President Joe Biden enjoys one of the narrowest congressional majorities in presidential history. Therefore, whether he’ll have any chance to enact more of his agenda before his first term is up depends on the midterm elections.
While it’s possible to find common ground between parties on legislation, such as the First Step Act in 2018 and the infrastructure bill Biden signed last year, presidents have relied heavily upon congressional majorities for their legislative priorities. Once lost, it proves challenging to get back.
Texas begins the 2022 campaign, holding the first primaries in the country on March 1. The Lone Star State gained two U.S. House seats for the election, and there is a primary race in 29 of the 38. Several have as many as 15 candidates (Democrats and Republicans) vying for the nomination.
As much as the public feeds on news about Trump-backed candidates, with 27 House Democrats retiring (21) or running for another office (6), one question is how many of the deep-blue seats the Left can take in the party primaries.
Like Republican Tea Party candidates a decade ago, left-wing candidates have launched primaries against sitting members, and with some success. For example, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who said capitalism is slavery by another name, defeated Eliot Engel in 2020. Engel had served in the House since 1989.
The Democratic race to watch is for Texas District 28. Jessica Cisneros hopes for a successful result in 2022 against incumbent Henry Cuellar; she missed by approximately 2,700 votes in 2020. Cisneros has the endorsement of Bowman, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley. She also has the backing of the left-wing PAC Justice Democrats, a driving force behind the success of “Squad” members.
Cuellar won the general election easily over his Republican opponent in 2020, but it is a district Biden carried by only 4 points over Donald Trump in the presidential election. With the backing of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Democratic leadership hopes one of the last remaining Democratic House centrists will hold on to his seat.
At the state level, two Trump-backed candidates, Gov. Greg Abbott and state Attorney General Ken Paxton, seek to push back challenges against some prominent Texas names.
Abbott faces a primary with seven challengers, including former state Sen. Don Huffines and recent Texas GOP Chairman Allen West. The list includes Rick Perry, aka Ricky Lynn Perry, a computer technician contracted with Lockheed Martin and not the former Texas governor and energy secretary. On the Democratic side, Beto O’Rourke seeks the Democratic nomination after failed bids for the U.S. Senate in 2018 and the presidency in 2020.
U.S. House Rep. Louie Gohmert raised eyebrows in the race for attorney general when he jumped into the race. One of Trump’s most powerful allies, Gohmert highlighted Paxton’s legal troubles as distracting from doing the job. Paxton faces a pending trial in a state indictment that goes back to 2015, an FBI investigation, and a recent violation of Texas’s open records law.
George P. Bush is also running for the seat. He’s positioning himself as the candidate who will work best with the state and federal government on border enforcement. It’s a somewhat odd position and a risk considering Paxton and Gohmert are border hawks.
Dim Bulbs of The Week
It’s a twofer in the Peach State! First up is the likely Democratic candidate for governor, Stacey Abrams. She posted a photo of herself in grade school surrounded by students with one vivid mistake. Abrams was not wearing a mask. Initially, Abrams and her campaign manager attempted to blow it off as a “non-issue.” However, when four more photos surfaced of Abrams unmasked with masked students, she quickly ran to the safe space of CNN to issue a mea culpa.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is well known for her bombast and a penchant for getting into verbal sparring matches with colleagues of both parties. Last week, in a tirade against Nancy Pelosi, she referred to the D.C. jail currently holding offenders from the Jan. 6 riots as a “gulag.” Greene then referenced “Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff and spying on American citizens that want to come talk to their representatives.”
Oops. The word Greene was looking for was “Gestapo.” Gazpacho is a cold soup, a favorite in Spain and Portugal during the summer. It’s unlikely House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went around to Republican House members shouting, “No soup for you!”
