2026-03-08T10:00:33.889Z / CNN
让德克萨斯州转向民主党的前景再次让民主党人感到兴奋。但该党要在该州重新站稳脚跟，仍面临着巨大的障碍。
随着州众议员詹姆斯·塔拉利科在上周的美国参议院初选中以压倒性优势获胜，民主党找到了一位年轻且精通媒体的候选人，他既能激发党内活动家的热情，又为重新争取一些长期支持得克萨斯州共和党的选民提供了机会。与此同时，共和党面临着在5月底前科尼恩参议员和州总检察长肯·帕克斯顿之间展开激烈决选的可能性，尽管现任议员的盟友希望唐纳德·特朗普总统支持科尼恩。
再加上特朗普在该州的支持率持续下滑——尤其是在2024年蜂拥至他的西班牙裔选民中——民主党人可以理解地认为这是他们多年来赢得得克萨斯州美国参议院席位的最佳机会，而他们已经近40年没有做到这一点了。
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然而，得克萨斯州民主党人多次看到其他候选人在激发了这种兴奋感后却中途失利。他们长期以来难以将该州人口的有利变化——日益多元化和城市化——转化为选举胜利。而科尼恩在初选中第一轮表现意外强劲，这让共和党战略家们燃起希望，他们认为科尼恩将比深陷丑闻的帕克斯顿成为更强大的大选候选人。
“这次初选确实让民主党人处于自2008年以来最好的位置，”总部位于达拉斯的共和党民调专家罗斯·亨特表示。但亨特表示，尽管该州“如果帕克斯顿成为候选人，立刻就会成为关键战场”，但他认为科尼恩赢得提名的几率现在看起来要大得多。如果科尼恩获胜，“他很有可能赢得大选。”
其他得克萨斯州战略家和分析师认为，全国范围内对特朗普的反弹以及共和党初选后可能留下的长期创伤，确保了塔拉利科能够与任何一位共和党人保持竞争力。但保持竞争力与实际获胜是完全不同的两回事。“我仍然没有理由怀疑这将是民主党在全国范围内的好年份，”德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校德克萨斯政治项目主任詹姆斯·亨森表示。“但共和党在这里有一道相当坚固的‘海堤’。”
民主党初选的大部分斗争围绕着不同的选举策略理论展开。以猛烈抨击特朗普和其他共和党人而闻名的众议员贾丝明·克罗克特，淡化了重新争取前特朗普支持者的必要性，并认为民主党获胜的关键是动员大部分非白人非选民。“我不同意我们是保守派州的说法。我们是一个不投票的州，”克罗克特在初选期间告诉CNN。
塔拉利科承认民主党需要动员更多选民，但他表示，仅通过动员就假设能够翻转该州是错误的。“我认为每个人都能同意，即使你有想象中最高的民主党选民投票率，你仍然需要从另一方争取一些人，”塔拉利科告诉《政治报》。
克罗克特认为得克萨斯州相对而言是一个不投票的州，这一点是正确的。根据人口普查数据，2024年，得克萨斯州仅有约58%的合格成年人投票，远低于北卡罗来纳州、佐治亚州和亚利桑那州等其他阳光地带战场州的投票率。然而，尽管在符合条件的西班牙裔选民中投票率特别低（仅45%），但该州所有主要种族群体的投票率都相对较低。
布鲁金斯学会城市研究部人口学家威廉·弗雷对人口普查数据的分析显示，2024年，没有四年制大学学位的黑种人、亚裔和白种成年人在实际选民中的比例与在合格选民中的比例完全相同。弗雷发现，西班牙裔人口在实际选民中的比例比在合格选民中少7个百分点，而受过大学教育的白种人在实际选民中的比例比潜在选民中多出约7个百分点。
这些模式表明，以动员为核心的策略存在局限性。黑种人、亚裔美国人和受过大学教育的白种选民——民主党最依赖的三个群体——在得克萨斯州选民中的数量至少与其在人口中的比例相当。大多数政治战略家认为，以激励某个大投票群体达到能够持久地使其在实际选民中占比超过合格选民的比例（除了影响投票率的传统差异，如年龄和教育程度）为基础制定政治策略是困难的。
