The Texas Democratic Party will elect its new chair at the end of this month, and Patsy Woods Martin is taking her shot at the top spot.
In an interview with Reform Austin last week, the longtime Democratic operative said that she hopes to revise the party’s messaging to reverse losses in key demographics, informed by her decades of experience in fundraising and campaigning at a statewide level. And running the state party is her ultimate ambition, she said, not a stepping stone to a higher office or bigger pay.
Decades of experience
Woods Martin has spent years in Democratic politics both as a fundraiser and a campaigner, she explained, stretching back to her college education, when she met then-Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter before he had presidential aspirations. After college, she moved to the state capital and worked at the Austin Women’s Center, where she befriended future Texas Gov. Ann Richards and helped her campaign for state treasurer.
Later, she campaigned with gubernatorial candidates in East Texas before returning to Austin to work as a professional fundraiser with the local United Way, the largest nonprofit in the U.S. Woods Martin founded I Live Here I Give Here while there, then left to build it up. This year, Amplify Austin, an initiative as part of that program, raised $9.6 million for political and non-political nonprofits.
Woods Martin also served on the board of Annie’s List, a statewide political action committee backing progressive women who support reproductive rights for Texas office. In 2014, its executive director died in a car accident, and the board asked her to take over. She led it for the next four years, and under her tenure she said she helped to make it “a real player in the Democratic ecosystem.”
She then moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and built another team to raise money for 14 state House races in 2020.
“What I saw while I was at Annie’s List was how hard it was for candidates running for the state House to raise early money,” she explained.
Her team raised $700,000 for those races and managed to flip a Harris County seat, helping Democrat Ann Johnson to oust five-term incumbent Republican Sarah Davis.
That same year, Woods Martin signed on as Beto O’Rourke’s finance chair for the first quarter of his gubernatorial race, “and we built the team that generated about $23 million in contributions in that first quarter,” she said.
Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election prompted people around the state to ask her to run for the state party chair. Initially, she was skeptical, but she later reconsidered her feelings.
“At first I said, ’No. Hell no. Have a good life. Why?’” Woods Martin explained. “And then I just sat back and thought, ‘You know what, if you have a set of skills that could help turn an organization around and focus Democrats on winning elections, you should offer that. There’s no time like the present. The stakes are high.’”
Strengths
Woods Martin argued that her experience with state-level politics and fundraising sets her apart from the rest of the candidates.
“I’m the only person out of this field of eight candidates now who has actually run a winning statewide organization,” she said. (One of her opponents, Lillie Schechter, was the chair of the Harris County Democratic Party but has not led a statewide organization.)
“Other folks bring different strengths to the table, but I’ve actually built relationships all across the state,” she continued. “I’ve actually been involved in Democratic politics longer than anyone else. And what that means is I have very deep and trusted relationships with folks around the state. And were I elected to serve in this role, it would bring a level of credibility to the organization based on [my] years of experience and also on what we did while I was at Annie’s List.”
Woods Martin also said that her ultimate goal is to run the state party and to help Democratic candidates, not to use the position to rise into national-level fundraising efforts.
“The other thing is, frankly, I’m not a consultant,” she explained. “I’m not looking at this as a way to run for higher, bigger office. My motives are to win elections right now. And I have no conflicts of interest. I’m here because I want Democrats to take power in this state so that we can change policy and make people’s lives better.”
Building trust, winning races
If elected, Woods Martin said she would focus the party on building trust and winning races.
“What I would like to bring to the Texas Democratic Party is a shift in culture, a focus on winning races and a culture of transparency, accountability and good communications with all of our stakeholders,” she explained. “Right now, the Texas Democratic Party is just one player in this whole Democratic ecosystem. And I think we can see in states that are effective, and where Democrats win, the party is the hub of that wheel. And the way you get to be the hub is by being accountable, only making promises you can keep, and frankly, having the resources to be able to demonstrate value in the ecosystem.”
Accountability is important for building trust and turning out voters, she said: “Nationally, 11% of the population trust our political parties, and so if we don’t build trust — and again, the way to do that is accountability and transparency — if we don’t build trust, how can we expect to drive voters to the poll?”
And in order to win races, the party will need to fix issues that have consistently impeded its efforts in Texas for the past decade.
Across the world, voters last year punished incumbent political parties for general postpandemic economic malaise, but in Texas, Woods Martin also saw those losses as a sign of the party’s complacency with key voting blocs.
“I really don’t want to look backwards and point fingers, right?” she said. “But what I’ve seen is, over time, I believe we’ve taken our electorate for granted. And so I’d like to look forward and really focus on winning elections for working people in the state of Texas. And if that means better messaging to working class folks, I think that is important.”
The party lost Black and Hispanic voters in the 2024 election, and in Harris County, the Democratic share of the electorate has been slipping steadily since 2016, she said.
And for the past decade, Texas Republicans have aggressively shaped the way most voters think about Democrats, and “Democrats in Texas have allowed Republicans to define our brand,”Woods Martin argued. “Republicans have spent, I bet, billions of dollars doing just that — at least, since I’ve been very actively involved in Democratic party politics, say since 2014. The Republicans have dominated the conversation, and they have put Democrats on the defensive.”
Democrats need to counter that Republican messaging with an offensive of rhetoric clearly explaining the ways that GOP policies are hurting Texans, she argues. That’s “one of the things I’d really like to see our party do, and I would institute this almost immediately,” Woods Martin said.
“I think we need to be talking in very concrete, concise terms about how the Republican policies that are being proposed and enacted are actually devastating,” she added. “You know, the issue that’s getting the most attention right now is their destruction of our public school system [by subsidizing private schools with a state voucher program]. … I live in rural Montague County, and … when I tell my neighbors that if vouchers are passed, the little 100-person school that is down the road is going to lose a teacher or a coach, it gets their attention and they understand in a way that they don’t when we’re talking in glittering generalities.”
The election
The State Democratic Executive Committee will convene in Austin on March 29 to decide who next will lead the party. It will host a forum for candidates in Austin the day before, on March 28.
