Let’s be honest: Texas was never in play.
Pollsters, the media elite, and national partisans tried to convince everyone otherwise. Democratic operatives deliberately engaged in political malpractice, raking in tens of millions of dollars by providing fraudulent information to donors.
No Democratic presidential candidate has carried Texas since 1976. The Lone Star State has not elected a Democratic senator since 1988 or a Democratic governor since 1990. Republicans have controlled the congressional delegation for nearly two decades, and the same goes for the Texas Legislature. Still, Democrats saw promise in Beto O’Rourke’s failed race for U.S. Senate in 2018 and in the voter turnout results of a hotly contested 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
On Wednesday, Texas Democratic Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa stated, “Any pundit who claims ‘Democrats lost Texas’ can’t see the forest for the trees.”
Hold my beer, America.
To set the “Turn Texas Blue” mirage into motion, the Washington bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News, Todd Gilman, announced a supposed “Texodus” of scaredy-cat GOP incumbents retiring in the wake of O’Rourke’s buoyant (failed) challenge to Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018.
Of course, congressional retirements when a party is in the minority are nothing unusual. Texas leads the nation in Republicans serving in Congress from one state — 23 of the 36 members. Meanwhile, 17 of those Texas GOP members planned on returning to the dysfunctional Congress. What’s more, several of the open GOP seats were not remotely competitive anyway.
In his August 2019 commentary, “If Lone Star State Goes Blue, GOP Could Be Texas Toast,” New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore wrote, “There are signs that the great gettin’ up morning for Texas Democrats could be approaching.”
Democrats convinced their own that there was nothing unusual about the usual talk of turning Texas blue. But, as R.G. Ratcliffe wrote in the December 2019 edition of Texas Monthly, “Democrats are foolish to think the parties have reached parity. Republicans will win in 2020 because they still have the numbers.”
Put another way: Joe Biden’s Medicare for all, ban on fracking, commitment to raising taxes, taking your guns, and rewarding illegal immigrants with amnesty don’t play well with Texans.
Rarely noted by pundits: The Texas GOP since the late 1990s has elected more women and people of color to statewide office than Texas Democrats ever did in all their history. Before 2020, the highest vote-getter in the history of Texas is a Latina Republican — Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman. She piled up nearly 4.9 million votes in 2016.
Still, the Democratic National Committee, Texas Democratic Party, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, and greedy Democratic consultants just couldn’t help themselves. Understandably, they were encouraged by O’Rourke and his $80 million campaign coming “close” to upsetting Cruz.
Yet it bears mentioning that every single Republican statewide candidate on the ballot in 2018 received more votes than O’Rourke. That included another statewide judicial Latina Republican, Judge Michelle Slaughter, who amassed over 4.7 million votes and was the top vote-getter in Texas.
As Biden might say, here’s the deal: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is politically strong as new rope — and he had no intention of letting the state slide to purple in 2020.
Texas Republicans, rather than flee in fear, were hellbent on rising to the occasion in 2020. They put forth an unprecedented ground game. The Lone Star State easily reelected President Trump with a record turnout. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn held his opponent, MJ Hegar, at arm’s length while she unsuccessfully tried to cuss her way into the conversation. Cornyn cruised to reelection by 10 percentage points.
We countered every Democratic attack on our congressional races with a throat punch. We will still be sending 23 conservative Republicans back to the U.S. House, just as before. We also crushed Democrats in every statewide race on the ballot.
The best part? Texas is poised to pick up three congressional seats with the Census count, and the Texas Legislature retained solid majorities under the Pink Dome heading into a redistricting legislative session.
So yes, I’ll take my beer back now.
Chad Wilbanks, CEO and founder of The Wilbanks Group, is a former Texas GOP executive director, former RNC regional political director, and a seventh-generation Texan. Follow him on twitter @chadwilbanks
