Texas Democrats have been pushing Biden to make more investments in Texas:
The chairman of the Texas Democratic Party points to the growing diversity of the state and the fact that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting 10 Republican-held Texas seats (and two recently flipped by Democrats) during this cycle.
He also cites the 1.6 million mail-vote applications his organization has sent out since January and the estimated 1.3 million unregistered voters the Texas Democratic Party contacted in its registration drive over the first week of September.
Hinojosa argues that a targeted advertising campaign by Biden in the right districts could not only secure him the state’s 38 electoral votes, it could get Democratic congressional and state House candidates across the finish line.
“We’re not asking Joe Biden to invest $100 million in Texas. We’re not asking him to invest $75 million,” Hinojosa said. “If the Biden campaign would simply invest one-third of that, which is a small amount of the money they hauled in during just this quarter, it would make the difference.”
The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee recently announced that they jointly raised $364.5 million in August, $154 million more than Trump over the same period.
Beto O’Rourke and his group, Powered By People, have been going gangbusters to flip Texas Blue:
P.S. You can sign up today to help get out the vote some more:
2020 has been a difficult year for so many reasons. But it has also given us an opportunity we haven’t seen in a long time – an opportunity to flip Texas, the second largest state in the country.
Whether you’re obsessed with the idea of Texas’ 38 electoral college votes going to Joe Biden, or you just want to make the lives of everyday people better, we need your help. Because not only do we have the opportunity to flip our electoral votes, but we also have the opportunity to flip our state legislature for the first time in 20 years.
With your help, we can take this opportunity and run with it. Can you join our mission to flip Texas by joining one of our phone banks with Texas State House candidates?
Even if you’re never volunteered with us before – or volunteered in general – it’s not too late to step in and make a difference. We’ll teach you exactly what to do, what to say, and show you the difference you’re making, all with Beto and these amazing state house candidates by your (virtual) side.
I know we’ve said it before, but I want to say it again because it’s important: You don’t want to wake up on Election Day and realize you could have done more. You don’t want to watch the electoral college votes tick in and think about the voters in Texas who never got a call. Let’s leave it all on the table this year.
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Kate Roberts
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With Biden investing more in Texas, it not helps our efforts to flip the state blue and win the Texas State House, it also brings more attention to big down ballot races like the U.S. Senate race:
Trump's long shadow dropped across the Texas political landscape over the past week or so in the form of high-profile explosive quotes – some offered by anonymous sources in a national magazine article and others from the president himself in recording for a forthcoming book.
It started with the Sept. 3 publication of a story in The Atlantic that cited unnamed people with "firsthand knowledge" who said the president had referred to U.S. service members – including those killed in action – as "suckers' and "losers."
MJ Hegar, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate and a decorated war veteran herself, wasted little time cranking up the volume on those those quotes while three-term Republican incumbent John Cornyn tried his best to give them as little oxygen as possible.
“I’m one of the pilots that got shot down on a rescue mission in Afghanistan," Hegar said shortly after the the story popped online. "Our commander-in-chief thinks that makes me a loser. He thinks the many friends I lost and soldiers I medevaced (evacuated by helicopter) off the battlefield were suckers. This is disgraceful."
The ad war is heating up:
Hegar, a former Air Force helicopter pilot and Democratic nominee for Senate, dropped her first general election television ad, leaning on her heroic military experience to make a contrast with Cornyn.
The $1.5 million ad blitz is scheduled for the Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso and Harlingen media markets, a Hegar campaign official said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Cornyn released his second ad of the general election season. It discusses his effort to end the rape kit backlogs that make it difficult to bring predators to justice. The commercial is running in the Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin markets, according to a Cornyn campaign spokesman.
Cornyn has a real dilemma with being tied to Trump:
“I think you’re in a tricky place, if you are a Republican incumbent up for reelection right now,” said Kirby Goidel, director of the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University.
“If I’m Cornyn, I want people to feel free to separate me from Trump,” Goidel said.
