Texas: Democrats' eternal hope

We are keeping with a theme this week. Red states with competitive Senate races. Today, Texas, a huge state where huge amounts of money are pouring in to both the governors and the Senate race there. Democrats have their hopes up in both cases. Are they headed for another disappointment? It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. I also cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And Domenico, you are talking to us from Texas right now. I have to imagine there are just campaign ads everywhere. There are campaign ads everywhere. The TV markets here have been flooded. I'm in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Frisco, which is one of the booming cities in America, a place that's got over a quarter million residents. In the early 90s, it only had about 6,000. So this is the story. This is the story of North Texas in particular, with just crazy population boom. And that means money, right? And there's been a lot of money poured in on the TV side of things. There's a lot of money here in development. And there's a lot of interest in this election. I mean, you drive everywhere. There's lawn signs. It was in a pretty red area yesterday. And so about 30 to 40% of the lawn signs were Tallarico signs. What does that mean? I don't know. We're going to see. But the interest is super, super high. In Texas for a decade, Ashley. How weird is it that Texas seems to be kind of the center of the political universe right now? You know, I feel like this has happened before. I will say I'm getting a lot of flashbacks to the 2018 election. That was a very similar sort of cycle where Trump was unpopular. There was a very enigmatic candidate running on the Democratic side. That was Congressman Beto O'Rourke. And it happens every once in a while where there is this conversation. Among Democrats, like, will it happen? Will the uniparty control of Republicans in Texas finally break? Will, you know, Democrats finally send someone to the Senate? We've been here before, I will say. Yeah. And we've we've talked about it before. But, you know, it's been since 1994 that a Democrat, any Democrat has won for any statewide office here, whether that's ag commissioner, attorney general. So, you know, it is a little bit like Lucy in the football with the Peanuts reference there where Charlie Brown tries to go kick the ball. And Lucy pulls it out at the last minute. It's a little bit like that for Democrats in Texas. But listen, history, you know, is is is only true until it changes. And and that's that's that's a thing that I think a lot of Democrats here are hoping happens, although a lot of people I talk to are skeptical that it will and sort of crossing their fingers. And Republicans are just, you know, kind of shaking their heads. A lot of Republicans I talk to here are shaking their heads about why. John Cornyn wasn't the nominee because they feel like he would have walked into it. And they're kind of holding their nose to vote for Paxton. Many people, although I have seen quite a few Paxton signs, I will say. And I do want to dig in more into the Senate race in just a moment. But I wanted to focus first on the governor's race there, which I feel like is I mean, Texas, as I mentioned, a huge state, one of the most important states in the country, just based on the size and the size of its economy. And it's looking like a competitive governor's race where incumbent Governor Greg Abbott is running for. A fourth term. He's facing Democratic State House Representative Gina Hinojosa. Tell me a little bit about these candidates, Ashley. You know, most election cycles, it is not this close. I will say this is what is notable about this cycle, which is it's not just the governor's race, but that lieutenant governor's race, the AG's race. Everything's like within a couple points, which is a unique thing. Like this is a kind of different moment. But, you know, Greg Abbott has been fairly popular, at least impervious to any sort of election. And I think that's something that's going to happen. And I think either scandal or disappointment, like writ large from Texas voters, you know, he had a couple of stumbles like throughout his governorship where, you know, Hurricane Harvey in 2017, there was a lot of dissatisfaction with how he handled that. There's been many school shootings there or mass shootings in general. And that whenever those kind of things happen, the question is always like, oh, is this going to be a tougher race for him? And that seemed to not culminate because he has won, you know, in big numbers, his reelections. This one looks like it's going to be tighter than the rest. And it has all to do with the economy, which we'll get to. And then Gina Hosa, she is the daughter of a long serving elected there. She has deep roots to the Democratic Party. I interviewed her for the first time maybe a decade ago when she was running for the state house. And that's, you know, the position she has now. She's a state house member and she was a member of the school board. So she's kind of always been in local politics. I think she was in the Austin school board. And so she's kind of been in local politics for a long time. And her family has like a big name in the Democratic