Hello all,
I hope county chairmen read this post as well as our TRCCA leadership. This was my first time as a county chairman in Jones County. We participated in Texas Victory 2008 and we were rewarded with money from Victory where we could purchase yard signs for our Republican voters. We also used some of the money to purchase newspaper advertisements in our three county newspapers to try and influence voters county wide to vote for Republican candidates. Here is where I ran into problems. I tried to keep as many people in the loop as to what was happening in Jones County, i.e., Skipper, Hans Klinger at RPT, Russ Duerstein SREC Rep, and others in RPT as well as the individual candidate campaign headquarters. I thought everyone would want to know how a county political party is doing in this campaign process. Apparently, small counties even though large in area square miles but with limited population does not figure in the overall scheme of a political campaign. I come to this conclusion because I had asked RPT and my SREC for help in developing an advertisement campaign for newspaper ads. I got no response from RPT and or SREC. I wanted to make sure that my ads, which I developed, met or exceeded any standard for a political advertisement and that I would not violate any law either state or federal. Since I did not get a reply from RPT or my SREC, I decided to go at it alone and hope that I did the right thing. I researched on RPT and the internet for rules and regulations as to political ads. Not too many at all.
As a result of my experience, I would like to propose that TRCCA come up with an action item to either teach county chairmen on the known rules to produce campaign advertisements, the legal ramifications of improper ads and so forth. This could include ideal times for newsprint ads to be published so as to get the best bang-for-the-buck. Feedback from the advertisements that I produced and had published were positive.
I certainly am not the expert on this but I feel it was money well spent and the Republican Party received some intangible exposure from this newsprint considering my Democrat counterpart did absolutely nothing during this entire campaign year.

David D. Andrews Sr.
Jones County Republican Party Chairman