Democrats chose a historic candidate in Candace Valenzuela, an Afro Latino leftist, in their bid to flip another House seat in Texas’s 24th Congressional District and keep or widen their House majority.
Valenzuela, a school board trustee, will face Republican Beth Van Duyne, the former three-term mayor of Irving.
Valenzuela’s embrace by the far left of the Democratic wing has empowered Van Duyne to run on a message cautioning about Democrats trending toward socialism.
Van Duyne gained a bit of national attention during her mayoral term for pushing the state legislature to adopt “anti-sharia” laws that state that foreign codes, such as sharia law, cannot supersede U.S. laws. The move came after a 2015 Breitbart article that reported on a makeshift sharia court in her city.
In contrast to Van Duyne, a longtime figure in Republican politics, Valenzuela is a political outsider who connects with voters by telling her story, detailing temporary homelessness at age 3 when her mother fled an abusive situation and a car accident that left her with chronic back problems and medical debt.
In the primary, Valenzuela faced Air Force veteran Kim Olson, an early favorite among the Democratic establishment who seemed like a tailor-made candidate recruit. But Olson missteps and national left-wing support for Valenzuela late in a primary runoff, including endorsements from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, EMILY’s List, and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, pushed her to victory.
Texas’s 24th District encompasses much of the suburban area between Fort Worth and Dallas. Republican Rep. Kenny Marchant has held the seat since 2005, but he is retiring at the end of his term.
Marchant’s retirement comes following signs that the district is trending blue. He won reelection by just 3 points in 2018, while Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke narrowly carried that district that year despite losing that race.
But Republicans have high hopes of keeping the district. President Trump won the district by 6 points in 2018.
