Far-left Dems in Texas aim for House
Texas is well known for its deepred policies and conservative leaders, yet the state may send a handful of progressive Democrats to Washington next year.
From Dallas to Austin to the Rio Grande Valley, far-left candidates are popping up in congressional races, including some in reliably blue districts that would likely elect them in November, if they make it past the primaries.
The list features some of the Texas House’s most liberal members and community activists and includes Austin City Council Member Greg Casar, the self-avowed Democratic socialist who pioneered the city’s “defund the police” move last year.
“We don’t just need progressives coming from each of the coasts,” said Casar, also an architect of Austin’s loosened homeless camping laws that were reinstated by the city’s voters earlier this year. “I think it’s so important for progressives to come from places like Texas that are bearing the brunt of failed Republican leadership in the state.”
Political experts say the increase in viable candidates is both a reflection of the increasing polarization across the country and of the popularity of young progressives in Congress, especially U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. If they can win March 1 primary races, progressive candidates are likely to claim at least two — and possibly three or more — Texas seats next year.
“There’s a real shot,” said Jen Clark, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. “It’s not necessarily just folly, and they’re just entering the race just to raise issues. Because those are solid blue districts, they do have a real chance if they reach out to the voters and can make a convincing case.”
Texas Republicans say they’re more than ready for that chal
lenge — and it might even make their campaigns easier. Some candidates are “salivating” at the chance to take on progressives in the general election, said Austinbased GOP strategist Brendan Steinhauser.
“They want to brand them as radical leftists out of touch with Texans, especially moderates and swing voters,” Steinhauser said. “We think that if the Democrats nominate those types of candidates in that B category, we’re going to have a lot of success — and there are going to be races on the table that otherwise may not be.”
Right-wing extremism
Casar is running in the 35th Congressional District, which stretches from Austin to San Antonio. It is currently held by U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who decided to swap districts after boundary changes made in redistricting. Casar faces state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez — also a progressive, but not a Democratic socialist — in the primary, along with two other Democrats.
Casar is undoubtedly the farthest-left candidate of the group, but Rodriguez’s record is similar: He is ranked among the most liberal members of the state House, where he’s served for nearly two decades, and he helped lead the Democrats’ dramatic walkouts over the summer in an effort to delay the GOP’s priority elections bill.
Whoever comes out on top is likely to also win in the November general election, as 72 percent of voters in the district picked Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.
The progressive momentum this year is, in part, related to a nationwide “sense of urgency” kindled by right-wing extremism that snowballed during the Trump administration, Rodriguez said. That filters down to Texas, he said, where GOP politicians this year implemented new voting restrictions and approved a near-total abortion ban in a remarkably partisan legislative session.
There are already five members of Texas’ Democratic congressional delegation in the House Progressive Caucus, and one is retiring next year: U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, who represents the 30th Congressional District in the Dallas area. The incumbent, who is the longest-serving House member in Texas, has already given her endorsement to state Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas — the most liberal member of the Texas House.
Eight other Democrats are also vying for the nomination in the 30th District, including at least three who self-identify as progressive: Abel Mulugheta, Arthur Dixon and Jessica Mason.
What ‘progressive’ means
All seven candidates who spoke to Hearst Newspapers for this article embrace the term “progressive,” even if they have different definitions for it — but all of them spoke either of grassroots organization or the idea of “putting people first” instead of corporations.
On most of their priority lists: improving access to health care (in many cases, Medicare for all); addressing climate change (in many cases, the Green New Deal); expanding abortion access; increasing voting options; legalizing marijuana; implementing gun control; facilitating a path to citizenship for people living in the country without authorization; promoting social equity and diversity.
But those policy items — a few of which are popular among Texans, according to recent polling — aren’t always well-received in Texas and elsewhere. The term “progressive” on its own can evoke images of more extreme, national politicians; and, for that reason, Crockett said she shies away from using it on the campaign trail.
“People don’t even understand what it is to be progressive, and everybody defines it a little differently,” Crockett said. “But if there is a narrative that has been put out there — that this is what it is to be progressive, and someone has a negative connotation of it — then it does you a disservice.”
Republicans would argue that progressive policies have earned that reputation, especially in Texas. While the GOP-led Legislature passed a slate of conservative legislation this year, local officials in Democrat-controlled cities have been working to undo their policies.
“We’ve been building the bench at the local level, and now I think it’s really important for there to be more progressive representation that’s willing to stand up against the status quo at the federal level,” Casar said.
But even if Texas progressives expand their presence in Congress, they likely won’t have a broad impact on policy, said Matt Mackowiak, a GOP strategist and chair of the Travis County Republican Party. He has been a longtime Casar critic, asserting that his camping and police initiatives in Austin have been “disastrous.”
“He’s going to be another Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ‘squad’ member focused on extreme policy ideas that are going to have 10 or 15 or 20 votes at most,” Mackowiak said.
Battlegrounds in South Texas
In 2020, immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros raised $1 million in her challenge to longtime U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo, one of the Democrats’ most moderate House members. She lost by less than 4 percentage points.
Now, Cisneros is back for round two.
“This time around, we’re not starting from scratch,” Cisneros said. “People know who I am. They know what I stand for. They know the people-centered progressive policies that I’m running on.”
National Republicans are targeting Cuellar’s district in 2022, hoping to flip the seat after making gains in majority-Latino communities in 2020. Former President Donald Trump earned about 46 percent of the vote there in 2020, and President Joe Biden, 53 percent.
“Polling shows Democrat policies are not popular in Texas,” said Torunn Sinclair, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “They’re not popular in Texas, and they’re not popular across the country. … No matter who makes it through a Democrat primary, they’re going to have a tough time winning in 2022.”
In the neighboring 15th Congressional District, incumbent U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen is stepping aside to run instead in the 34th Congressional District, after redistricting made the 15th redder.
Six Democrats are now vying for the nomination in the 15th District, where Trump won 51 percent of the vote last year. One of them, 30-year-old Michelle Vallejo, has earned the support of local nonprofits for her progressive platform, and she says her top priority is Medicare for All.
Back in the 34th District, where Biden beat Trump by about 15 percentage points, Gonzalez — one of the more moderate House members — is also facing a progressive challenger in Beatriz Reynoso, an Air Force veteran who is campaigning on raising the minimum wage.
And then there are the districts where Democrats have little to no chance of winning in the general election, but progressive candidates run anyway.
“Texas, especially our established Democratic Party, needs to shift the complete focus and invest in these red areas, invest in these ‘unwinnable elections’ and ‘nonviable candidates,” said Claudia Zapata, a community activist running in the 21st Congressional District currently represented by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin.
The willingness to run even for unlikely offices speaks to the energy of the progressive movement nationwide, experts say — and it’s a trend likely to grow in Texas as the state increases in population and diversity.
“A lot of this really does come from progressives who feel that the Democratic Party — their strategy, whatever it is, it hasn’t been working,” said Mark Kaswan, a government professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “We’ve had 25 years of Republican control of the state, so maybe it is time to take a different approach.”