Texas Dems have reason to be demoralized by Flores’ victory

Many Texas Democrats were demoralized Tuesday, when Republican Pete Flores defeated Democrat Pete Gallego in a runoff special election for the Texas Senate seat vacated in June by the resignation of Democrat Carlos Uresti.

They should be demoralized. It was a potentially consequential loss. Democrats have no one but themselves to blame for it. Flores’ victory doesn’t necessarily suggest that a “red wave” is coming to Texas in this year’s midterm elections, as many Republicans were quick to claim. But the Texas Democratic Party’s response to Gallego’s defeat does not augur well for their prospects of competing successfully.

“Gov. Abbott stole an election, plain and simple,” the party’s chair, Gilbert Hinojosa, said in a statement.

“Republicans set a date that would guarantee low voter turnout, then Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Republican special interests poured money into the race, denying the people of West Texas and the U.S. Mexico border representation that shares their values,” he continued.

This is actually irresponsible rhetoric, particularly given the context. Many Texans are rightly concerned about voter suppression. And a handful of Texans share my alarm about Abbott’s disregard for constitutional constraints on the powers of his office. In April, the governor literally suspended the Texas Election Code to call an emergency special election in the 27th Congressional District, which had been represented by Republican Blake Farenthold.

In this case, however, Abbott hasn’t even been underhanded. He could have called for a special election to be held Nov. 6, as Uresti requested. But Abbott was under no obligation to do that, and Uresti was hardly in a position to opine about the needs of his constituents.

They claim to see a red wave coming. But they approached this special election as if they were worried about a blue one in November.

In February, Uresti was found guilty of 11 felonies. He was, at the time, facing allegations of sexual misconduct, reported by Olivia Messer of The Daily Beast. And having covered the Texas Senate, I would add that Uresti didn’t contribute much to the chamber’s debates.

A bit of a fluke

Further, there’s no basis for Hinojosa’s implication that Flores doesn’t share the values of the Texans who will be his constituents.

He’s apparently the first Republican to represent this district in the Texas Senate in over a century, and his election was a bit of a fluke. Flores placed first in the special election itself, which was held in July. But Democratic voters were split between Gallego and Roland Gutierrez, who represents south San Antonio in the Texas House and finished in third place. Together, they earned more votes than Flores did. And Flores, it’s worth noting, was the Republican challenger to Uresti in 2016; in that contest, he won barely 40 percent of the vote.

But that doesn’t imply that Flores, a retired game warden who will be the first Hispanic Republican to serve in the Texas Senate, is an extremist. And the district isn’t a blue one, exactly. In fact, it overlaps much of the 23rd Congressional District, which is currently represented by Will Hurd, a Republican who unseated Gallego in 2014, and defeated him in a rematch, in 2016.

So Hinojosa’s criticism is misleading, in addition to scurrilous. I wouldn’t actually extrapolate much from Flores’ victory itself. It’s potentially consequential because under the rules of the Texas Senate, legislation can’t be brought to the floor unless three-fifths of the senators present agree to hear it. In other words, Republicans need 19 votes to bring bills to the floor, over the objections of their Democratic colleagues — assuming that none of the chamber’s 31 seats are vacant and none of the members are absent.

But prior to Uresti’s resignation, there were 20 Republicans in the Texas Senate. And they’d probably only 18 votes to trample Democrats for much of next session. Abbott has refused to schedule a special election to replace Democratic state Sen. Sylvia Garcia, who is currently running to represent Texas’s 29th Congressional District.

A wake-up call

So the fact that Republicans like Abbott and Patrick put so much effort into flipping this particular Senate seat is suggestive. They claim to see a red wave coming. But they approached this special election as if they were worried about a blue one in November.

Hinojosa may fault them for that, but I don’t, because that would effectively be faulting a political party for competing — which would be strange.

And Democrats who were demoralized by the defeat should take Flores’ victory as a wake-up call. I think we can all agree Texas Republicans aren’t exactly firing on all cylinders lately. I often have occasion to criticize them. But in this case, Republicans didn’t do anything wrong, politically or morally. Democrats can’t say the same.

The district favors Democrats, but Flores’ victory wasn’t an upset. Uresti’s misdeeds created an opportunity that Republicans were bound to capitalize on, and Democratic leaders were complacent about the risk that they would succeed. That attitude might not have guaranteed Gallego’s defeat—but it certainly wasn’t likely to result in a blue wave.