Andy Brown, Chairman
Andy Brown is a life long Austinite, community advocate and successful attorney. Since his election as Chair of the Travis County Democratic Party in 2008, Andy has raised over $1.4 million for the Democratic Party, helping win contested races in Travis County for the Democratic candidates. While much of Texas suffered devastating losses in 2010, Travis County won every county-wide race, helped Bill White win every single State Representative district in Travis County and helped significantly increase straight ticket turnout in Congressman Doggett’s district over 2006 levels in 21 key precincts–all while saving funds to smoothly run the Party in the 2011 interim. Andy brings years of organizing experience to the Travis County Democratic Party-he has served as Lloyd Doggett’s campaign manager, as a grassroots field organizer for political campaigns and causes, as Executive Director of the 21st Century Democrats in Texas, and as a candidate for State Representative.
Andy grew up in Austin, graduating from McCallum High School, and has been an active Democrat his whole life. He blockwalked for Ann Richard’s campaign against George W. Bush in 1994. Afterwards, Andy moved to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where he helped a successful grassroots campaign led by nonprofit Aire Puro to get rid of leaded gasoline in Honduras, Central America. In 1996, he was a field organizer for the Texas Democratic Party, responsible for setting up coordinated campaigns in 84 counties across the state.
Later, he served for two years as Executive Director of the 21st Century Democrats, where he had the responsibility of, among other things, making payroll every month. He was also an organizer in Hidalgo County for the Vote No on Prop 12 campaign to help protect the Texas Constitution from big business. In 2004, when Congressman Lloyd Doggett’s district was redrawn to extend from Travis County to Hidalgo County, Andy took a leave from his job as a lawyer and organized for Lloyd in McAllen, and later became his campaign manager in Travis County.
Laura Hernandez, Executive Director
Laura Hernandez currently serves as the Executive Director for the Travis County Democratic Party and has lived in Austin for six years. She is a native Texan, who’s lived all over the state including Houston, Dallas and more recently El Paso. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Political Communication and has been involved in Democratic politics at the local and state level since her freshman year in college when she joined her local University Democrats chapter. In her limited free time she sits on the board of the Capitol Area Democratic Women, Co-Chairs the Anti-Defamation League’s Jewish-Latino Advisory Committee and is a Commissioner for the Austin Commission on Immigrant Affairs. She lives in East Austin with her dog Mack Brown and likes to go running around the lake and catch up on sleep.
Tom Elliott, Administrative Director
Tom Elliott has been serving the Travis County Democratic Party as the Administrative Director since August of 2011. He is a Texan through and through, growing up training and showing horses in Union Valley, Texas about 30 miles east of Dallas. Tom graduated from Southern Methodist University in 2010 with a B.A. in political science and a B.A. in philosophy. Shortly after graduating, he moved to Austin and started working as a community organizer for Texas Campaign for the Environment. Tom is currently on the Executive Committee of the Liberal Austin Democrats and supports several LGBT non- profits locally and nationally. He’s also donating his hair to Locks-of-Love for the second time and he’s an amateur photographer in his spare time.
Diane Holloway
After a long career as TV critic and feature reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, Diane has joined the Party’s web communication efforts as reporter/writer of ‘ On The Record with Diane Holloway,’ the TCDP Blog. In the Blog, Diane interviews elected officials, candidates and regular people about the issues that affect our lives. Diane had the good fortune of working as a student vote coordinator for Sen. Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign. After graduating from college in Virginia, she lived in Washington, D.C., working for the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. Diane moved to Austin to work for the daily newspaper as a reporter, columnist, critic and blogger.
