By Brad Brooks
FORT WORTH, Texas, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Texas has been the Democratic Party’s great, unrealized hope for three decades: a vast and fast-changing state that often seems within reach, only to slip away.
On the eve of a midterm election that could decide control of the US Senate, Democrats are dreaming again about breaking the Republican stranglehold on the Lone Star State, even as they brace for heartbreak.
Most polls show Democrat James Talarico, a 37-year-old state representative, seminarian
and former schoolteacher, narrowly ahead of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. In the governor's race, Democratic state Representative Gina Hinojosa is trailing three-term Republican Governor Greg Abbott by just a few points.
No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since 1994, the longest drought in the nation. Ending it would reverberate far beyond this state of 31 million people, redrawing America’s political map ahead of a wide-open contest for the presidency in 2028.
“This is the most competitive election between the parties that we have seen here since the early stages of Republican hegemony,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). “If Talarico or Hinojosa win, it’s a political earthquake.”
For the first time since 1972, Democrats are contesting every state and federal race, testament to a party that says it is investing in its future rather than just individual candidates.
Interviews with more than 40 voters, activists and organizers on both sides of the partisan divide revealed three potential cracks in the Republican coalition -- Latinos jolted by President Donald Trump’s immigration raids; conservative women uneasy about Paxton’s alleged marital infidelity and, to a lesser degree, Republican men squeezed by rising prices and the war with Iran.
Tyson Jex, 33, a suburban father of three, has always voted a straight Republican ticket. This year he’s undecided.
“We have conservative people in power, but it doesn’t seem like anything changes,” he said.
TWO PLAYBOOKS
Many Texas Republicans remain confident in their chances on November 3, believing the political fundamentals are still in their favor.
About 49% of Texas voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, compared with 40% for Democrats, according to UT polling.
Then there's the money: Republicans have spent over $300 million on ads supporting Paxton, dwarfing the $102 million spent for Talarico, according to FEC data.
Dave Carney, Abbott’s chief strategist and a veteran of Republican campaigns in Texas, added that the party’s ground game is peaking late by design. “We’re going to win, absolutely," he said, referring to both Republican candidates.
For their part, Talarico and Hinojosa have focused relentlessly on the cost of living and the outsize political influence of billionaires like Elon Musk, who poured nearly $160 million into Texas to buoy Paxton.
“We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis,” Talarico said at a rally in the city of Temple last week to thunderous applause.
Republicans, meanwhile, have leaned into culture-war issues. In ads, Paxton has hammered Talarico over his support for transgender rights and branded him a heretic for his progressive Christianity.
Rallying for Paxton last week at a brewery in the small town of Sanger, just north of Dallas, speakers riled up a raucous crowd by painting Talarico as a radical leftist and describing the election stakes as existential.
“If we lose one race this cycle, Texas will be a battleground state for the rest of our natural lives,” warned state Representative Andy Hopper.
Neither the Paxton nor the Talarico campaign made its candidates available for an interview.
LATINO BACKLASH
Tarrant County, home to the city of Fort Worth, is the most conservative of Texas’ big urban counties and is seen as a bellwether. In the 2020 presidential race, Joe Biden was the first Democrat to carry it since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, winning by less than 2,000 votes; Trump easily won it back in 2024.
The challenges facing Republicans among Latinos and women voters come into focus here.
Latinos helped deliver Texas to Trump in 2024, giving him 55% of their votes in a dramatic swing away from Democrats, according to exit polling.
Now, their enthusiasm is surging in the opposite direction. Among likely Latino voters, Talarico leads 54% to 41% and Hinojosa 56% to 42%, UT polling shows.
About 1.56 million Latinos had cast ballots as of Wednesday, nearly double the number who had voted at the same point in 2022's midterms, according to TargetSmart, a data firm that works mainly with Democrats.
Latinos make up roughly 28% of early voters, up from 20% at the same time four years ago, the data shows, while white, rural turnout is lagging significantly behind 2022 levels.
“Higher Latino turnout is almost certainly going to be good for the Democratic candidates,” said Tom Bonier, a senior adviser at the firm.
While Hispanics account for nearly a third of Texas’ eligible voters, their 2024 turnout trailed that of non-Latino whites by more than 20 points, according to the Census Bureau.
This year feels different for people like Rick Arredondo, a 52-year-old welder in Fort Worth’s heavily Latino northside. He rolled up to a polling station on his bike last week, eager to vote for the first time in his life.
He said he would cast his ballot for Democrats after immigration agents detained and deported his neighbor.
“Anybody that’s my skin color is fair game,” said Arredondo, a US-born citizen who now carries his passport for fear of being swept up in a raid. “Politics finally reached me in my little corner of the world.”
Down the street, Vanessa Dalay, 23, said she had skipped past elections but wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
“The deportations have radicalized me,” she said.
For Carlos Ronquillo, a 35-year-old house painter who voted for Trump in 2024, his anger over the raids has been compounded by economic struggle.
“I’ve got a diesel truck and I’m spending over $200 to fill it up,” Ronquillo said while getting a tire fixed at a Fort Worth shop. “That’s bad enough. But then you have ICE taking everybody, not just the criminals they said they would.”
Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist advising the Talarico and Hinojosa campaigns, said that in focus groups that many Latinos still back closing the border and deporting lawbreakers.
“But none of us signed up for (ICE) to be in our community, picking up our cousins and our aunts and uncles,” he said.
TROUBLE AT HOME
Republican organizers say a different issue is troubling women voters, one particular to Paxton, who beat incumbent John Cornyn in the party primary with Trump’s backing.
Paxton’s wife, state Senator Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last year on “biblical grounds,” accusing him of adultery. Paxton has declined to discuss the matter publicly.
Jill Tate is president of the Texas Federation of Republican Women, a grassroots group with more than 10,000 members in 160 clubs. She estimates about 40% of the conservative women her members are talking to have doubts about Paxton because of his marital problems.
“I’ve never seen us have to work quite so hard to win in my 30 years,” Tate said while canvassing in Allen, a deeply conservative suburb of Dallas.
Lauren Stewart, a 25-year-old Republican in Temple, said her religious upbringing made it hard to overcome her reservations about Paxton.
“I might skip voting in that race,” Stewart said. "I’ve heard that from a lot of my friends, too.”
Among likely Republican voters, 71% of men view Paxton favorably, compared with just 59% of Republican women, UT polling shows.
That might not matter in a typical year. But with polls showing Democrats more energized, it could be crucial.
“This is an election where small increments of voters matter,” Henson said.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Texas; Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and Alistair Bell)
