In new district, Democrats see an opportunity
A1 tricts they hope to take in November.
The race is a high priority, said Bill Brannon, executive director of the state Democratic Party.
“I would say it’s either top tier or very, very close to top tier — it’s a high target,” Brannon said. “It’s a race that presents a lot of opportunities.”
The Democrats hope that Stillwell, a father of three who owns an insurance agency and has never held elected office, can beat out Republican candidate Tony Dale and Libertarian Matthew Whittington for control of House District 136. The new district covers portions of Northwest Austin, Cedar Park, Leander, Round Rock and the Brushy Creek Municipal Utility District.
Dale is a Cedar Park City Council member whose campaign signs have dotted most major roads in the district for months and who has won the support of numerous elected officials in the county. Defeating him won’t be easy.
“Any time a Democrat tries to come into Williamson County and win, it’s going to be an uphill battle,” said Bill Gravell, a political consultant who has worked on campaigns in the county since the early 1990s. “I can’t think of a more formidable candidate than Tony Dale.”
Republicans currently hold 101 of the Texas House’s 150 seats — a supermajority that allowed the party to control the state’s budget during the last legislative session. They aren’t likely to keep such a strong hold on the chamber after redistricting redrew boundaries, creating new districts like the one in Williamson County. The Republican Party has said it expects its House membership to number in the mid-90s, while the state’s Democratic Party has said it envisions 84 Republicans and 66 Democrats.
Democrats say demographics in the newly drawn district provide an opportunity for the party.
According to data from the Williamson County Elections Department, more than a third of registered voters in the district live in Austin and nearly 20 percent of them are 30 or younger — a group that generally leans left.
The party sees the district as a possible repeat of Democratic state Rep. Mark Strama’s 2004 grab of a northern Travis County seat.
Strama, who still holds the seat immediately south of House District 136, said that like the new district, his was drawn for an easy Republican win.
“Frankly it was hard to convince anybody it was a winnable race — which I think is the challenge Matt has now,” Strama said.
Growth in the area — especially in Pflugerville — from Central Austin, as well as California and other states, made his district more Democratic than anyone realized at the time, Strama said.
Diana Maldonado was the last Democrat to take a House seat in Williamson County. Maldonado won a House district centered in southeastern Williamson County in 2008 but lost it to Republican state Rep. Larry Gonzales in 2010.
Taking the new district would be difficult for a Democrat — but maybe not as difficult as a victory in other parts of the county.
In the 2008 presidential election, voters in the precincts that now make up the district favored John McCain by a 6-percentage-point margin, significantly smaller than the 13-point margin that McCain had over Barack Obama countywide.
Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, beat Democratic challenger Rick Noriega in the district by 15 percentage points in the same election, compared with Cornyn’s 21percentage-point countywide victory.
In 2010, voters who lived in the area that is now the district gave Gov. Rick Perry a 15-percentage-point win over Bill White. Perry beat White by 22 percentage points in the countywide vote.
In nearly every primary for the past 10 years, Republicans hit the polls in the district in greater numbers than Democrats — with the exception of the 2008 primary that saw 17,639 Democrats compared to just 8,808 Republicans, according to numbers from the county elections department. That primary featured a tense Democratic battle between Obama and Hillary Clinton and probably drew voters from both parties.
“We still don’t have the majority, but we believe we have a highly competitive race,” County Democratic Party Chair Karen Carter said. Carter described the district as a hot spot of Democrats with a significant number in the Northwest Austin area, as well as some in Cedar Park and Brushy Creek.
The party hopes Stillwell — a certified teacher who ran unsuccessfully last year for a seat on the Round Rock school board — will get a boost from his push to restore funding to public education.
“It is a tough county to run in — however, it is a county that has a lot of people who are very concerned about education,” Carter said.
Stillwell — who sits on the Round Rock school district’s Bond Oversight Committee and previously sat on the district’s Grading Committee — describes himself as a fiscal conservative and has worked to take the middle road, while painting Dale as a tea party extremist.
“He’s running against the federal government, not on what he can do for the state,” Stillwell said.
But Stillwell faces a tough competitor in Dale, a U.S. Army veteran who won the Republican nomination in May with 66 percent of the vote. Dale’s place on the Cedar Park City Council has also given him a boost in name recognition. Dale said he has a proven track record on the council as a fiscal conservative who’s worked to keep taxes low and pay off the city’s debt.
“I don’t think those are out of touch with what the residents of Cedar Park or the district are looking for,” Dale said.
Dale, a father of two who owns a consulting firm advising clients on energy-related matters, said he’s confident he can take the district in November but is ready for the competition.
Stillwell said his campaign has hit about 2,000 homes in the district asking for support. He went door to door in the Avery Ranch neighborhood Thursday evening and left literature at about 25 homes.
Mitzi Angelle, 54, one of the homeowners Stillwell spoke to, said she’s a Republican, but perked up at Stillwell’s spiel about disappointment in Obama and the importance of state funding for public education.
“I think we want a lot of the same things,” Angelle said, adding that she likes to vote for the person, not the party.
“Those are the people I need to meet — the swing voters,” Stillwell said.