Although a universally bad year for Republicans everywhere was no doubt a major factor in the defeat of seven-term Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla in Texas’ 23rd District yesterday, the ever-weakening conditioning of the Republican Party at the state level in Texas and throughout the 254 counties in the Lone Star State was also significant in the upset win of former Democratic Rep. Ciro Rodriguez.

So says Tom Pauken, former Reagan Administration official, longtime conservative activist, and state Republican chairman of Texas from 1993-96. In an exclusive interview following Bonilla’s stunning 57% to 43% loss to Rodriguez (who formerly represented a neighboring district from 1996-2004), Pauken told me that “Democrats were more organized in Texas and the grassroots those of us began building back when Ronald Reagan won the Texas presidential primary in 1976 is withering.”

Fort Worth attorney Pauken noted that in Dallas County, which became a Republican bastion when Ronald Reagan swept it in 1980, now has Democrats in every countywide office for the first time in 26 years. “You name it—county judge, district attorney—and the Democrats have it,” said Pauken, who cut his political eyeteeth in the conservative Young Americans for Freedom organization and Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign for President. He added that the decline in volunteers and grass-roots activist “is something apparent in most of our counties, including Bexar County [San Antonio],” which is the hub of the district Bonilla has held since 1992.

What is needed to turn this around? “Reinvigorating the grassroots with conservative ideas and making the party stand for something, which it increasingly isn’t,” Pauken told me, “and that’s why someone like Henry Bonilla, who had been around for a long time and had a good voting record [lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 91%] was defeated.”