Lt. Col. Allen West, former chair of the Texas GOP, is officially running for chair of the Dallas County Republican Party.
After filing with the county Thursday morning, West spoke with The Dallas Express about his bid to lead the local chapter of the GOP, asserting that the party must step up when it comes to electing conservatives to local offices, including county commissioner, city council, and school board.
“When you look at the strategy of the Left, they have been very successful in going to red states and taking over major population centers because the Republican Party has not focused on county and local levels,” West told The Dallas Express. “We need to be focused on the local races because that’s how you can flip an entire state if you take over a major population sector. Look at Nevada, look at Colorado, look at where I was born and raised in Georgia. Five major city areas have flipped that state.”
West noted that the “far Left” currently controls the large cities of Texas such as Austin, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, and Dallas, with Republicans “always try[ing] to play catch up.”
“We’ve got to start turning these things back around in these major counties,” West stated. “I always tell folks to go back to the 2020 presidential election cycle by county and look at all the red across the United States of America by county, except for very specific places where you see the blue. And it’s all the major population centers where you see the greatest amount of failure of leftist policies.”
“I’ve always said that the number one most important elected position in the United States of America is school board,” West added. “I’ve always tried to focus on the local-level elections.”
West said Republicans must become more engaged in municipal elections, which he tried to push during his tenure as chair of the Texas GOP.
“Even though people say they’re nonpartisan, we know that that is not the case,” remarked West. “I see this as probably more important and more focused for the state of Texas than being up there at the at the state GOP level because this is where the leftist folks like George Soros have come in and supported judicial races. He supported DA races. And once again, we’re playing catch up on that.”
Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot’s campaign received more than $400,000 in funding from left-wing megadonor Soros, as previously reported by The Dallas Express. Most elected leaders in Dallas County are Democrats, including Creuzot, County Judge Clay Jenkins, and every member of the commissioners court.
However, in September, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson switched parties and became a Republican, citing crime and fiscal conservatism as the key motivators behind his decision. Still, West said he is not impressed.
“If you really want to impress me, do it when you have something at stake,” West said. “If you had changed to being a Republican [when] you still had to run for re-election here in the City of Dallas, that would’ve meant a lot more to me. Right now, that’s the easy thing to do — to say that I’m not up for re-election, so I’m gonna change the party.”
“I’d like to sit down and talk to him. I’d like to welcome him to this party,” West continued. “But I’d like to ask him, you know, truthfully, what is behind your decision to make this switch?”
West served in the U.S. House of Representatives from January 3, 2011, to January 3, 2013, representing the state of Florida. He eventually moved to Texas and was elected chair of the Texas Republican Party in 2020 before resigning the following year and launching a primary bid against Greg Abbott for Governor of Texas. However, that campaign was unsuccessful.
Since West’s announcement on November 28, some have accused him of being a political opportunist and a “grifter.” In response, West questioned what there has been for him to gain.
“What opportunity am I trying to gain for myself? As state party chairman, I wasn’t compensated. It’s kind of interesting because the guy before me was, but I was not. Running for governor, I didn’t make any money off of that. Running for Dallas County Republican [chair], I’m not making any money,” West remarked. “I’m not an opportunist. And I think it’s very disingenuous that people would come to a person that put his life on the line for 22 years and had strips into three different combat zones and all of a sudden call him an opportunist.”
“Once upon a time, in the United States of America, you did not get elected into public office if you hadn’t worn a uniform,” West continued. “I think if we had veterans that were out running for more political offices, which is going to be a focus of mine, we’d have a different country. Because when you elect people that have put their lives on the line for this country, you get a different type of person.”
People like Matt Mackowiak, chairman of the Travis County Republican Party, have argued that Dallas voters should “reject” West. Mackowiak, who is also a political consultant wrote in a post on X that West was “[d]efeated after one term in Congress,” “[r]an a Dallas nonprofit into the ground,” and “[d]estroyed the Texas GOP financially.”
In response, West said during his interview with The Dallas Express that he is “not going into a back and forth with anyone.”
“I don’t follow social media for that very reason,” West said, adding that his maxim is, “Never allow irrelevant people to cause you consternation.”
“Republicans redistricted me out of congressional office,” West asserted. “The folks complaining about [the Republican Party of Texas] never donated [and] tried to undermine everything. I will give y’all my all but if these folks want to keep losing and watch Texas decline … that’s their choice.”
West argued that Dallas Republicans should elect him as chair of the Dallas GOP because he would shift the status quo in favor of conservatives and make the party relevant in local politics.
“If you want to continue with the status quo where you don’t have a voice, you don’t have a Republican on the county commissioners court; you don’t have any of the major countywide offices, and not many of your municipalities and city council members or school boards — if you want to continue with that status quo, fine,” West said.
“I’m happy to continue on and do what I have been doing and be a voice. But I think that we can be the first county in a major urban population center … that can show we can turn this thing around, and we can lay out the blueprint whereby we say that the Left should not be able to come in here and force their policies in these areas.”
Furthermore, West wants to show the people of Dallas County that “you can have better” in terms of law and order, safety, education, and election integrity.
“You can have better when it comes to selecting people that will go out and not try to rule over you, but govern,” West said, referencing County Judge Jenkins’ orders to close local businesses in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’d say to Clay Jenkins, ‘Show me where you have the enumerated power to tell a private business they have to shut down. You don’t,'” West said. “That’s at the gubernatorial level, that’s at the presidential level. So why are we allowing these things to happen?”
West told The Dallas Express that he believes it is “so important” for Republicans to “get out there and train and recruit the right type of candidates.”
“I want to make sure that we present to the Republicans here in Dallas County, and maybe independents and some disaffected Democrats, the best possible constitutional conservative governments and candidates that we can have out there,” West added.
West believes there is a “cabal” not only in Dallas but across the nation in the Republican Party that is “happy to lose just as long as they can maintain some power.”
“I think that’s a very dangerous thing,” West said. “And I think that’s a slap in the face of everyday patriotic Americans to see what’s happening in their country.”
However, West was not all doom and gloom, adding he believes there is an “awakening” happening across America.
“When I travel around, not just here in Texas or here in Dallas, but across the country, I see an awakening,” West said. “I think COVID really caused a lot of people to drop the scales out of their eyes. It’s kind of like in The Matrix … I think more people are taking the red pill, and what they see is very disturbing to them, but they’re looking for principled leadership that they can trust to take them and take this country back to what it was intended to be.”