Voter turnout in Texas runoffs should have Republicans on edge

Democrats often urge Americans to vote as if their lives depended on it.

This year, circumstances are helping to reinforce that message.

“I think we’re seeing the ramifications of having failed Republican leadership, and no one is seeing it more than those of us here in Texas,” said Billy Begala, a spokesman for the Texas Democratic Party.

Begala made his remarks Friday morning, the last day of early voting in advance of Tuesday’s primary runoff elections.

“It didn’t have to be this bad,” he said of the resurgence of

COVID-19 in Texas. “It really didn’t.”

Texas at one point seemed to be having relatively good luck with the new coronavirus, and was one of the first states to begin re-opening. Health officials were talking in April about the Houston’s area’s curve starting to flatten in terms of new infections. But conditions across the state have deteriorated markedly since then. As of Friday, the state was reporting some 250,000 cases, and more than 3,000 deaths.

Republican leaders such as Gov. Greg Abbott, while pumping the breaks on phased reopening, have been scrambling to put these figures in a more favorable context, as well as to contain growing public concerns about President Donald Trump’s management of the crisis.

They’ve noted, for example, that Texas’s death rate per million is lower than that of New York or California, both of which are led by Democrats.

The early-voting period, which began June 29, has provided some evidence that people aren’t taking comfort in this message.

The coronavirus has complicated elections administration. Democratic officials have been urging Texans to vote by mail, if they’re eligible. And Texans who’ve gone to the polls in person have noticed unusual precautions in most of the state’s major counties. In Harris Coun

ty, for example, voters have been provided with rubber finger cots and disinfectant wipes as well as the traditional “I voted” stickers.

Still, turnout — which is typically abysmal for runoff elections in Texas — has been higher than expected through the early voting period. As of Thursday, some 900,000 voters had cast ballots across the state, a majority of them in the Democratic primary runoff.

“The key takeaway is that if we’re able to make voters feel safe, and of course be safe, then it’s a very positive experience for them,” Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins said Friday.

The turnout through the early-voting period, he continued, raises the prospect that Harris County will see higher turnout in November than the 60 to 62 percent that’s typical in presidential election years.

“If I were a betting man I’d put money on 65 for sure, and I might take some odds on 70,” Hollins said.

Voter registration, similarly,

has continued apace, despite the challenges presented by the pandemic. Since March, nearly 149,000 voters have been added to the rolls in Texas, bringing the statewide electorate to a record 16.4 million people.

All of that augurs well for Democrats, who have hopes of retaking the

Texas House of Representatives in November, and maybe, just maybe, capturing the state’s 38 electoral votes.

Democratic voters have more decisions to make, at the moment. Longtime state Sen. Royce West of Dallas and Air Force veteran MJ Hegar are vying for a chance to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican.

There are also a number of high-profile runoffs in congressional districts.

For example, attorney Mike Siegel, who surprised observers by nearly unseating U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul in 2018, is facing off against physician Pritesh Gandhi in Texas’s 10th Congressional District, which sprawls from Austin to northwest Houston;

The biggest battle on the Republican side — or, at least, the most expensive one — is in Texas’s 22nd Congressional District,

southwest of Houston, where Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls and GOP donor Kathaleen Wall are in a runoff for the Republican nomination to replace U.S. Rep. Pete Olson, who is retiring at the end of this term.

Wall, who earned 19 percent of the vote in the 17-way primary in March, has poured more than $8 million of her own money on the campaign, much of it going to television ads touting her enthusiasm for Trump and attempting to cast Nehls, who got 40 percent of the vote in the primary, as ideologically suspect.

Still, Republicans should be nervous about surging July turnout given that Democrats don’t have a marquee name on the ballot like former congressman Beto O’Rourke, who excited Democrats nationwide in his nearmiss U.S. Senate bid in 2018.

“I don’t know that here in Texas we have one specific candidate or officeholder who is the standard-bearer for the party,” Begala acknowledged.

Perhaps voters are simply fed up with the incumbents, who happen to be Republicans, for the most part.

“I think it’s that when voters look around right now, when Texans look around right now, they see a pandemic, they see horrific racial injustice, they see record unemployment,” said Amanda Sherman, the communications director for Hegar. “Voting is a way for them to do something about it”

“This is personal, for voters,” she added. “There’s nothing more kitchen-table right now than a pandemic that has them quarantined.”