Indeed, the Cornyn campaign believes there are a lot of Biden-Cornyn voters out there. It is currently running three ads — one on safely reopening schools, another on Cornyn’s legislation to clear up the rape kit backlog and another, in Spanish, describing Cornyn as a problem-solver who supports legalizing the status of Dreamers, immigrants lacking legal status who were brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents.
But Goidel said any attempt to broaden Cornyn’s appeal must tread lightly lest he arouse a Republican base that, Goidel said, “now seems loyal to Trump and not loyal to the Republican Party.”
This is every Republican candidate’s dilemma in the Trump era, said Brendan Steinhauser, the Austin consultant who managed Cornyn’s last Senate campaign in 2014, in which he defeated Democrat David Alameel with 62% of the vote.
“So if you’re John Cornyn,” Steinhauser said, the thinking goes, “if I turn on the guy, Republican voters are not going to vote for me. Democrats are not going to vote for me no matter what. I need to win independents, yes, but there aren’t that many of them. So how do I keep my base happy and hope the moderates and independents don’t punish me for this?”
“Truly, until some Democrat wins statewide in Texas, it’s just going to be like this,” Steinhauser said. “Or if Trump is trounced in Texas, or loses Texas, or wins by 50,000 votes, maybe you’ll see a shift the next election cycle. But until that happens, their instinct is ‘don’t run away from him.’”
Stuart Stevens, who worked on Cornyn’s early campaigns and the author of a recent book, “It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump,” said the Cornyn he knew then “would have laughed at Donald Trump.”
“Watching @johncornyn shrink in office has been a Dorian Gray like moment. A once serious Supreme Court judge, he has grown smaller and less substantive the longer in office. At this rate, he will leave office in a matchbox,” Stevens tweeted.
And Hegar isn’t afraid to run on the issues to rile up her base. Like this one:
Former Air Force pilot MJ Hegar, a Democrat challenging Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, is calling for an end to open carry.
The issue has never attracted the same sort of urgency from gun safety advocates as expanding background checks or banning assault-style weapons. But advocates say that is changing as protests rage on. They point to the Austin case and other high-profile shootings, including in Kenosha, Wis., where 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse is accused of killing two protesters and injuring a third with an AR-15-style rifle.
Like Texas, Wisconsin state law allows for rifles to be carried openly, though the state requires the carrier to be 18, meaning Rittenhouse likely was breaking the law. Police didn’t stop him before the shooting, despite video showing them offering him water.
“These cases are exactly why we need to curb open carry,” Hegar said. “Open carry in this day and age only serves to escalate the division and violence in our communities. Recent incidents show us that open carry is no longer about freedom but violence.”
Along with health care, the economy, climate change and equality:
Shifting her focus to the LGBTQ community, Hegar emphasizes how she worked in the military alongside LGBTQ service members. “I think you’ll find that people who want to [keep LGBTQ citizens out] of the military are usually people who haven’t fought and served,” Hegar says bluntly. “People who have fought and served, and have been in the shit with bullets flying, only care whether or not you can do your job. I don’t care what religion you are, what color you are, or who you love. Love who you love, but stand and fight with me.”
Hegar has strong words for discriminatory practices in general: “Not only is it morally repugnant to discriminate against people, but it’s also really strategically ineffective.”
The fierce mom cites her two kids as the inspiration behind her run for the U.S. Senate. “I look at them and I see two amazing souls who I want to grow up and love whoever they want.” She speaks with high praise for the queer members in her own family. “I’ve seen kids come to terms with it in my family, and I’ve seen bullying. The rights of queer kids, as they come to terms with who they are, is something I’m really passionate about.” This lifelong ally of the LGBTQ community has been endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign and the Houston GLBT Political Caucus, among several other groups.
Let’s keep up the momentum to flip Texas Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Biden, Hegar and their fellow Texas Democrats campaigns:
Joe Biden
Blue Texas PAC
Texas Democratic Party
Texas House Democratic Democratic Campaign Committee
Powered By People
MJ Hegar
Mike Siegel
Sima Ladjevardian
Wendy Davis
Sri Preston Kulkarni
Gina Ortiz Jones
Candace Valenzuela
