sicians of all political stripes from across the state; improv- ing the candidate endorsement process; and building the war chest and grassroots preparation needed to carry out medi- cine’s agenda. With the restructuring, Dr. Holland says, TEXPAC’s mission to stay “united in protecting patients” stands on firmer ground. “TEXPAC will be a different organization. It will be a better organization. It will be more inclusive and involve physicians more than it ever has before. But our mission and our scope has to be bigger because our opponents are growing, and we are challenged at every turn. And if we don’t improve and build and grow, we are going to fall behind and lose more and more of these political battles.” To achieve that growth, the organization aims to roughly double the size of the voting board. TEXPAC’s current board has 44 voting members: one for each of Texas’ 31 Senate dis- tricts, plus votes from the alliance, the resident and medical student sections, and TEXPAC’s internal committees. The new board would include two members from each Senate district and increase alliance, resident, and student votes. Fourth-year osteopathic medical student Blair Cushing re- members scanning the TEXPAC roster at a board meeting a year or so ago and noticing not a single medical student on the list. “I looked at my classmates and said, ‘We need to sign up.’ ” The Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine student did just
that. Ms. Cushing, the former student representative to TMA’s Board of Trustees, also sees more of her classmates donning
TEXPAC WILL COME TO YOU
Are you looking to strike up a conversation with your local lawmakers? Not sure how the legislative process works? Want to build support for a medi- cine-friendly candidate? TEXPAC has the resources and political know-
how to get you going and can visit your county medical society to help. For more information, contact TEXPAC Director
Clayton Stewart by phone at (800) 880-1300, ext. 1365, or (512) 370-1365; or by email, clayton .
stewart@texmed.org. Also, visit
www.texpac.org.
22 TEXAS MEDICINE September 2014
their TEXPAC badges at the TMA Medical Student Section meetings she attends. The medical student and resident slots on the TEXPAC Board are full, too, and the restructuring con- templates expanding the medical student representation from one position for the entire TMA Medical Student Section to nine: one for each medical school in Texas. Ms. Cushing’s activism in TEXPAC, TMA’s First Tuesdays at the Capitol (
www.texmed.org/Firsttuesdays), and local events has since earned her valuable face time with Tarrant County lawmakers, even those who differ from her political beliefs. Those events turned into an opportunity to talk about the on- going need for more graduate medical education funding to keep aspiring doctors like her in Texas. “I developed personal relationships with my representative
and representatives from around the county and even their staff members. And during session, every time I went into their offices, even unannounced, I always had an audience,” Ms. Cushing said. “They remembered me. They were support- ive. And immediately, every one of those representatives said,
‘We don’t know about this issue, and we need your help to understand it.’”
CANDIDATES FOR MEDICINE The more members engage in building and maintaining rela- tionships with local lawmakers and candidates and the more politically diverse TEXPAC’s membership, the better medicine’s issues are understood, Dr. Holland says. That understanding is key to the PAC’s political endorse-
ments, a process the restructuring committee also aims to re- vitalize. “We are looking at redoing the way we gauge support, the way we grade and rank our friends and foes, and how we make decisions as to whom to endorse and not endorse,” Dr. Holland said. “Physicians have scientific minds. We like to deal in the objective, not the subjective, and we have ways of look- ing at who truly are our friends and using hard data to do so.” Foremost, TEXPAC gears the endorsement process around
recommendations that come directly from physician members and county medical societies that know or work closely with candidates on medicine’s issues, says Candidate Evaluation Committee Chair Arlo Weltge, MD, a Houston emergency phy- sician. Other top factors include candidates’ support for medi- cine’s goals; their background and experience, for example, if they work in medicine or have family who do; and their potential to win. But Dr. Weltge stresses physicians should engage with every candidate for two reasons: “One, we can’t control every elec- tion. So the candidate we endorse won’t always get elected, and we need to have a relationship with those who do end up in office. Two, even the ones who lose, for the most part, aren’t going away. They will be around exerting their influence. So the more we educate candidates long term, the better our is- sues are understood.” The former scenario recently played out when TEXPAC’s en- dorsed candidate Rep. Dan Branch (R-Dallas) lost the Repub- lican bid for attorney general in a crowded primary election.
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