More of S.A. to have a say in U.S. House race
WASHINGTON — When U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar and immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros face off in a hotly anticipated Democratic primary rematch next year, they’ll be competing for votes from a much larger chunk of San Antonio, after the district long anchored in Laredo was redrawn to include tens of thousands more potential voters from Bexar County.
The new boundaries could shake up what will likely be one of the most closely watched primaries in the state, if not the nation. Cisneros’ progressive challenge in 2020 drew national attention as the Laredo native came within 3 percentage points of unseating Cuellar, a longtime congressman and one of the most conservative Democrats in the House.
The district, which previously covered parts of Bexar County almost entirely east of Loop 410, now stretches across much of southeast San Antonio and into downtown. Its northwesternmost tip now extends beyond the Alamo.
The new district is likely bluer: Under these new boundaries, the margin between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump would widen by 2.6 percentage points.
The result: Cuellar, who struggled in Bexar County in 2020, and his Democratic challengers will likely be spending a lot more time and money in San Antonio in the coming months. And they will likely not be alone. At least four Republicans have jumped into the GOP primary, as the national party targeted Cuellar’s district to flip after Trump’s surprisingly strong showing in South Texas in 2020.
Both Cuellar and Cisneros argue that the addition of some 41,000 San Antonio and Bexar County residents old enough to cast ballots in the race will benefit them.
Cisneros won the portions of the district in Bexar County by a 2-1 margin in 2020. The primary was decided by just 2,700 votes. Her campaign is optimistic that she can make up the difference by turning out voters there this time.
“San Antonio did play such a crucial role last time, and obviously with the numbers now, I expect nothing less,” Cisneros said.
Cuellar’s campaign, meanwhile, plans a “full-fledged operation” in Bexar County after focusing more resources on Webb, Starr and Zapata counties in 2020. Cuellar has tapped Bert Santibañez, a San Antonio political strategist, to work on the campaign. Santibañez said the Bexar County voters who have been added to the district tend to be older, a demographic with whom the campaign believes Cuellar will have an edge.
“We’re not taking it for granted obviously, considering what happened two years ago,” Santibañez said. “Jessica, we all know she did well in this county and I think she’s going to allocate resources here, and we want to be in lock step with her and compete for votes in Bexar County.”
But political experts say the race won’t look anything like 2020 because of a series of new factors.
Among them: At least one other Democrat — Tannya Benavides, a former teacher and political organizer based in Laredo — has joined the race, inspired in part by the success Cisneros saw in 2020. Others may jump in before the deadline to file next month, as well.
The midterm primary is also unlikely to draw the same turnout as 2020, when dozens of Democrats — including high-profile progressives such as Bernie Sanders — were vying for the presidential nomination.
And the redrawn district includes new residents in rural Jim Hogg and Duval counties, who may be turned off by Cisneros’ progressive message, particularly on issues such as immigration and guns.
“There’s all these complicating factors,” said Sharon Navarro, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “I think the dynamics are different.”
Cisneros’ campaign is confident she stands to gain the most from new San Antonio voters. She has already attended multiple events in San Antonio, including a “Bans Off Our Bodies” march in October, and is working to again earn support of unions and big names such as former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, who endorsed her in 2020.
Cisneros insists that because of the close race in 2020, more voters in the district are paying attention to Cuellar’s votes in Congress, including those against at least two high-profile Democratic bills.
Cuellar was the lone Democrat to vote against sweeping legislation to uphold abortion rights, House Democrats’ response to Texas’ new virtual ban on the procedure. And he was the only Democrat
to oppose the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, legislation aimed at bolstering unions.
“Since the primary last time, the entire district is paying more attention to what the congressman has been doing in Washington, and I do think that’s going to be reflected in the next election,” Cisneros said. “As someone who had gone unchallenged … he had been able to do a lot of things under the radar.”
But Cisneros said she plans to campaign across the district and will have to focus her energy on other new portions.
“Last cycle, name ID was a big hurdle. We’re glad we’re not starting at zero, but now both me and Congressman Cuellar are going to have to introduce ourselves to a new electorate,” she said. “We have to be organized and really strategic about how we’re going to introduce ourselves to those folks.”
Cuellar’s allies are confident he will do better this time. Democratic strategist Colin Strother said Cuellar did “a really thorough and aggressive postmortem” and hired an all-new campaign staff.
“We got the grade we earned in Bexar County last time,” said Strother, who worked on Cuellar’s 2020 campaign. “We spent no money there. I spent $93 on the ground there.”
Strother attributed the support Cisneros drew in Bexar County to a surge of new voters driven to the polls by excitement for progressive presidential candidates Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And he argued that Cuellar has a strong base of support there in areas of south San Antonio that he represented from 2005 to 2012 that were added back in the new maps.
“Assuming that they make it a priority and invest there, it’ll be just fine,” Strother said, predicting Cuellar would end up with nearly 60 percent of the vote throughout the district.
But this time, it’s not just Cuellar and Cisneros in the race.
Benavides said she decided to run in June, when it was still unclear whether Cisneros would challenge Cuellar again. Benavides, a progressive political organizer who moved back home to Laredo from New York in March, said she watched the 2020 primary from afar.
“It was amazing. It was so exciting to see that Laredo was being talked about, that we were being given consideration,” she said. “Before the Cisneros campaign, it was rarely talked about or thought about to go up against someone like Henry Cuellar.”
But Benavides, who spent several months working for a political group opposed to Trump’s border wall, said that once she returned home to Laredo after the primary, it seemed that all the attention and energy that Cisneros had drawn from national political groups seemed to fade quickly.
“We’re always screaming from the rooftops: This is what we need, we need investment, we need consistent infrastructure building, we need to make sure the folks in these communities are the ones being given the skills … so they’re not relying on an election, or six to four months leading to an election,” she said.
Benavides said she is hoping to push the race to a runoff and then “consolidate power and forces” behind whichever progressive candidate emerges.
“To have two strong progressive Latinas running is something that should be celebrated,” she said. “It’s going to be all hands on deck. We know that Henry Cuellar is not going to get in Congress.”
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