A secret recording between Texas state House Speaker Dennis Bonnen and a conservative activist was recently revealed, and as NBC reports www.nbcnews.com/...
A secret recording reveals GOP fears that Texas state House could turn blue
Should Democrats flip the lower chamber, they'll play a role in redrawing the state's congressional and legislative maps.
Democrats need to flip nine seats to take control of the state House in 2020, an election where Democrats hope to inspire enthusiasm similar to the Senate race at the top of the ticket in 2018. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz narrowly defeated then-Rep. Beto O'Rourke in a race Republicans have blamed for down-ballot losses.
As Dallas News reports from a couple days ago www.dallasnews.com/…
Texas is no longer the nation’s ATM and is the biggest battleground state in the country,” said Abhi Rahman, spokesman for the Texas Democratic Party, predicting that Democrats are “poised to win up and down the ballot in 2020.”
Texas has 38 electoral votes. Texas plus Hillary states = Democratic WIN. The GOP has no path to Presidential victory if they lose Texas.
Imagine if in 2020 the biggest Democratic state, California was up for grabs--we would be in a panic. This is what the GOP is feeling now. And in the not so distant past, California was up for grabs and Reagan grabbed it, helping with his landslide victory. Wouldn't it be nice to turn the tables?
When Beto O'Rourke announced his Texas Senate run, all the pundits thought it was a political suicide run. Texas wouldn't be a battleground for many years to come, they said ( a sentiment I saw frequently expressed also here on Daily Kos).
Beto, through hard work and dedicated campaigning and every single County, transformed Texas into a battleground. He did this with no to little help from the national party. He almost won in a MIDTERM-- voter turnout in Texas midterms previously had been abysmal. Presidential level turnout would have pushed him over the top. Also-- surprising as it might be to those who have never lived in Texas-- Cruz has a strong base of support and is MUCH more popular than Trump. Remember, Cruz beat Trump in the Texas primary.
It is no surprise that Beto consistently is beating Trump in Texas head-to-head matchups. Here's the most recent showing Beto beating Trump by 2.3 points. Biden is the only other candidate beating Trump; he has a 1.6 point margin. www.uttyler.edu/...
But beyond the polls, ground game matters. And Beto still has extensive campaign infrastructure in Texas. www.dallasnews.com/...
Beto O'Rourke Wednesday released a list of 100 Lone Star supporters, including 70 elected officials.
The endorsements, O'Rourke hopes, are a sign that he can win the March Texas primary by tapping into the support base he built as a 2018 Senate candidate.
As last week's DFW Rally Against Fear shows, Texas enthusiasm for Beto is alive and well:
scamperdo wrote an excellent diary back in August on the wave of GOP retirements affectionately known as TEXODUS Battleground TX: GOP freak-out now public; Texodus; The chart scaring GOP; NYT-GOP sirens going off! Texodus has been continuing and scamperdo’s diary shares data from 2018 showing why:
- Tarrant County, the last GOP urban center flipping blue
- 12 state house seats flipped which robbed GOP of their once reliable supermajority
- 2 state senate seats flipped which robbing GOP of their once reliable supermajority
- 2 Congressional seats flipped
- 6 Congressional seats held by under 5% margin
- All 59 incumbent GOP judges in Houston lost their seats
- Harris County Clerk (Houston) flipped into voter expansion advocate's hands.
- And finally, record turnout that blew past every internal GOP estimate.
Beto can beat Trump in Texas and have coattails. Game over for Trump and the Republicans.