提高西班牙裔选民的投票率无疑是得克萨斯州民主党潜在复兴的重要组成部分，但自2020年以来特朗普在这一群体中的支持率上升意味着民主党不能假设动员更多非传统西班牙裔选民一定会对他们有利。“那些不经常投票的得克萨斯州西班牙裔人可能主要是民主党人，但他们不一定是主要的自由派或进步派，”支持民主党的政治行动委员会“孤星项目”主任马特·安格尔表示。
考虑到所有这些限制，安格尔表示，克罗克特和塔拉利科之间的辩论对得克萨斯州民主党人来说是一个错误的选择。“我认为你必须建立一个联盟才能获胜，而不是仅仅试图赢得那些自认为是民主党的人，”他说。“但你确实需要那种能量和情感来最大限度地提高民主党选民的投票率，这也是合理的。这就是得克萨斯州的困难所在——你必须同时做到这两点。”
共和党人也面临着类似的辩论。科尼恩的盟友认为，全国民主党人对投票反对特朗普的热情使得失去参议院席位的风险如此之大，以至于共和党不能冒险提名像帕克斯顿这样极化的候选人。这是科尼恩支持者希望说服特朗普支持这位参议员的核心论点。
帕克斯顿的盟友则坚持认为，塔拉利科最终会被证明与其他民主党候选人一样缺乏可行性（主要是因为他在社会问题上的自由派观点），而关于他实力的警告只是为了吓唬特朗普和初选中的选民支持科尼恩的诡计。“建制派希望你相信……塔拉利科在得克萨斯州是一个巨大的威胁，只有被他自己政党中58%的人在昨天否决的‘共和党人’约翰·科尼恩才能击败他，”一个支持帕克斯顿的保守团体在初选后的第二天在社交媒体上发布。
即将到来的塔拉利科与科尼恩或帕克斯顿之间的较量，标志着得克萨斯州民主党人恢复其影响力的长期斗争中的最新一轮。得克萨斯州民主党人上一次选出美国参议员是在1988年，州长是在1990年，并且最后一次赢得任何州级职位是在1994年。自2002年以来，他们就没有控制过州议会的任何一个议院。
由于缺乏权力，民主党的基础设施和筹款能力已经萎缩。尽管塔拉利科吸引了大量小额捐款，但全州的民主党基础设施仍然非常薄弱。“当你这么长时间没有赢得州级选举时，就没有一个常设的州内政治机构，”共和党民调专家亨特表示。“共和党人有很多组织，他们已经变得非常擅长赢得选举。”
但即使在民主党人的惨淡岁月里，得克萨斯州也被同样推动其他阳光地带州政党发展的经济和人口结构变革所重塑。一是种族多样性的增长：南加州大学公平研究所的数据显示，从2000年到2024年，得克萨斯州新增超过1040万居民，其中有色人种占新增人口的92%。
二是城市化程度的提高：休斯顿大学霍比公共事务学院高级研究助理理查德·默里的分析显示，自2000年以来，该州四个最大的都市区——达拉斯/沃斯堡、休斯顿、奥斯汀和圣安东尼奥——占该州人口和就业增长的80%以上。
这种多元化和在增长的都市区表现的结合，正是民主党人在2000年后能够让科罗拉多州和弗吉尼亚州转向民主党的相同策略，并且最近也让他们能够在亚利桑那州、佐治亚州和北卡罗来纳州更有效地竞争。
在2010年代的大部分时间里，民主党人感到乐观，认为得克萨斯州虽然进展缓慢但似乎也在沿着类似的轨迹发展。
默里的计算追踪了这种变化。他和他的同事将该州分为三个大的地理区域：组成四个大城市区的27个县；德克萨斯州南部得克萨斯州的28个主要西班牙裔县；以及全州199个非都市区县。
民主党人在2016年总统选举中首先在大城市区取得显著收益（当时希拉里·克林顿以微弱优势击败特朗普赢得这些地区），然后在2018年进一步扩大优势，当时民主党众议员贝托·奥罗克开展了一场令人振奋的参议院竞选活动，仅以2.6个百分点的差距未能击败共和党参议员泰德·克鲁兹。
默里发现，奥罗克在四个大城市区以明显优势击败克鲁兹，赢得了该地区总投票的54%。奥罗克在得克萨斯州南部大量西班牙裔人口的地区也表现出色，获得了约三分之二的选票。
但这还不足以让奥罗克获胜，因为根据默里的计算，克鲁兹在该州广阔的小城市和农村地区赢得了72%以上的选票——足以让他获得超过875,000张选票的不可逾越的优势。
