Climate, Hispanics will factor in Texas
Joe Biden is seeking to do what no Democrat has done since disco was at its height: win Texas.
Texas Democrats are justifiably energized, coming off a 2018 election cycle in which they flipped 14 seats in the Legislature and two in Congress and came within 3 percentage points of winning a U.S. Senate seat. And with voter registrations surging, both parties see that the electorate is changing fast in Texas.
“This election gives us the opportunity to turn Texas blue,” U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-houston, told Texas delegates to the Democratic National Convention during a Zoom call Wednesday morning. “Poll after poll shows Texas is ripe for the taking.”
But the challenges for the Biden campaign in Texas are clear as he leaves the convention with a head of steam heading into the final 74 days until Election Day.
Climate change
Biden’s climate change proposals have never been as aggressive as those of other Democrats who ran for president such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Still, Biden has declared that he wants to phase out fossil fuels in America for more clean energy alternatives.
That has opened a strong line of attack for President Donald
Trump, who warns that Texas oil and gas workers will lose their jobs if Biden wins the White House. In Midland last month, Trump made clear what his campaign’s No. 1 message will be in Texas.
“If they got in, you will have no more energy coming out of the great state of Texas,” Trump said.
While the Texas economy has undoubtedly diversified over the last 20 years, the oil and gas industry is still a dominant force. Last year, more than 428,000 Texans worked directly in the industry, according to the Texas Oil and Gas Association.
During the convention Wednesday night, Biden’s campaign signaled how he will try to thread the needle on climate change while also supporting energy workers. Though Biden declared that the campaign will push for clean energy programs, he did it by having a union worker from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers narrate a video outlining his climate change plan that emphasized that it would lead to good, high-paying union jobs in the energy sector.
“When I think about climate change, the word I think about is jobs,” Biden said.
Energizing Hispanic voters
Biden emerged from the Democratic primary in March with a problem with Latino voters, particularly in Texas.
While Biden won Texas, Sanders nearly pulled off an upset thanks to a big turnout among young Latino voters, a group Biden has been trying to fire up for his campaign. National polling showed in May that while Biden was winning Latinos over Trump, he was behind where Hillary Clinton was in appealing to those voters. Biden has tried to address that with a slew of big hires in Texas that includes two Latinas who have been put in charge of his state operation. Rebecca Acuña, raised in Laredo, will be his Texas state director, and Jennifer Longoria, an Edinburg native, will be his deputy state director.
Biden’s paid for Spanish language ads, and his team is convinced that by the time November rolls around, he’ll be dominating with Latino voters over Trump.
The Beto map
If Biden is going to flip Texas, he has to replicate, at least in part, what Beto O’rourke was able to do during his 2018 U.S. Senate campaign.
O’rourke made visiting every Texas county a priority, going to even traditionally red counties. While he still lost badly in the Panhandle and Northeast Texas, he pulled off stunning victories in counties all along Interstate 35 that hadn’t voted for a statewide Democratic candidate since Ann Richards ran for governor, such as Hays and Williamson in Central Texas. O’rourke came close in Collin and Denton counties in North Texas.
O’rourke came within 219,000 votes of winning the state. If Biden is going to get closer, he has to build numbers up in those regions beyond what O’rourke did.
But Biden’s campaign has shown its hesitancy in committing too many financial resources in Texas. The state, with 20 major media markets, is simply too expensive when compared with vying for other states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and even Florida — all considered closer to flipping to Biden than Texas.
That likely means he’s going to need to rely largely on a volunteer network and energy from Texas Democrats to make it happen.
“This election gives us the opportunity to turn Texas blue. Poll after poll shows Texas is ripe for the taking.”
U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-houston