Despite loss, O’Rourke run shows a changing Texas
AUSTIN, Texas — Beto O’Rourke didn’t turn Texas blue. But for the first time in decades, it’s looking much less red.
The midterm elections in Texas ousted a Republican who carried a “bathroom bill” targeting transgender people, drove out a GOP lawmaker who called federal immigration agents on Hispanic protesters and gave Democrats in Houston run of the nation’s third most populous county.
For a generation, Texas has been a laboratory of conservatism that tested legal boundaries and churned out Republican presidential candidates. But cracks in the GOP’s supremacy have emerged in unexpected ways and races. Predictions that Texas will come into play in 2020 may still be a stretch, but the signs of a subtle shift are more than mere talk.
“This is the most optimistic I’ve felt since high school,” said Dallas state Rep. Eric Johnson, a 43-year-old Democrat running to become the first black speaker of the Texas House.
He was unequivocal about why Democrats broke through this year.
“Beto was the reason,” he said.
It remains to be seen what’s next for O’Rourke, who came within 3 percentage points of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in the closest Senate race in Texas in 40 years. The El Paso congressman has insisted he’s not interested in another office for now, but that has done little to dampen speculation that he could run for office again in 2020.
On the surface, Texas didn’t change much after the ballots were counted.
Republicans continued a 24-year streak of sweeping statewide races and lost only two seats in Congress. The GOP also still comfortably controls the Texas Legislature.
But Republicans’ big margins shrank in a number of places. Typically easy wins in five congressional districts around Austin, Dallas and Houston were sliced to within 5 percentage points this time.
Of Texas’ five largest counties Tarrant County was the only one President Donald Trump carried in 2016, doing so by 57,000 votes.
Two years later, O’Rourke won the county over Cruz by 3,900 votes.