Texas Republicans are in a tense moment with an election on the line.
President Trump, who is visiting Texas on Wednesday, has a campaign that is outwardly confident, even cocky, about his chances of winning the once reliably Republican state. But some of the state’s most prominent politicians are sounding the alarm about the possibility of the state flipping in favor of Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Stuck in the middle is Allen West, the new chair of the Texas Republican Party. The conservative firebrand took the reins with just about 100 days until the November election after defeating incumbent Chairman James Dickey at the state convention, pitching taking a more aggressively conservative stance as a party.
Trump and Biden have been neck and neck in recent Texas polls, with one survey showing showed Biden 5 points ahead. That prompted Democrats who have long worked to turn Texas blue to proclaim it’s now a swing state.
“Texas is the biggest battleground state,” Texas Democratic Party spokesman Abhi Rahman told the Washington Examiner. “Joe Biden is already showing his investment into Texas and his campaign will continue to invest throughout the election. With the national organizations, allied campaigns, Texas Democratic Party, and in-state partnered groups, we will have the resources to win up and down the ballot in November.”
The trend extends to down-ballot races, where Democratic House candidates hope to ride Biden’s coattails to big wins in the state’s congressional delegation. Earlier this month, Cook Political Report election forecasters moved four Texas House races one tick in the rating scale to the left, resulting in three GOP-held seats being rated toss-ups.
West is no stranger to the threat of Texas becoming increasingly Democratic. After the former Florida congressman and retired Army lieutenant colonel moved to the state from Florida in 2015, he wrote a 2018 book called Hold Texas, Hold the Nation: Victory or Death.
“The Left really believes that they have an opportunity to take Texas, and when you look at our major population centers, they’re all controlled by the Left,” West told the Washington Examiner in an interview on Tuesday.
That population center trend is troubling, West said, because the same thing happened in other states that turned from red to blue. “You can look at Colorado. You can look in New Mexico. You can look in Nevada. You can look at what happened just last election cycle in Virginia.”
That’s not top of mind for the Trump campaign, though. In a press call last week, during which he spent 30 minutes questioning the accuracy of polls nationwide, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien mocked the idea of the Biden being competitive in Texas.
“I would invite the Biden campaign to play in Texas. They should play hard,” Stepien teased. “Spend a lot of money in the Houston and Dallas Bay markets,” he said, communicating that the money would be a waste for Biden in what he considers a safe Republican state.
Political science professors who study Texas agree that the state has increased its share of Democrats in recent years but say that it isn’t yet a traditional swing state and win for Biden this year would be more a sign of a major blowout election rather than a lasting change in the state’s political DNA.
But Texas Republicans have a starkly different attitude from the Trump campaign about Texas turning blue, sounding the alarm at what they see as the potential for a total shift of control if Biden wins the state.
Sen. John Cornyn, who is up for reelection this year, gave a warning at the state party convention last weekend.
“Republicans are facing the greatest electoral challenge we’ve faced in the last five decades,” Cornyn said. “Joe Biden sees Texas electoral votes as the prize that will put him over the top and put Democrats in the driver’s seat in the electoral college for a generation to come.”
Sen. Ted Cruz echoed Cornyn, saying in a convention speech, “If the Democrats win Texas, it’s all over.” The sentiment continuously pops up in Cornyn’s fundraising emails.
West, whom Trump congratulated in a tweet last week after he won the chairmanship, has no incentive to contradict the president’s reelection campaign. He echoed some of the Trump campaign’s critiques about polls.
“A lot of the polling is done with registered voters, not most likely voters,” West said.
But he toed the line between being positive about the president’s chances of winning the state and recognizing the two senators’ concerns.
“Cruz [is using] his experience of 2018 against Robert Francis O’Rourke,” West said. “Even a very strong red county like Tarrant County was not won by Sen. Ted Cruz.”
West’s plan to counter the Democrats? Ramp up messaging in communities where Democrats have an edge in order to lessen their hold. His first trip as chairman was to the heavily Democratic Rio Grande Valley.
“The inner-city communities, the black community, Hispanic community, even the Asian community — we have a huge Vietnamese community here in Texas,” West said. “These are communities that have conservative principles and values at heart, but we have not done a good job of communicating that.”
That’s satiating a hunger for more fire among some rank-and-file Republicans.
“Hallelujah, finally they’re getting some guts and want to fight,” a Houston resident wrote to the Houston Chronicle about West’s new chairmanship. “I’m hoping West’s leadership will inspire our timid leaders to go forward and fight to lead our great state of Texas.”
The threat of Biden and a blue wave in Texas looms over Trump’s Wednesday visit.
While the president is focused more on raising money from reliably red portions of the state than on campaigning to the public, it gives fuel to Democrats to point out the close poll numbers in the state. Biden took Trump’s visit as an opportunity to criticize him: “Now isn’t the time for politicking or photo-ops.”
Biden has yet to act substantially on the potential others see in Texas, though. He ran a small number of ads in Texas as part of a six-figure ad buy, but the major money he is spending on ads this month, nearly $30 million, went to more competitive swing states, indicating that he is not targeting the area.
“Joe Biden’s campaign likes to pretend they’re viable in Texas more than they like actually campaigning in the state, but that’s because even they’ve admitted Texas isn’t on the table for Biden,” Trump deputy national press secretary Samantha Zager told the Washington Examiner.
And as for the polls, West is betting that there will be a change once people become comfortable with relaying their true feeling to pollsters and become aware of violent civil unrest taking place across the country.
“You’re going to see a big change in sentiment,” he said. “In the end, they’re going to vote in the right way for the rule of law and not the rules of the mob.”
