Yesterday, Texans went to the polls to vote. There wasn’t much fanfare about this election. After all, it was a run-off election for state and national races. It was, however, an historic election because it saw the first time an Hispanic female who is also the first openly gay candidate to win a major party’s nomination for governor. Milestone as that may be, Texans — and everyone else for that matter — should be more concerned with the actions of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) leading up to yesterday’s vote. Simply put, the DNC decided it knows best when it comes to who should be on the local and state ballots.

Not that this should surprise anyone. We saw this attitude in full-force during the last presidential campaign. Long before the primary, the fix was in by the DNC. Hillary Clinton was going to be the nominee. It didn’t matter who the voters wanted. The DNC, for whatever reason, wanted Hillary. Bernie Sanders never had a chance.

This time around, the DNC had its fingers in state elections. Oh, they will tell you it is just the by-product of doing all they can to help Beto O’Rourke defeat Ted Cruz for the U. S. Senate. Except their actions speak louder than their words and those actions must be recognized and fought against, no matter what your party affiliation.

The DNC loves the fact Lupe Valdez defeated Andrew White to take the Democratic nomination for governor. Valdez, the former Dallas County Sheriff, is the perfect picture of diversity. You might even call her the perfect poster child for the Democratic Party. Hispanic, female and gay. Such a better image in this day of diversity than the pale and male White. Google Valdez and you will find articles from around the country touting her race, her gender and her sexual preference as why she should be elected. In Texas, you find her being asked about the issues, her background and why she would make a good governor.

But it went beyond the color of their skins and their sexual preferences. You see, White is a moderate. He is personally opposed to abortion — not that he varied from the DNC’s “right to choose” platform. The very fact he dared to personally believe something that didn’t march in lockstep with the national platform was enough to put him on the wrong side of the DNC. So they pushed Valdez, helping her win a relatively close race against White.

If that was the only thing the DNC did in Texas, folks wouldn’t be looking quite so closely at their actions. Riding high — or maybe low and trying to remind Dems across the nation that it still held all the power — the DNC decided it needed to insure the “right” candidate won the race for a U. S. Congressional seat. This time, the DNC’s fundraising arm “worked to undercut” Laura Moser in her race against Lizzie Pannill Fletcher. Why? Fletcher, a former Planned Parenthood board member, would seem a difficult sell as a candidate in a district that has over the last few election cycles turned more Hispanic. But the DNC saw Moser as being too liberal. This might be true or it might be a repeat of the presidential election where a mini-Hillary is their choice against a wanna-be Bernie. This article from the Washington Times certainly gives credence to that possibility.

In reality, the DNC is more concerned about doing whatever it takes to win back the majority in Washington that they have forgotten they have to remember what is important on the state and local level as well. The DNC sent such “luminaries” like Nancy Pelosi to Texas in an attempt to sway voters to choose the “right” candidate.

The problem now, as it was in the presidential election, is that the DNC isn’t looking at what’s important to local voters. When it decided White wasn’t a proper candidate because his personal beliefs didn’t fall in line with the national platform, the DNC said it didn’t respect personal choice. Just because someone believes in the right to life, it doesn’t follow that he wouldn’t support another person’s right to choose. Ignoring a district’s ehtnic makeup and cultural values, simply to push a candidate the DNC feels would make a better addition on the national level is disrespectful and insulting on so many levels.

And this is something happening around the nation. It is also why a businessman and television personality now sits in the Oval Office. The DNC thought it knew better than the voters did about what they needed in a candidate. The Republicans put forward a candidate who spoke to the voters, who said what they wanted to hear and who, at least so far, is doing more to hold with his campaign promises than most ever expected.

The DNC has one value — the party. When the party becomes more important than the people, we have a big problem. The party should serve the people and not the other way around. The Republicans need to watch and learn from the mistakes of their counterparts. Most of all, we need to speak with our votes and let the DNC know that it is not the master of our fates.