Wayne Thorburn is author of Red State: An Insider’s Story of How the G.O.P. Came to Dominate Texas Politics. He has lived in Austin since 1977 and has held a number of positions in Republican politics.

While Texans have always welcomed newcomers, they have never liked invasions. They didn’t like it when Santa Anna did it in 1835. They didn’t like it when the Yankees did it during the Civil War and Reconstruction. And it’s pretty clear from the midterm election results that they definitely didn’t like it when Jeremy Bird and his team of Obama organizers known as “Battleground Texas” did it in 2013.

Two weeks ago, Democrats took a walloping in Texas. Wendy Davis, the Lone Star State’s Democratic star a year ago, got just 38.9 percent of the vote—some 283,000 votes fewer than the party’s gubernatorial candidate four years ago and 200,000 less than Democratic Texas Gov. Ann Richards obtained in her losing re-election effort nearly two decades before that. Even more disappointing: Davis got more votes and a higher percentage of the vote than any of the other 11 Democratic candidates on the statewide ballot.

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Yes, it was a bad year for Democrats across the country, but you can’t blame the GOP landslide in Texas purely on President Obama, the Islamic State and the “national mood.” Why did Battleground Texas—so sure a year ago that it could make the Sunbelt state competitive for Democrats—fail? Is the possibility of a purple Texas gone forever? Was it ever really there?

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In January 2013, Jeremy Bird, the former field director for the Obama campaign, announced the formation of Battleground Texas to much fanfare and media attention. Backed by a number of major Democratic donors, the new effort was committed to turning Texas blue by rebuilding party infrastructure, recruiting strong candidates, registering new voters and turning out those whose voting history was erratic at best. Bird would be the overall strategist and spokesman for the effort while Jenn Brown, an Obama veteran from Ohio, would move to the state to oversee daily operations. In the end, Battleground Texas would raise a hefty nine million dollars to finance its operations.

Many observers believe Battleground Texas made a strategic mistake right from the start. Rather than recruit a prominent Texas Democrat to serve as nominal chairman or prime spokesman for the effort, Battleground Texas chose two non-Texan Obama organizers, Bird and Brown, to be the faces of the organization. Working apart from the existing state and county Democratic organizations, Battleground was viewed by some as an invading army made up of outside political operatives who might have understood politics better than the local folk, but who couldn’t relate. As Glenn Smith, a longtime Texas Democratic consultant, notes, “You have to speak Texan if you’re going to do well here. They didn’t. There was this belief after 2012 that if ya waved this turnout wand you would wake up some progressive majority. It didn’t exist.”

As the campaign year progressed, tension developed over Battleground’s failure to share much of the voter data they had accumulated with the major county Democratic organizations committed to boosting turnout. Operating distinctly from the regular party organization became a further bone of contention, a development described by Chris Young, political director of the Harris County Democratic Party, as a “kind of privatization of the political system.” Of course, in most Democratic circles, privatization is not viewed as a positive trend.

Then came the second strategic mistake. When State Sen.Wendy Davis launched her filibuster against a bill restricting abortion services in Texas, she became a bi-coastal liberal hero. Money and media attention came from Hollywood, Manhattan and Washington from those who hoped to see Davis bring Texas into their vision of the 21st century. But as Davis gained more popularity in liberal circles around the country, back home she became viewed, even among the state’s liberals, as unrepresentative of traditional Texas values and perspectives. By the time of the midterms, more Texans disapproved of Davis (47 percent) than approved of her (40 percent), according to a UT/Texas Tribune poll. Davis ended up losing to Republican Greg Abbott by a 20-point margin—a significant change from a year earlier, when she had been polling within five points of her eventual opponent.

The name identification, media appeal and fundraising potential of Davis led Battleground to merge much of its effort with the Davis gubernatorial campaign. In effect, Battleground Texas became the field operation for Davis: The two entities shared fundraising through what they labeled the Texas Victory Committee, and Battleground’s operations moved from the capital city of Austin to Davis’ home territory of Fort Worth. Suddenly the long-term effort to turn Texas blue had become a short-term objective to elect Wendy Davis as governor. Rather than building a lasting base at the local level, Battleground was now engaged in a top-down effort to change Texas politics.

This lack of a bottom-up strategy was particularly glaring on Dec. 9, 2013, the filing deadline for 2014 candidates. Far from attracting a number of qualified and vigorous candidates to the Democratic banner, Battleground and the party ended up ceding much of the field to the Republicans without even a whimper. In fact, Democrats failed to recruit anyone to run on their ticket for more than 40 percent of all state legislative positions on the ballot. The end result would be almost a two-to-one Republican majority in both the Texas Senate and the House. Even more depressing was the party’s showing at the county level. Democrats could not find anyone willing to run for County Judge (chief elected official in the county) in 165 of Texas’ 254 counties, ceding almost two-thirds of all counties to the Republicans without an election. Thus, by 2015, while the Democrats will retain the county judge in four of the six largest counties, the GOP will hold all 29 suburban county judge positions, 18 of 21 in the other metropolitan counties scattered around the state, and 150 of the 198 small town county courthouses. Of all the major counties in Texas, only Dallas, Bexar, El Paso, Jefferson and Travis, along with the border counties of Webb and Hidalgo, will have a Democratic county judge.

And even more depressing than that was the fact that not a single Democratic candidate could be found who was willing to run for any county office in 86 counties—more than one-third of the total. These 86 included the heavily populated suburban counties of Denton, Johnson and Parker (outside Dallas-Fort Worth), Montgomery (suburban Houston) and Comal (north of San Antonio) as well as the other urban counties of Bell (Temple), Randall (Amarillo) and Grayson (Sherman). As the saying goes, you can’t win a game if you don’t field a team.