DAY OF RECKONING IS HERE
Off-the-charts voter turnout throws uncertainty into many contests
In the first nationwide elections since President Donald Trump took office, Texans will flock to the polls today to decide the most-watched U.S. Senate race in the nation, remake the state’s congressional delegation and quite possibly decide which party will control Congress going forward.
Already, some voting records have crumbled.
Texas registered a record 15.7 million registered voters this year, 1.7 million more voters than the state had four years ago at the last midterm election. Already at least 4.8 million votes have been cast through early voting and absentee ballots in the state’s largest 30 counties — more than were cast in the entire 2014 election cycle. And the state is almost certain to set a new record for overall midterm voting. Texas has never had more than 5 million votes cast in a midterm election.
That off-the-charts voter turnout has thrown more uncertainty into contests up and down the ballot, making polling even more suspect heading into Election Day. Polls are typically based on assumptions of what the electorate will look like, and this year’s electorate is already looking like nothing Texas has ever seen in a midterm.
Even before those votes are counted, Texas is assured of historic changes to its congressional delegation.
A record eight members
of Congress from Texas are retiring this year, meaning voters will replace more than one-fifth of the state’s 38-member delegation.
Twenty women are running for Congress, with Texas all but certain to send a record number of women to D.C. And statewide, 105 women are running for office, setting the state up for record numbers of women in public office.
And for the first time in the state’s history, Texas voters are expected to send a Latina to Congress — actually, two Latinas: Sylvia Garcia of Houston, a longtime state senator, and El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar.
The election also marks the first re-election campaigns for seven statewide elected officials, all Republicans, including Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton. Although all seven have a clear advantage going into the election, the environment has all of them out on the campaign trail fighting against the potential of Democrats riding a wave of antiTrump sentiment to upsets around the state.
Heavyweight bout pits Cruz vs. O’Rourke
No race has generated more buzz and likely driven more people to the polls than the heavyweight battle between U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Democrat Beto O’Rourke. No Democrat has come close to winning a U.S. Senate seat in Texas in the last 30 years. But O’Rourke, a congressman from El Paso, has stunned the political world with a socialmedia driven campaign that has brought in more than $70 million and turned the race into one of the closest in the nation.
The two candidates have combined to spend more than $110 million, a new record in American politics for a U.S. Senate race.
Public polling has shown the race in the single digits, suggesting it could be the first U.S. Senate race decided by less than 11 percentage points in Texas since 1978.
O’Rourke’s success or failure rests in Texas’ big cities. He has to get Democratic voters in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio to vote like it’s a presidential election and give him bigger victories over Cruz than even Hillary Clinton had in those cities over Trump in 2016.
Cruz has built his firewall outside the cities, banking on traditional red suburban and rural counties to vote in big numbers. Cruz tells the crowds at his rallies
that while the left is angry, he is convinced Texas has more conservatives than liberals that will bring him a second 6-year term in office. To accomplish that, Cruz needs the state’s 200 smallest counties to show up at presidential levels and give him big enough margins there to stop O’Rourke.
If O’Rourke were to defeat Cruz, it would be a major blow to Republicans who are desperately clinging to a two-seat majority in the U.S. Senate. Democrats need to pick up at least two U.S. Senate
seats held by Republicans on Tuesday to regain the majority.
Both Cruz and O’Rourke finished their campaigning on Monday with stops in and around Houston. While Cruz held four rallies around the area, O’Rourke held one large event in the morning before flying to Dallas then El Paso.
Texas is key as Democrats vie for control of Congress
Texas is in position to play an outsized role in determining who will run the U.S. House starting
2019. Nationwide Democrats need to pick up 23 seats held by Republicans to regain the majority and serve as a major check against Trump over the next two years.
And Democrats see at least five seats in Texas as key to that math. The best shot for Democrats may be the 7th Congressional District in Houston, the 23rd in San Antonio and the 32nd in Dallas. In all three of those, Republican incumbents are trying to hold seats in places where Clinton won a majority of votes in the 2016 election.
In the 7th Congressional District in Houston’s western suburbs, U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, and Democrat Lizzie Fletcher have combined to raise over $8 million in a race that public polling shows is virtually a tie.
In San Antonio, polls show U.S. Rep. Will Hurd with a narrow lead over Air Force veteran Gina Ortiz Jones, but the 23rd District also stretches from Bexar County to El Paso, an area that could be affected by O’Rourke’s place at the top of the ticket.
Republicans’ hold on state government not threatened
If there is a blue wave powering Democrats this year, state Democrats are convinced they can make key gains in the Texas Legislature. Democrats are unlikely to win the majority in the Texas House, but they have identified up to 20 seats in areas where Clinton either beat Trump in 2016 or lost narrowly enough to make them think they can cut into the Republicans’ 95-55 edge in the state House.
In the Texas Senate, Democrats have pinpointed three seats in Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston as they hope to narrow the Republicans’ 21-10 advantage there. But Republicans have been buoyed by a special election result earlier this year in a traditionally Democratic stronghold. State Sen. Pete Flores won the seat over Democrat Pete Gallegos.
Abbott, a Republican seeking his first re-election as the state’s top elected official, has been concerned enough about the Legislative landscape to spend more than $1 million to help GOP candidates in competitive legislative districts in Dallas, Houston and Austin, among others.
While Abbott is facing a challenge from Democrat Lupe Valdez, the most vulnerable statewide Republican could be Paxton, the attorney general who was indicted in 2015 on charges of securities fraud and failing to register as an investment adviser. His opponent, Democrat Justin Nelson, is putting pressure on Paxton after raising more than $4 million.
Meanwhile Patrick, in his first re-election, faced a challenge from Democrat Mike Collier, an accountant who has made high property taxes the centerpiece of his campaign.
Defeating any of the statewide candidates will be a tall task for Democrats. All seven statewide candidates won their first terms in office with at least 58 percent of the vote.