Trump proxies touring Texas in a bus
In launching a statewide bus tour from San Antonio on Thursday, President Donald Trump’s reelection team made clear the campaign is determined to address one of its biggest challenges in Texas: wooing Latino voters, especially in Bexar County.
Trump won Texas by 9 percentage points over Hillary Clinton in 2016, but he carried just 28 percent of Latinos nationwide. And he performed poorly in Bexar County, winning just 40.7 percent of the vote — the worst showing for a Republican here since the 1960s.
“I think he’s going to do better,” said Mary Louise York, a member of San Antonio Republican Women. She was among nearly 200 people who greeted the bright-red “Team Trump” bus with a rousing ovation when it pulled into a parking lot off Loop 410 near Culebra Road.
York predicted that voters will recognize Trump had the economy humming before COVID-19 struck. “I think it’s really about the economy,” she said.
Brad Parscale, the former San Antonio resident who was Trump’s campaign manager until he was demoted in July, said he has no doubt Trump will do better this time in San Antonio and with Latinos in particular.
“I think 2016 and 2020 are just different races,” said Parscale, the campaign’s senior adviser for data and digital operations. “The president after four years has shown
what he has done for the Latino population, what he’s done for the San Antonio economy.”
Parscale cited Trump’s tough line on immigration and low unemployment before the pandemic.
Trump himself is not part of the bus tour through Texas. Standing in for him Thursday were Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Trump adviser Katrina Pierson and Parscale.
The “Team Trump” bus made stops at businesses and restaurants before greeting GOP activists to get them fired up for the stretch drive to Nov. 3.
“We are absolutely, 100 percent confident that President Trump will carry Texas solidly with great Latino support,” said Patrick, who scoffed at the idea that Texas is a swing state.
Patrick said that as long as the campaign executes its game plan, Trump will easily hold Texas.
That plan has been in action for well over a year, as the Trump campaign has worked to train supporters in Bexar County and elsewhere to serve as the backbone of a get-out-the-vote effort this fall.
On the front lines of that effort are people like York, who work the phones, walk through neighborhoods and hold meet-and-greets to keep activists and voters engaged.
“This is a movement because of you guys,” Parscale told 200 people, most of them dressed in red and white, at a rally off Highway 281 on San Antonio’s North Side.
“He is the leader of the movement. You are the engine of the movement. You guys have got to keep on working.”
Wayne Vaughn, the Atascosa County GOP chairman, was among those at the rally.
“It’s not the campaign that I’m worried about,” Vaughn said. “It’s the voters getting complacent.”
Vaughn said the key is to ensure that people who voted for Trump in 2016 turn out again in November — and that they persuade their friends to vote as well.
Despite the confidence expressed by Patrick and Parscale, polls have shown the race in Texas to be tighter than many had expected. Most recent polls have shown Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden in a virtual dead heat in the state.
Texas has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1976, when Jimmy Carter carried the state in defeating incumbent President Gerald R. Ford.
After leaving San Antonio, the Trump bus was headed up Interstate 35 to Austin. On Friday, it was scheduled to drive to the Dallas area.
Texas Democratic Party leaders say Republicans’ rhetoric shows they are out of touch with what is happening on the ground in Texas.
Manny Garcia, executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, said Latino communities have been hardest hit by Trump administration policies. He said COVID-19 had exposed the failings of the health care system, particularly in South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley.
“The voters in the state are changing, and they don’t know how to address it,” Garcia said of the president’s re-election effort.
Nowhere has that change been more evident than in the 20-some counties along I-35 from Laredo to the Oklahoma border.
As recently as 2014, Republican candidates outperformed Democrats along that stretch.
In that year’s U.S. Senate race, incumbent John Cornyn, a Republican, won those counties by a combined 346,000 votes. But in 2016, Clinton took the I-35 corridor by a margin of 116,000 votes.
In 2018, Democratic U.S.
Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke won those counties by about 440,000 votes while narrowly losing the statewide vote to incumbent Ted Cruz.
But new polling data gave Trump supporters some cause for optimism on Thursday. Although Biden continues to outpace Trump among Latino voters nationwide, a new Quinnipiac University poll shows that his advantage with that part of the electorate is not as large as Clinton’s was in 2016.
Clinton took 66 percent of Latino votes nationwide. Biden is the choice of about 56 percent of Latinos, according to the Quinnipiac poll.
John Austin, the Bexar County Republican Party chairman, said he’s convinced Latino support for Trump is stronger than is reflected in polls. He said issues such as religious freedom and Second Amendment rights are drawing Latinos to the GOP.
“I think he’ll win Bexar County this time,” Austin said.