But what does hard work, what is the benefit of hard work, right?
Benefit of hard work is you can provide for your family.
It gives you a sense of personal responsibility, independence.
Agency, right? Freedom. But that's not all.
If you can also provide for your family, you can also contribute to your community.
(23:26):
And so really and truly kind of one of those aspirational things where not only
are you with hard work able to provide for your family, but you're also able
to contribute to community.
So we took that aspirational feeling, but we also knew that we couldn't be talking
about us, right? We couldn't be talking about Democrats.
(23:47):
We had to be talking about those folks. We had to be talking about you, right?
It had to be about you. Not about us. It It had to be about you because it's
important for you to feel like it's important to vote.
It's important to vote because it's about you. It's about your family and it's about your future.
Absolutely. And so that's where we came down.
(24:08):
You know, both in Spanish and in English, your family.
Your future, your vote. We ended on your vote so that you knew why it was important to vote.
It was important to vote because of your family and your future. That's the bottom line.
Without the vote, nothing will change. Nothing will change.
You know, you want good roads, vote.
(24:29):
If you want good public schools, vote. You know, there's just so many ways that
we could riff off of that, your family, your future, your vote.
We have it in Spanish. So it's tu familia, tu futuro, tu voto, right? right?
For the young folks, we took off your family because that's really wasn't where they're at, right?
So it's your future, your vote.
(24:50):
You know, we're, we've got signs.
We've got all of the graphics around it. We're very excited about the reception
that we got. We unveiled it at the Comal County Boot Camp.
And it was just, it was, it was a really great event for us to be able to unveil our messaging.
Very well received. It's been very well received, you know, really across across
(25:11):
the Hill Country, because Kendall County, Guadalupe County, Comal County.
Blanco County, and there's another one, you know, have agreed to purchase signs
so they can put them out and about and we can see, you know,
your family, your future, your vote, vote Democratic in 2024,
you know, across the Hill Country.
And I'm really excited about that. All right. Well, great. Well,
let's let's pound that message home.
(25:32):
Speaking as someone that's worked in radio for a long time, they used to tell
us that a person needs to hear a message at least three times.
Oh, seven times? I was going to say three times because like when you're driving
in your car, for example, with a radio commercial, you hear it,
you don't pay attention.
The second time, you might perk up a little bit. By the third time,
you should be basically remembering the message.
(25:56):
So what are the other four then?
You mentioned seven. That's how I always heard. And maybe it's just harder headed.
We're harder headed in the Air Force. Well, that's true. Maybe so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we could get into a whole debate about one branch of the military versus
another. But that's another podcast.
But all right, Michelle, how can we get a hold of the party?
(26:17):
How can listeners get more information or, you know, find you guys?
You mentioned your web address before, right? Right. Yes, we're at actually
all of the graphics, all of the the communications is actually on the Comel
County Democratic website.
We're on YouTube and TikTok and at KDEM Bear County.
(26:38):
Both both channels are KDEM Bear County. Both channels, you can find about 100 videos.
OK, that's a great way to get to know the candidates. It is.
It's a fantastic way. We've got both railroad commissioner candidates on there,
which is, you know, if you want to know, you know, we've got Mary Fox out there.
We've got Dwayne Hanley, who's running for House District 19.
(27:00):
We've got a lot of candidates out there. So please come and subscribe.
We'd love to have you. All right. Well, Michelle Loselis, thank you so much
for stopping by and spending some time with us.
We are certainly trying to help get the message out. My pleasure.
And we'll talk again soon.
Excellent. Thank you so much. Your family, your future, your vote.
Conversations from the Hill Country is a production of the Kamal County Democratic Party Precinct 204.
(27:25):
Precinct Chair and Podcast Director, Teresa Patrick.
Deputy Chair and Podcast Executive Producer, Donna Kelter. Music provided by John Mullane.
Online at j-o-n-m-u-l-l-a-n-e dot bandcamp dot com.
We welcome your comments. I'm Adam West.
Music.
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