Could Texas turn blue in 2018? Stranger things have happened

The other day, while walking my dog, I had an awkward realization: I think Texas will turn blue in 2018.

That’s not a prediction, exactly; the primaries will be held in March, so as it stands, we don’t even know who all the Democratic candidates for statewide office will be. Furthermore, I could easily be wrong, and there’s plenty of reason to think I will be. We all know the drill: Texas is a red state. The last time Democrats won statewide office was in 1994. In 2014, Republicans swept the top-of-the-ticket races by a 20-point margin. Although Democrats have outperformed expectations in other red states recently, the idea that they might win statewide in Texas next year no doubt strikes many of you as crazy.

With that said, stranger things have happened. In 1995, Donald Trump was a spokesman for Pizza Hut’s stuffed crust pizza. Today he has access to America’s nuclear arsenal.

And if you think about it, it really wouldn’t be that strange if Democrats won statewide in Texas next year. We all know they will do so eventually. And when they do, their victory will seem inevitable in retrospect. Texas is a young, diverse, urbanized and outward-looking state. Historians of the future — assuming humankind has a future, and one in which historians are valued as something other than a protein source — probably will wonder why we stayed red so long.

This is a question that I’ve fielded a number of times since I began writing about Texas politics in 2007. And I’ve always argued that a key part of the explanation is that Republican leaders like Rick Perry and David Dewhurst, who helmed the state for more than a decade as governor and lieutenant governor, demonstrated both decency and competence.

Those guys aren’t in office anymore, though. In 2014, Tex-

ans elected a new batch of Republican leaders, some of whom should have read the book I wrote about the state, which had been published the year before and included an entire chapter predicting the scenario now at hand.

Texas Republicans have proved that demographics aren’t destiny, but success has made them complacent. On social media, they exhort voters to “#KeepTexasRed.” Offline, though, Texas Republicans have been doing their best to turn Texas blue.

Monday was the filing deadline for Texas’ 2018 elections, so as of this week, we know that Democrats are in a position to capitalize on the opportunity. They have a full slate of candidates for the statewide offices, as well as every congressional district and most seats in the Legislature. Few of them are well-known at this point. But many of them are impressively well-qualified, and all of them are Democrats running in Texas in 2018.

So let’s consider what might happen in the gubernatorial race, as an example. The strongest contenders for the Democratic nomination are Lupe Valdez, the longtime sheriff of Dallas County, and Andrew White, a Houston-based businessman who told me that he started thinking about running for office after losing his father, former Gov. Mark White, in August. Either would enter the general election as a genuine underdog. The incumbent, Greg Abbott, has a 60 percent approval rating and more than $40 million in his war chest; the odds are that he will win. Unusual moment

But Abbott’s not going to win by a 20-point margin, as he did in 2014. Many Texans remain sorely disappointed by his failure to deliver on the bathroom bill. And it’s theoretically possible that Democrats could beat him regardless. He won roughly 2.7 million votes last time around. In 2016, 3.9 million Texans voted for Hillary Clinton. That was a presidential election year, of course, and turnout usually drops off for midterms.

But this is obviously an unusual moment in American politics. After more than a year of talking to Texans on both sides of the aisle, I think Texas Democrats can expect to see higher turnout next year than they did in 2014, regardless of what they do.

I suspect they also can expect to win a higher percentage of the votes cast by women, Latinos and business leaders than usual, simply by virtue of the fact that they are Democrats, which means they are not members of the party whose leaders have shown blatant contempt for all three groups.

Plus, as noted, Texas Democrats are actually trying this time around. Although many of the candidates I’ve spoken with believe they can win, they all know that victory is hardly guaranteed. It should be a good year for Texas Democrats; even Republicans expect they’ll pick up some seats in Congress and the Legislature. But they’re still Democrats, and Texas is a red state.

In talking to Texas Democrats who’ve decided to run anyway, I’ve heard a couple of recurring points: Texas had problems even before Trump was elected president of the United States. They felt like they had to do something. Someone had to step up to the plate. Ridiculous thinking?

I asked Todd Litton, a Democrat running in Texas’ 2nd Congressional District, about the issues he plans to focus on during the course of the campaign.

“Common sense and common decency,” he said.

Litton was being entirely serious. I was momentarily puzzled, then we both laughed.

Is it ridiculous to think that Texas will turn blue in 2018? Perhaps. But it would definitely be ridiculous to dismiss the possibility out of hand, or to act as if Republican voters in Texas should be willing to abandon any concerns or principles that may have drawn them to the party in the first place to “#KeepTexasRed.”

And although I do think Texas will turn blue in 2018, that’s just a feeling, or hunch. But I know that it might not. I also know that if I am wrong, legions of strangers on the internet will derive some kind of pleasure from telling me so, and that I will find that annoying. The thing is, I live in Texas. I have friends and family on both sides of the aisle. I care about them, and I listen to what they have to say.

If the leaders of the state are doing so, they will be able to see what I can see these days. Many of the Texans they work for are scared or sad — or both. And many of the Texans they still work for don’t care what color the state is; they just want change.