It’s fair to assume the ass kicking Texas Democrats got on Election Night will leave them smarting for years to come.
In total, 239 of the state’s 254 counties shifted red, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of Associated Press data published last week.
For Texas Dems, that change in hue was no more obvious — or more concerning — than in once reliably blue counties such as Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, Zapata, Jim Hogg, Brooks, Kenedy and Willacy, which make up the Rio Grande Valley.
Despite president-elect Donald Trump’s ugly and repeated rhetoric about Latinos, migrants and mass deportations, four RGV counties that voted for President Biden in the 2020 election went for Trump this time around.
“Hispanics in the Valley went Republican because Republicans said, ‘You’ve got good jobs for the first time in your lives now in the Border Patrol and oil and gas industry, and the Democrats are going to screw you on both,'” Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson said of the GOP’s messaging.
While Republicans’ claims weren’t necessarily true — U.S. oil and gas production was higher under Biden than Trump, after all — they nonetheless stuck, according to Jillson. And so did the GOP’s attack ads focused around LGBTQ+ issues and migrants.
Indeed, Jillson and other political analysts believe Texas Democrats’ RGV losses were the result of the party’s abysmal messaging on social issues combined with Abbott’s $10 billion Operation Lone Star anti-immigration initiative, which has pumped enormous amounts of state tax money into South Texas.
“You have to talk to people as they are, not as you wish they were,” Jillson said. “So, if Hispanics are more socially conservative than your Anglo activist base, you’ve got to acknowledge Hispanic concerns about abortion rights, about transgender rights, about transgender people in women’s sports, which is already illegal in Texas. But, still, Republicans pounded Democrats mercilessly on that issue.”
The Economy and missed messaging
Jillson and Nancy Thompson, founder of Mothers Against Greg Abbott, a grassroots group advocating for progressive policies in Texas, agree that the Republican governor’s pricy border crackdown, Operation Lone Star, swayed a lot of Valley voters.
“[Abbott] is supplementing the RGV in so many ways with the border crisis, because the state is employing not only just Border Patrol people, but they’re also keeping the hotels open and filling the restaurants and stuff,” Thompson acknowledged.
Thompson also faulted Democrats for failing to get across a succinct message.
“I really feel that the tabletop issues that are hurting everyday Texans were not getting addressed,” she said. “That’s things like the price of gas, the price of eggs, the price of milk, that type of stuff.”
From “build the wall” to “mass deportations” to “Trump will fix it,” Republicans clung to short, declarative slogans that proved effective with voters. Meanwhile, if pressed to echo one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign slogans, many voters would struggle to do so.
“If you hit voters with a galvanizing, thematic, terrifying bumper sticker theme, they can take that on one gulp,” Jillson said. “But, if you give them two paragraphs on something you favor, their attention will drift and they won’t help you.”
Mainstreaming misinformation
It also didn’t help Democrats that disinformation went largely unchecked this election cycle, according to experts.
American University political scientist Prof. Allan Lichtman called disinformation one pivotal factor in the Republican victory this election. Lichtman has correctly predicted every Presidential election since 1984 — with 2024 being an exception.
Lichtman uses 13 keys, including incumbency, charisma and scandal, among others, to predict election outcomes. Those keys didn’t account for disinformation, he admitted.
“It’s not what just people feel about the economy, for example. It’s tremendous disinformation that they’ve come to believe,” Lichtman said in a post-election YouTube video. “That the stock market is crashing, that unemployment is at an all-time high, that wages are crashing, that jobs are being lost. All of which is patently untrue. But, people have come to believe it because of the incredible explosion of disinformation.”
What’s next
To win again in South Texas, Democrats need to entice working-class voters, specifically those with only high school diplomas, back to the party, according to Jillson. It’s the same challenge the party faces at the national level.
While Thompson agrees that Texas Democrats need to do a better job with reaching out to everyday voters, specifically in the RGV, she balks at the notion that Dems must abandon messaging on social causes, specifically those related to the LGBTQ+ community.
“You don’t throw your voting block under the table,” Thompson said. “This is the most vulnerable community of Democrats that we have. We’re seeing trans families move out of Texas every day because they can’t live here anymore because it’s not safe. This is a community that is scared. They need allies.”
Even so, Jillson maintains that the only way forward for Texas Democrats is to reconnect with the party’s large minority, working-class base, even if it means potentially ruffling well-educated, socially conscious urban voters.
“They’ve got to craft a series of messages that appeal less to the leadership of their various activists’ constituent groups and more to the average voters,” Jillson said. “They’ve got to look through their activist base to the actual electorate and think about how to appeal to them.”
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This article appears in Nov 13-26, 2024.