Party. So and she's running on obviously school issues, but the economy, you know, she's running on making things cheaper for families. And so that's really what a lot of this race is about. Yeah, look, this is a state that doesn't have an income tax. So there's only so many levers that you can turn if you want to be able to raise money to be able to pay for things like cops and schools and firefighters and all of that. And one of the issues here, of course, is property taxes, because, you know, being able to, raise those to be able to close budget gaps is obviously not popular. And then you have data centers, you know, AI data centers are really starting to populate a lot of the rural areas here. And we know that that's been an issue across the country. They're unpopular because they're driving up energy costs in a lot of places. And, you know, you're having this kind of turning point election on some of these things. And it's a lot of what Hinojosa is running against and saying, this is Abbott's doing and he's trying to create these things. And while he's trying to say she's someone who's going to raise your taxes. I mean, it's interesting. I'm curious how much Trump is factoring in. I feel like Trump is obviously the elephant in the room in every single race in the midterms this year. But governor's races are a little bit insulated from that in terms of state government and federal government. Two different things, obviously. Is Trump coming up a lot in this governor's race? Or how is that kind of being reflected here? Maybe Trump is not coming up a lot, but the economy that he has created is coming up a lot. And Trump is not actually on the ballot, even though he says he is. But, you know, I think that Democrats, their argument is that the way that Republicans like Trump and Greg Abbott have run the economy put voters in the position they are in now, which is they can't afford basic necessities. A lot of people are in debts they don't think they can crawl out of. And so whether or not, you know, Trump is the issue, his economy is forefront. Because I'll say for like at least the last 20 years, Texas has been in this unique position where even when there's economic downturns and, you know, specifically, I think of like the Great Recession, Texas has been pretty impervious, you know, not untouched, but the economy has done better than the rest of the country. That is not true now. And it's partly because of what Domenico is talking about. Housing prices have gotten high. And even though gas is cheaper there than it is in California, it's still much higher there. And people drive a lot in Texas. So it doesn't affect people because, you know, everything is far apart in Texas. You're driving a lot. I think about that a lot, how much more I thought about gas prices when I lived in Florida versus now, right? It makes a big difference. And so, you know, the war in Iran and, you know, because I talk to, I hear from swing voters every month, people do make the connection between the gas prices and the decision that Trump has made. And so, you know, whether or not he's talked about all the time, his economy and the situation he's created is definitely at the forefront. Yeah. I mean, Texas is the kind of place where you're driving everywhere for the most part. I know a lot of, you know, public transportation options are certainly not getting, you know, trains between places like, you know, Frisco and downtown Dallas or, you know, Dallas to Houston or something like that. So people are driving everywhere and a lot of stuff is spread out. The gas prices are high. It's something that people think about, they talk about, they want to drive their big trucks. And that costs a lot of money. And, you know, recent Marist poll showed Trump with a 46% approval rating in Texas, which is higher than, uh, obviously nationwide where he sits at about 37% on average, 54% disapprove, you know, and that's interesting because Texas is a place that Trump won by double digits. So even here, you're seeing people kind of more down on Trump. He's a more of a net negative. Um, and that's why someone like Abbott maybe had a scheduling conflict earlier this month when Trump showed up at an event, uh, in San Antonio and that area for, um, Ken Paxton. Wow. Yeah, exactly. So, and that's an Abbott we know is close to Trump. So he's not somebody who you would expect to kind of be like, ah, maybe I don't want that on me. Yeah. Well, Trump isn't polling well in Texas, but especially on the economy. So how much you want to be connected to someone when they are not popular, when you're already in a tough race? I mean, at the same time, you know, Republicans here, you know, are a huge factor and they need to be able to turn out the energy and get out. those Republicans to go vote. And a lot of them still like Trump. And I think it's a really difficult balance that, uh, that, you know, both the Abbott and, uh, Paxton campaign have to balance. I mean, when you mentioned Trump's approval rating in Texas being underwater right now, which is, I didn't realize that that is surprising. I'm curious how much of that is being driven by the Latino vote. I know that Latinos swung towards Trump in 2024, and I've seen a lot in the last year about that support