Ever since its realignment in the late 1990s, Texas was considered the unbreachable refuge of conservative sentiment. A state where, according to Texas Rep. Will Hurd, “this thing called private property rights still matter.” A place where religion continues to be important to a majority of voters and most prefer less government, not more.
But that’s changing. Now, “Texas is purple,” Hurd tells the Washington Examiner.
In 2020, Democratic candidates can compete in the Lone Star state. Beto O’Rourke demonstrated as much when he ran in 2018 to unseat Republican incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz. O’Rourke lost but by a small enough margin that Democratic strategists and activists alike have since poured millions into the state, attempting to energize Texas’s blue-leaning city dwellers and shift the tide in the Democrats’ favor.
At the state and local levels, this strategy has already paid dividends. In the past year, the San Antonio City Council voted to ban Chick-fil-A from its municipal airport, citing the fast-food chain’s “legacy of anti-LGBTQ behavior”; the Austin City Council approved an additional $150,000 in its annual budget to supplement abortion providers; and the Dallas City Council wrote into its nondiscrimination ordinance specific protections for transgender residents that could affect religious liberty in the city.
These policies are significant and influential. Texas’s population and economic output are becoming increasingly concentrated in the state’s four big cities: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, which means these cities’ policies will influence the state’s political tilt.
This is a reality the GOP must confront. As of last year, 88% of Texans lived in urban areas, and the Texas Demographic Center expects that urban population to double in the next 40 years. The influx of West Coast residents has certainly contributed to the problem, according to Hurd, as has international immigration.
If Republicans don’t figure out a way to appeal to Texas’s urban voters, they risk losing the nation’s second-largest Electoral College prize. Already, the GOP is fighting to hang on to Florida and Pennsylvania, two swing states that could decide President Trump’s fate in 2020. Without Texas, it’s hard to see how any Republican becomes president.
Democrats’ gains in the state are not an aberration; they’re a trend. Hurd is one of the few Republicans willing to admit as much, and though he’s retiring from Congress in 2020, he plans to continue to help the GOP combat the Democrats’ efforts in his home state. And he plans to start on the East Coast, of all places.
The sentiment that drives East Coast Democrats is present in Texas’s cities, Hurd says, and helping GOP candidates unseat Democrats along the East Coast could help the Texas GOP develop a similar plan of action.
This strategy might just work. Hurd already knows how to talk to Texans. He’s won tough races before, and he’d likely do so again if he chose to run for reelection. The rest of the GOP, however, needs to learn how to appeal to Texas’s city-living voters — and fast. Texas might still lean Republican, but it’s not the impregnable fortress it once was.
Texas state is changing, and Republicans must change with it.
