By Thomas Desoutter
Texas is the second-largest American state by both size and population with over 29 million inhabitants, of whom only 45 percent identify as non-Hispanic white. In spite of this, it is generally not considered an important political battleground. It has been a reliably conservative state for a century, and although political analysts have long predicted a leftward drift in its voting pattern, it has yet to materialize substantially, as Democrats have seen several disappointments in statewide races. For example, in 2014, Texas State Senator Wendy Davis rode a wave of positive media coverage after launching her gubernatorial campaign with a thirteen-hour filibuster of new anti-abortion laws. However, she was crushed in the general election by current governor Greg Abbott and received less than 39 percent of the vote. Most recently, State Representative Beto O’Rourke of El Paso ran an enormously popular and energetic campaign for the U.S. Senate during the 2018 midterm cycle, but fell short with 48.3 percent of the vote. Abbott was re-elected as governor in a landslide the same year.
With this history in mind, some may be skeptical of again pinning Democratic hopes on this tantalizing state. Pundits tend to place greater emphasis on swing states like Florida and newly competitive states in the Midwest and the Sun Belt. While those states are indeed vital in the presidential election, it is essential to understand that the importance of down-ballot elections in any of these states – especially Florida – pales in comparison to the race for the Texas State House. The reasons are threefold: Texas has a large and rapidly growing population living under one-party Republican rule; it has 36 or more congressional seats at stake in the upcoming 2020 redistricting wave; and most importantly, victory is absolutely possible.
O’Rourke may have lost the Senate race, but the turnout he generated was an unprecedented boon to Democrats down-ballot. For example, Democrats surged to majorities on seven of the state’s fourteen appeals courts – previously, they held seats on just three. Due primarily to Beto-driven use of the state’s “straight-ticket” voting option, the largely unknown 27-year-old Colombian immigrant Lina Hidalgo defeated the popular 11-year Republican incumbent Ed Emmett to become the chief executive of Harris County, which includes Houston. Democrats gained two U.S. Representatives, but even more auspiciously, they picked up twelve seats in the Texas House of Representatives, narrowing a 95-55 Republican majority to 83-67.
A closer analysis shows cause for further optimism: three Democratic challengers fell short by less than 0.5 percent, five more got within 5 percentage points of their opponents, and eight more were within 10 percent. As Democrats only need a pickup of eight seats to deadlock the chamber at 75 seats each, they can get there merely by winning the seats within five percentage points. Nearly all of these are concentrated in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston metropolitan areas, where Donald Trump is much less popular than in the rest of the state. By comparison, Republicans have a 73-47 State House majority in Florida, and the Florida State Senate is out of reach because there is only one competitive GOP-held seat up for election.
What would a blue Texas House of Representatives mean? The biggest prize is a seat at the redistricting table, ensuring that state legislative districts and the state’s 36 or more U.S. congressional districts are not drawn using extreme gerrymandering techniques recently greenlighted by the U.S. Supreme Court. As there were six 2018 U.S. congressional races in Texas in which the Democratic candidate lost by fewer than 5 percentage points, the drawing of districts could have a huge net impact on the composition of Texas’ congressional delegation.
Another blessing of a Democratic Texas House would be an end to the wave of right-wing legislation that is being imposed on the state’s 29 million inhabitants. Texas has been among the GOP-led states introducing new anti-abortion, anti-LGBT rights, and anti-sanctuary city laws, as well as a $150 million cut to medical care for children on Medicaid. Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick are among the most conservative leaders in the country; the former is a climate change denier who supports a constitutional convention to make far-right changes to the country’s constitutional structure, while the latter is a strident advocate of Confederate monuments and teaching creationism in schools. In the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Patrick tweeted “A man reaps what he sows. Galatians 6:7,” implicitly expressing support for the mass murder of gay people. With Republican control of the state legislature and courts, there is no shield between Texas’ population and these dangerous figures.
Finally, state legislatures are the base upon which lasting political power is built. The Republican governments in Michigan and Wisconsin laid the groundwork for Donald Trump’s decisive 2016 victory in those states by breaking the power of trade unions and enacting broad voter suppression laws. Republican state officials like Brian Kemp and Dan Abbott helped rig subsequent elections through mass purges of tens of thousands of names from voter rolls. By taking the Texas House of Representatives, Democrats can break the unified power of the Republican Party in the largest state under its control and prepare a new generation of leaders for a Democratic takeover of the rest of the state and potentially a long-term Democratic majority. If we can learn anything from a decade of Republican dominance at the state level, it is that some of the time and money wasted on presidential and Senate primaries should be redirected to these essential races in the diverse and growing state of Texas.