Race for Texas intensifies amid surging turnout, virus cases
McALLEN, Texas — Texas’ surprising status as a battleground came into clearer focus Friday as Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris devoted one of the race’s final days to campaigning across America’s largest red state and early voter turnout zoomed past 9 million — already more than the total number of ballots cast during the entire 2016 election.
Harris visited three cities, including McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley along the Mexican border, which has been ravaged this summer by the coronavirus. By showing up closer to Election Day than anyone on a Democratic presidential ticket has in years, the California senator in some ways fulfilled weeks of pleas by
Texas Democrats for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to take their chances here more seriously.
“Texas has been turning it out,” Harris told a McAllen drive- in rally. “You’ve been standing in line. You’ve been organizing. You’ve been making a huge difference.”
But Biden himself hasn’t come to Texas, and the campaign has made relatively little investment in advertising and staff.
Texas’ heavily Latino border routinely ranks among the nation’s lowest in turnout, meanwhile, and although early voting numbers were up sharply, residents here haven’t stampeded to the polls like voters have elsewhere.
Texas is approaching 18,000 confirmed deaths from COVID-19. Nearly 1 in 5 are occurring in the Rio Grande Valley, which in recent months became so overwhelmed that one hospital transferred coronavirus patients hundreds of miles away by helicopter almost daily. The virus is now even raging hundreds of miles west along the border, in El Paso. There, officials on Thursday ordered a two-week shutdown of non-essential activities — though not polling places.
Harris’ Rio Grande Valley rally also was not far from where top Trump administration officials a day earlier announced they had completely nearly 400 miles of border wall — a late attempt to show progress on perhaps the president’s bestknown campaign promise four years ago. The area is the border’s economic engine, with a population about 90% Mexican American and represents one of Texas’ youngest and fastest-growing areas.
Texas’ early votes exceeded the 8.9- plus million overall votes four
years ago by Friday morning, according to an Associated Press tally. This year’s numbers were aided by Democratic activists challenging in court for, and winning, the right to extend early voting by one week amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Hawaii also surpassed its 2016 voter turnout according to the AP tally, while Georgia and Washington state were also closing in.
Voters statewide don’t register by party affiliation.
Turnout has also been inflated by Texas’ booming population. More than 16.9 million people are registered to vote in 2020, 1.8 million more than 2016’s about 15.1-plus million. The number of early votes so far accounts for only about 53% of statewide registered voters.
Still, the fact that the state exceeded its entire vote total for the past presidential cycle hints at a potential electoral sea change, Democrats say.