Texas Dems exploring why hopes dashed

Democrat Brandy Chambers knew it was going to be close — but really, she thought she had it in the bag.

It was her second time challenging Republican state Rep. Angie Chen Button in a Dallas-area House district, two years after coming within 1,000 votes of a win. This time around, internal polls consistently showed Chambers up 5 to 10 percentage points, and early returns suggested that thousands more Democrats had voted than Republicans.

“I truly expected that I would win,” Chambers said.

Instead, she lost by about 200 votes. “I was completely shocked and awed, and I couldn’t make sense of it, because A plus B

didn’t equal C,” Chambers said. “I struggled with, ‘OK, what happened, where was the faulty information, what was going on?’ ”

Her election night confusion mirrors the secondguessing going on within the

Texas Democratic Party, the members of which received every advantage they hoped for in 2020 — enough campaign cash to keep pace with a well-funded GOP, a polarizing candidate at the top of the Republican ticket and historically high voter turnout — but still gained virtually nothing.

The early diagnosis: A na

tional push to avoid in-person campaigning because of the pandemic was ruinous, especially with Latino voters who are key to the party’s fortunes in Texas. Early polls were skewed against conservatives and gave Democrats a false sense of security. Republicans effectively characterized calls to defund the police as a threat to public safety. And the party’s message did not connect with the average voter worried about recovering from the economic hurt inflicted by COVID-19.

Texas Democrats believe the lack of in-person campaign events and doorknocking especially hurt them come Election Day, as Republicans continued to meet with voters.

“This was probably the most difficult thing that we faced — the most impactful thing in our election,” Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said. “You had the Republican Party engaged in all of these races in a massive canvassing campaign and bragging about it. … We were left at a very, very severe disadvantage.”

Hinojosa said Presidentelect Joe Biden’s campaign had advised down-ballot candidates to avoid in-person events and that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee issued similar rules for its candidates, threatening to withhold funds from campaigns if they went door to door.

About two months before the election, Hinojosa said, he’d heard concerns from congressional candidates and organizers who said they “were having a hard time reaching Hispanic voters by the phone. ... They really needed to be freed to knock on doors.”

But the national officials

wouldn’t budge, he said.

A DCCC spokesman confirmed that there was a nationwide policy directing candidates not to canvass in person during the pandemic but denied that the organization threatened to take away funding from Texas Democrats if they persisted.

Experts said that policy especially hurt candidates such as Gina Ortiz Jones, a Democrat who was running for a San Antonio-area swing district for a second time. While she had name recognition and had come close to unseating retiring GOP Rep. Will Hurd in 2018, she lost by a larger margin this year to Republican Tony Gonzales.

Gonzales traveled widely across the sprawling district, which stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, multiple times during the campaign cycle. Jones, who declined to be interviewed for this story, stopped holding in-person events in March — and that soon became an easy campaign attack for Gonzales, who said the district couldn’t afford a “virtual” representative.

Internal discord

Outwardly, the state party noted that Texas Democrats had held their own: While the party didn’t pick up any of the seats it targeted — save one in the state Senate — it didn’t lose any, either.

But internally, 38 members of the party’s executive committee were frustrated by the “embarrassing” losses and by public statements made after the election by party leaders, who they said “boasted” about turnout and Biden’s 6 percentage point loss to President Donald Trump in Texas “in a manner that can only be described as disingenuous and disconnected with reality.”

The members demanded 12 action items to move forward, including changes in senior leadership, the creation of a 10-year strategic plan and a request for assistance from states where Democrats had successfully run campaigns this cycle.

“The ultimate goal was ‘let’s start a conversation.’ It was not meant to be petty or divisive,” said Jen Ramos, a member of the state party’s executive committee and co-author of the letter. “We just decided that we’ve got to be firm about this but also really have a means to healing.”

Hinojosa said he was initially “disappointed” by the letter, saying it ignored turnout gains the party had made and inaccurately pinned blame on senior members of the party. But he agreed with several of the letter’s points. And to evaluate the others, he formed a 23-member committee to conduct a “deep dive” on what happened last month and decide how to move forward. The effort was first reported by the Texas Tribune.

The committee is cochaired by Ramos and Chris Hollins, a former Harris County clerk who oversaw elections operations this fall. It has six months to develop recommendations for 2022.

If that’s to happen, the party must re-evaluate its messaging, said Kendall Scudder, a state party executive committee member who also co-authored the letter. The party spoke broadly to voters about state or national issues, such as redistricting, instead of local projects that would affect them directly, he said. And it failed to effectively pitch itself as the party that would help families recover from the pandemic.

“Republicans were talking about how we could keep you working,” Scudder said. “Democrats were talking about shutting the economy down. Democrats were being the most responsible, but sometimes you don’t love the parent who spanks you. You love the parent that buys you candy.”

Scudder said the party must improve its communication with minority voters and stop pushing only issues that “we ascribe to them as important,” such as immigration for Latino voters or criminal justice reform for Black voters.

Hollins said the committee will meet soon to settle on an initial list of objectives. Revamping party messaging is at the top of his list, too — especially as it relates to the specific identity and goals of the Texas Democratic Party and how they differentiate from those of more liberal states.

“(Republicans) always try to tie the party to California or New York, and we have to make that clear ourselves,” Hollins said. “Until we do that, we will be stuck with whatever the national trending or messaging is.”

And even as Texas becomes more blue, the election proved that it takes much more than raising money and buying social media ads to win in statewide elections.

“The stars have to align, because the Republicans know something the Democrats don’t know, and that’s how to win,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. “Winning is sort of a learned experience, in the same way losing is. And right now, Democrats have losing down pat.”