Wes and Glenda Crenshaw bleed conservative red, but with the Republican presidential nomination sealed up, the option of crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary was all too tempting for Wes.

“He didn’t want [Barack] Obama to win in Texas,” Glenda Crenshaw said of her husband. “He wanted Hillary [Clinton] to stay in the race until the convention so they would duke it out.”

Enabled by an open primary, Wes Crenshaw and nearly 2,000 Denton County voters who cast ballots in the previous two GOP primaries crossed over to vote on the Democratic ticket, Republican Chairwoman Dianne Edmondson said.

In part, some of the voters who crossed over are believed to be Democrats returning to their own primary, but others, such as Crenshaw, had a different motive.

“They were following the Operation Chaos,” Edmondson said. “It was a mixture of those two things that caused the crossover.”

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh created “Operation Chaos,” encouraging voters in open primary states to vote for Clinton in the hopes of muddying the waters over the presidential nomination.

Without a clear direction, Limbaugh believed the Democratic Party would be divided, thus helping the Republican Party, Edmondson said.

“I had an ethical problem with it, and I discourage people from doing it,” Edmondson said. “But I personally know of some people that did cross over.”

Neil Durrance, the  local Democratic Party chairman, said while he doesn’t discount that the crossover occurred, the 2,000-voter mark could not be verified, and he attributed much of the flip-flop to disgruntled voters.

“There is great displeasure with the Republican Party locally, statewide and nationally,” Durrance said. “Some people told me that they had voted Republican plenty of times, but they are now going to vote Democrat.”

Durrance said, it is just another example of the resurgence of the Democratic Party.

However, Edmondson said she did not believe a large percentage switched political alliances.

“That’s just wishful thinking,” she said.

While Edmondson and Durrance heard the whispers, Nancy Dillard, a Republican, saw firsthand the crossover during the March primary. Republicans came to the polling site looking to cast a Democratic ticket, but instead were sent to another site.

Dillard said she tried in vain to try to encourage them to vote on their party’s ticket.

“I told them that there were some important races down ballot, but they said they would vote for them in November,” Dillard said. “I was amazed. They bought into Rush’s Operation Chaos.”

While the number of crossover voters is a relatively small — just under 4 percent — Edmondson said it highlights why Texas needs to move to a closed primary, which would prevent crossover.

Durrance said he sees no reason for the open primary system to change, because the crossover rate is typically small.

“Two to 4 percent doesn’t radically change anything,” he said. “If it was a large percentage, then it might be something to look at it.”

DAN X. McGRAW can be reached at 940-566-6875. His e-mail address is dmcgraw@dentonrc.com.

SWITCHING PARTIES?

Republican officials announced that nearly 2,000 residents who had voted in the previous two Republican primaries switched over to vote on the Democratic ticket last month. Here is a breakdown of the votes cast:

March 4 primary