deteriorating. Do we have a sense of whether be driving what's happening in Texas, too? I mean, that's a big chunk of it, because I mean, I say this every time, but these are the nation's swing voters. These are voters that are not encamped in either party, mostly because parties haven't figured out a good way of messaging to them and to making them feel like one party has their back consistently. And that is a historical problem that both the parties need to at one point figure out. But, you know, the economy in particular and issues like immigration are the stuff that is in the forefront. And especially, I mean, especially the economy. I mean, a lot of these communities are these are working class people. So changes in anything like in their day to day budget, like food prices, which have been soaring, housing prices, they are just more vulnerable to the up and downs of the economy. And since they're not tied to either party, if you're not if it's not working out for them, they're they're happy for change because they're not diehards. They're not diehard Republicans. They're not diehard Latinos. And, you know, this is going to be an interesting situation for Republicans, because when they redrew their maps, the congressional boundaries last year, they made a big assumption that the voters who supported Donald Trump in 2024, who were mad at the Joe Biden economy, that they would be there for them this cycle. But this economy is also not working for them. So it is, you know, it was a gamble they're taking. And it's looking like it might not have been in their favor. So it's a gamble they're taking. Republican than earlier generations here. And, you know, that is something that I think Republicans had been banking on because Trump did well in places like Cameron County and Hidalgo County won those counties, which is really shocking. South Texas is huge Latino population. And that's a place that, you know, if Hinojosa is going to do well, if Tallarico is going to do well, they're going to have to win those counties by a lot and win the suburban areas outside Dallas, outside. And that's a place that, you know, if Hinojosa is going to do well, they're going to have to win those counties by a lot and win the suburban areas outside Dallas, outside. Republicans is actually going to work or if they needed a fighter and a firebrand like Jasmine Crockett. And that's obviously going to be tested here to see if he can win over some of those moderate voters, the people disaffected with Paxton, disaffected with Trump, and if they'll cross over. But remember, I've said this before on this podcast, these elections are also not necessarily choices between two choices with Democrats and Republicans, but it's between three, Democrats, Republicans, and the couch. And as many Republicans that stay home here also is helpful for Tallarico. Yeah, I see Tallarico doing a couple things, you know, besides the obvious, which is something that he got a lot of attention for early on and when he was running in the primary, was he's talking to Christian voters, like he's talking to religious voters. He's invoking religion from a more liberal perspective. But also as a way, because, you know, a knock on liberals, especially I heard this a lot in Texas when I was covering like Republican conventions. Like you hear a godless liberals, like that kind of thing, like rallying Christians in the state is like a big thing that Republicans do. And he's like directly talking to people of faith in the state and saying like, hey, I am not outside of this community. I'm a member of it. And so there's a place for you in my party, if you agree with me on some things and are also of the religious person. And then there's also a kind of similar to what we're seeing in Georgia with John Ossoff. Tallarico is also talking about corruption and how it relates. Right. To. How like the economic situation that people find themselves in. It's very helpful to have a scandal plagued opponent to talk about corruption. He'll knock Paxton for, you know, allegedly making sweetheart deals for data centers, that sort of thing. And people in Texas are really nervous about already high energy prices being affected by, you know, an influx of data centers around their neighborhoods. So he's sort of connecting the two, which is like, you know, Ken Paxton has seemingly no rules about how he works with private entities and corporate donors, blah, blah, blah. And so this is how this is affecting your life. And so I see those as being like probably the more effective levers that he's using for a particularly Texas audience here. And we'll see. We'll see how it works. I will say for a place where people drive all the time, billboards are also huge here from a campaign advertising standpoint. And I have seen I can't tell you how many times I've seen the same billboard. That has Ken Paxton's face on it in black and white and says the most corrupt politician in America. So, you know, that's clearly one thing that Tallarico is really trying to home in on. All right. Well, we can leave it there for today. Come back tomorrow for more. I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. I also cover voting. And thank you for listening to the Empire Politics Podcast. Thank you.