Dallas Liberty Center Crusades To Keep Texas Red

DALLAS, Texas — Faced with Battleground Texas in their own backyard and demographics that show the city of Dallas leans to the left, the Dallas Liberty Center launched in late August. It is a 400-square foot grassroots action center, a downtown oasis where constitutional conservatives have galvanized to preserve the very Texas values of freedom and liberty.

Ken Emanuelson, a longtime local grassroots activist who is affiliated with the Dallas Liberty Center, sat down with Breitbart Texas to discuss the sobering challenges facing Dallas County in this midterm election, mainly the fact that unaffiliated conservatives and independents have not historically voted. Getting them out to cast their ballots is vital. This year, that may make the difference between a red and a blue Dallas County.

The Grassroots Texans Network pointed out that the tipping point may be found in “at least 100,000 conservative voters who do not vote in mid-year elections in Dallas County.” They cited 2006 and 2010, breaking it down to four out of five conservative voters who may well skip out on the 2014 midterm election.

If even only 25% of the 80,000 they calculated as registered conservative voters show up on election day conservatives will push liberals back and Dallas County stays red.

Center volunteers are phone banking and block-walking to targeted county households to get their demographic out to vote. “We have a specific plan to motivate 10,000 conservative voters to the polls this election. We already know who they are, down to the voter. We know they are hostile toincumbents and left-wingers,” said Emanuelson.

An incumbent like Clay Jenkins, the progressive county judge and MSM media darling on the Dallas County Commissioners Court, is a key figure the center is working to unseat. Jenkins is the top elected official in the county. They hope to oust him with conservative Ron Natinsky, a former Dallas City Councilman and local entrepreneur.

Jenkins, who the Dallas Morning News reported as hosting White House staffers in his unilateral push to bring 2,000-plus illegal immigrant minors into Dallas County the over the summer of 2014, has nurtured a long-term love affair with the Obama administration.

The news outlet commented that even before the President was elected to his first term, Jenkins donated $1,000 to the campaign, according to federal election records. Back then, Jenkins was a practicing lawyer who did some pro bono legal work for the Obama campaign.

“Three years later, Jenkins was in his first term as the top elected official in Dallas County and decided that he needed the White House’s help. He reached out to the administration after receiving word that the U.S. Postal Service planned to close a mail processing center in Dallas. When the decision was reversed, Jenkins got to make the public announcement,” the Dallas Morning News article stated.

Breitbart Texas reported how Jenkins went rogue in his decision to house the undocumented in three Dallas Independent School District (ISD) closed school facilities this summer. He never consulted the constituents to whom he answers as an elected official. He dodged Breitbart Texas on the issues as well.

However, following public outcry, Jenkins’ migrant housing mission was scrubbed, although the official word was that the numbers entering the U.S. illegally through Texas were down, removing the need to warehouse such large numbers of unaccompanied alien minors in the Dallas area.

The Dallas Morning News reported last year that Jenkins supported the lawsuit brought by Obama’s Justice Department challenging the Texas voter identification law. The Fifth Circuit Court ruled unanimously in favor of the Texas voter ID law and the U.S. Supreme Court has since upheld the Texas law which Breitbart Texas reported. It is in effect for the current election.

Jenkins stood against his constituents in his handling of the Ebola crisis that was created when a Liberian man brought the deadly virus into Dallas. When asked about holding town hall meetings to better inform frightened citizens of the situation, Jenkins told reporters at a televised press conference that these kinds of community gatherings were nothing more than “an opportunity for crazy people to scream at one another.”

Given Jenkins role, this should be all the more disconcerting to Dallas County residents. Empower Texans explained, “Despite what the title may suggest, County Judges do not serve a traditional, judiciary role. They are the head executive of county governments, are elected in countywide or ‘at-large’ elections and serve with four other elected commissioners who oversee county governmental operations.”

There’s a lot at stake. “2014 is a particularly critical cycle,” said Emanuelson. “If the Republicans can’t succeed in ousting Clay Jenkins this year, with all of the incredible mismanagement and outright corruption we’ve seen in county government, that’s probably it for Dallas County.”

Emanuelson continued, “Based on our analysis of voting trends in prior elections, we anticipate that Clay Jenkins is, all other things being equal, on track to win reelection this year.”

Yet, those perennially absent-at-the-ballot conservatives, independents and libertarians have the power to change the equation and tip the county back into the red zone. Otherwise, it is a bleak blue future.

“Texas is the largest red state in the nation. If Texas ever turns Democrat blue, no Republican presidential candidate can hope to win. It’s numerically impossible,” Emanuelson added.

The Dallas Liberty Center has already exceeded its goal of reaching those 10,000 unaffiliated conservatives and independents through a combination of phone calls and good ole’ fashioned knocking on doors.

“We hope to triple those numbers by election day,” Emanuelson told Breitbart Texas.

Besides phone banking, the center serves as a meeting place, and staging area for grassroots conservative candidates and causes that are financially supported by the 1836 PAC.

Emanuelson cautioned, “Dallas County is the center of gravity, population-wise, of the Metroplex. If Dallas County goes solid blue, it will ultimately take the Metroplex with it, which means Texas goes blue. Democrats seem to get this. Republicans, by and large, don’t seem to grasp the bigger picture.”

All liberty loving Texans better grasp that it is make-or-break it time.

Follow Merrill Hope on Twitter @OutOfTheBoxMom.