The Mercury News

Is Texas race a Dem template for a national victory in 2020?

- By George F. Will George Will is a Washington Post columnist.

HOUSTON >> Nationally, the Democratic Party, which gave indispensa­ble assistance (“Basket of deplorable­s”!) to the election of today’s president, seems intent (“Impeach!”; “Abolish ICE!”; “Free stuff!”, “I am Spartacus!”) on a repeat performanc­e. Here, however, in the 7th Congressio­nal District, in what might turn out to be the year’s most instructiv­e House race, Democrats seem serious about winning, and if they do with Lizzie Fletcher, they’ll have a template for 2020 nationally.

She speaks with the measured precision of an attorney who has worked at a major law firm (Vinson & Elkins) and who is fluent in the business school patois of her corporate clients. The ginger group Our Revolution, which is a residue of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidenti­al campaign, supported a candidate to her left in the seven-candidate primary, perhaps because Fletcher has endorsed neither a single-payer health care system nor a ban on off-shore drilling.

In a district held by Republican­s for the past half-century, she isn’t far behind — in some polls, within the margin of error — the Republican incumbent.

A fifth-generation Houstonian, Fletcher’s striving to become just the fourth person to represent the current iteration of the 7th district, which she describes as “leaning purple but still light pink.” It was reconfigur­ed in 1966, when it was won by 42-year old George Herbert Walker Bush, who still lives in it. After his two terms, it was held for 15 terms by Bill Archer, who rose to the chairmansh­ip of the Ways and Means Committee. His successor, John Culberson, 62, wants to “let Texans run Texas” but isn’t a conscienti­ous objector to non-Texas money he can send home from his perch on the Appropriat­ions Committee. His conservati­sm had a Trumpian tang six years before Trump came down his tower’s escalator: In 2009, Culberson co-sponsored a “birther” bill that would have required presidenti­al candidates to prove they are natural-born citizens.

If the best kind of generals are lucky ones, Fletcher, 43, is that kind of candidate. The tight Senate race between incumbent Ted Cruz and Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke is apt to energize Democratic turnout statewide. Culberson perhaps did nothing untoward when he sold a biotech stock — the one concerning which Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., has been indicted for insider trading — 10 days before the shares lost 99 percent of their value, but the optics aren’t optimal. And while their city was still prostrate from Hurricane Harvey, Houstonian­s heard the president’s stupefying statement that the Coast Guard had to save 16,000 people because they “went out in their boats to watch the hurricane.”

Texas is the 15th-most urban state (84.7 percent), with the nation’s fourth-, seventh-, ninth-, 11th- and 15th-most populous cities (Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin and Fort Worth). Hillary Clinton mopped the floor with Donald Trump in nearly all, which is one reason Trump carried 21 states by larger margins than his 9 percentage-point victory in Texas.

A Fletcher victory might be an early tremor of a political earthquake. In presidenti­al politics, Democrats have three large, safe states — California, New York and Illinois — with a combined 104 electoral votes, 38.5 percent of 270. Texas, the Republican­s’ only such state, today has 38 electoral votes and after the 2020 census will have two, perhaps three more.

If it turns purple, Republican­s will be living dangerousl­y. Here, Democrats seem serious about winning.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States