FCDP Leadership

Rhoda (Fish) Gersch grew up on a farm in Northeast Kansas in a large family of seven siblings, one brother and five sisters. She graduated from Kansas State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in History. Throughout her professional career she worked for the Texas Legislative Council of the Texas Legislature, The North Central-Flint Hills Area Agency on Aging, and the Wyoming Governor’s Office on Aging, during which she received a Certificate in Gerontological Studies. The last 28 years of her career she spent as the Executive Director of Combined Community Action (CCA), a private non-profit in Giddings Texas. During her time at CCA she was limited in the amount of political work she could become involved in because the agency received federal funds that were governed by the Hatch Act. Upon retirement in 2012, Rhoda volunteered to become the Fayette County Precinct 11 Associate Judge and worked the polls during primaries and general elections. In 2016, she joined the Fayette County Democratic Party and became the secretary. A position she continues to hold. Rhoda is an avid reader and is a co-founder of the Winchester Texas Quilt Block Trail.

The County Executive Committee (CEC) is responsible for overseeing county party operations including (but not limited to) collecting filing fees, appointing watchers, determining the order of names on the ballot, canvassing primary results, and setting and publicizing times and places for Precinct and County and Senatorial District and State Conventions among other responsibilities. Additionally, the CEC has primary responsibility for planning and coordinating the General Election campaigns of the Democratic Party’s nominees within the county. In the case of nominees running for office in districts which include areas outside of the county, the CEC works with the Senatorial District Committee (SDC) to get Democrats elected. The CEC will assist the SDC in raising funds for conducting local campaigns, supporting the statewide effort for the entire ticket, producing materials, and coordinating local services for all Democratic campaigns.

Kirk Pate, a member of the Fayette County Democratic Party (FCDP), is currently precinct chair for Flatonia, member of the FCDP Field Operations Committee over all direct voter engagement activities in Fayette County; co-founder of BlueUP Texas, a network of Democratic county parties in rural Texas. He is an experienced Voter Activation Network (VAN) user with experience creating or utilizing VAN target lists, setting up virtual phone banks, creating VAN lists for exporting to peer to peer texting applications and to MINIVAN (a mobile field canvassing app), setting up peer-to-peer texting applications and MINIVAN applications, and training volunteers on VAN and all applications. Mr. Pate has expertise in managing all aspects of field operations and tasks. He established and monitored operating peer-to-peer texting tasks and budgets in coordination with NURO. Retired in 2001 from RTI International as a senior survey director, he was extensively involved in developing technical and business proposals to federal agencies, developing and monitoring survey budgets, designing, implementing, and evaluating survey data collection protocols and methodological experiments; developing questionnaires; developing procedural manuals and data collec­tion instruments; recruiting, training, and supervising door-to-door field and telephone data collectors; organizing and moderating focus groups; and developing and testing computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) systems. He lives near Flatonia.

Cecil Webster is a member of the State Democratic (Party) Executive Committee (SDEC), representing the 21 counties, or parts thereof, in Senate District 18. The SDEC constitutes the senior leadership of the Texas Democratic Party, with responsibility for providing oversight of party staff and statewide party activities. He has also served as county chair and a precinct chair of the Fayette County Democratic Party, and he has been elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and a state delegate to every State Democratic Convention since 2008. Webster is a military veteran, having served 26 years of active duty in the U.S. Army, retiring as a colonel.