For many months, former bar owner Ronnie Lewis has partnered with the left-leaning newspaper to publish his crusade against the Ector County Republican Party.
Now, Lewis is filing to run for Republican Precinct Chair, and has drafted a candidate to run against GOP Chairwoman Tisha Crow, who has been the focus of his anger.
Lewis is apparently angry over the Republican Party endorsing candidates for local offices, taking issue with the GOP endorsing conservative Republicans against moderates and Democrats who previously held those offices, including on city council.
The inherent nature of political parties, like the GOP, is to get their candidates elected to office – every office.
Lewis has spun this as a nefarious action by the GOP, saying they are attempting to “take over” every office — illustrative of his many misleading comments.
But Lewis apparently doesn’t mind partisan politics being involved in local offices, just the Republican Party.
Former Ector County Democratic Party Chairwoman Joann Marie Keese apparently had enough of Lewis’ hypocrisy, and dropped a screenshot on social media of a private message Lewis sent to her where he reached out to “help get a local Democrat elected to our school board.”
Keese apparently released the message to expose Lewis’s stark hypocrisy of claiming to be a staunch Trump supporter and Republican in public while working to get Democrats elected in private.
Even the Democrats apparently couldn’t stand his duplicity but Lewis’ antics do not end there.
In an exchange with a local Democrat activist on Facebook, Lewis railed against the local Republican Party, decrying their conservative policies and discussed working with the Democrats to get them to “cross over” and vote Republican leaders out of office.
“The average Republican in Ector County is unaware they are trying to take over elected offices in the city and county as well as the hospital board and the school board,” Lewis wrote, adding “Our Mayor and council should not be in a competition to see how ‘conservative’ they can be.”
The Democrat activist, Zachary Pfalzgraf, told Lewis he was in agreement, writing “I would very much like to get together and demand a change in policy for the local Republican Party, even though I am a Democrat, as obviously pictured.”
When Odessa’s Accountability Project exposed Lewis’ comments working to get Democrats elected to the Ector County School Board, Lewis even confirmed it in the comments, writing “Anything to keep Tisha Crow, Jeff Russell, and Javier Joven from destroying our community. I’m calling on all of Odessa to come together and stop this madness.”
“Ronnie Lewis is lying to us,” Crow wrote in a statement responding to Lewis’s antics.
Crow says Lewis has lied about precinct chairs being appointed by her, which is impossible, when most were actually elected by popular vote.
She also called Lewis a “Democrat Operative” and criticized his efforts to get Democrats to vote in the Republican Primary to oust conservatives from office, saying it may constitute voter fraud.
Texas law prohibits voters who have formally affiliated with one political party to vote in the primary of another party during the same election cycle.
Ector County Republican Party Precinct Chair Tim Harry says Lewis has attempted to use a local attorney, Gavin Norris, to silence his free speech and keep him from calling Lewis out for supporting convicted drug dealers in local office.
Harry says when Lewis was bullying him into signing a petition for his candidate to run for GOP chair, Harry responded saying he would not, and quipped that he “didn’t support drug dealers.”
The comment was made in reference to Lewis’s public support for Tommy Ervin, who was illegally holding office on the ECUD board of directors for many years.
Ervin had four felony counts of dealing methamphetamine and cocaine, and lied about being pardoned in order to hold office. Ervin has also been accused of attempted murder in the past.
Norris sent Harry a letter threatening a SLAPP lawsuit if Harry didn’t retract the comments, but when Harry pushed back both Norris and Lewis didn’t follow through with their threats.
Lewis has now officially filed to run for Republican Party Precinct Chair in precinct 203, challenging incumbent Carmen Wilhite.
12/11/2023 5:48 PM UPDATE
Odessa Attorney Gavin Norris contacted Odessa Headlines to inform us that has never been affiliated with Black Lives Matter and we have updated our report to reflect this information.