奥罗克与克鲁兹的接近对决被证明是得克萨斯州民主党人的现代最高点。尽管乔·拜登在2020年和奥罗克在其2022年州长竞选中也赢得了四个大城市区的总投票，但两人都没有达到奥罗克在2018年的总支持率。到2024年，特朗普赢得了除奥斯汀外的每个大城市区，并重新超过了这些地区总投票的50%。
与此同时，在拜登执政期间，民主党人在得克萨斯州的另外两个主要地区退缩了。默里发现，2022年的雅培和2024年的特朗普都使共和党在该州的中小城市县的选票份额超过76%，而在西班牙裔人口众多的得克萨斯州南部，共和党在特朗普2024年连任期间的选票比例从克鲁兹时期的仅约三分之一飙升至刚刚超过一半。
拜登政府不仅没有巩固民主党在得克萨斯州的微弱但可衡量的势头，反而削弱了它。“拜登是一个典型的东海岸人，他很少（如果有的话）访问得克萨斯州，对它一无所知，并且完全搞砸了移民问题，”默里说。
拜登执政时期让得克萨斯州民主党人陷入了困境。但对特朗普动荡的第二个任期的迅速反弹，让他们对塔拉利科的参议院竞选充满了自2018年奥罗克竞选以来前所未有的活力和乐观。
与当时的奥罗克相比，塔拉利科有几个潜在优势——但也面临着一些持久的、甚至在某些方面不断加深的挑战。优势首先来自特朗普，他如今在得克萨斯州和全国的地位比2018年更弱。
德克萨斯大学的民调显示，特朗普的支持率自去年6月以来从未超过45%。与他的第一任期不同，当时选民主要对经济表示满意，而如今他在得克萨斯州面临着对其经济记录的广泛不满。亨森表示，特朗普面临着与“2024年促使许多改变立场或不支持民主党的选民的（经济）担忧非常相似的担忧”。
自2018年以来，加强民主党力量的另一个重大变化是该州持续的多元化。弗雷发现，尽管西班牙裔选民投票率低迷，但少数族裔选民在人口中的绝对增长正在无情地改变选民构成。2018年，西班牙裔选民占得克萨斯州实际选民的39%，但到2024年这一比例上升到46%，黑种人、拉丁裔和亚裔美国选民都有所增加。（有和没有四年制大学学位的白种人几乎各占2024年剩余选票的一半。）截至1月，非白种人现在占得克萨斯州所有合格选民的53%以上，仅自2024年以来就增长了近3个百分点。
默里表示，选民构成的日益多元化本身就可能影响2026年的结果。他计算，如果所有主要种族群体都像2018年那样投票，但按当前选民比例计算，塔拉利科将赢得参议院席位。“如果你能达到那个水平，你就非常有竞争力了，”默里说。
对民主党人来说，困难在于能否达到同样的水平。根据出口民调，民主党人在2020年和2024年总统选举以及2022年奥罗克自己的州长竞选中，在受过大学教育的白种选民中的支持率都没有达到2018年奥罗克的44%（这与亚利桑那州和北卡罗来纳州等其他阳光地带战场州形成对比，在这些州民主党人获得了多数支持）。对民主党人来说更不祥的是，他们在得克萨斯州西班牙裔选民中的支持率大幅下降。
几乎所有得克萨斯州的观察家都认为，共和党人今年不太可能重现特朗普在2024年赢得55%西班牙裔选民的表现。但大多数人仍然怀疑民主党人能否将时钟倒回至奥罗克在2018年获得的近2:1的西班牙裔支持率优势。
得克萨斯大学LBJ学院教授、前Univision民调专家塞尔希奥·加西亚-里奥斯表示，共和党在2024年对得克萨斯州西班牙裔选民的成功“只是一个时间点的现象，与经济有关”。但他补充道，“我现在不会惊讶于看到他们转向民主党，尤其是在（格兰德）河谷地区”，不过他也表示，“我不知道（民主党人）是否能恢复”到本世纪初他们在西班牙裔选民中享有的更高支持率水平。
塔拉利科凭借其宗教背景和冷静的举止，似乎很有希望在大城市区重新获得支持，而他的初选表现表明，他可以帮助民主党人至少部分地走出在得克萨斯州西班牙裔选民中的困境。但即使他做到了这两点，他仍然必须跨越该州广阔且坚定支持共和党的中小型社区，这些地方的选票约占得克萨斯州总选票的四分之一。
“得克萨斯州的大地方不是人口众多的城市得克萨斯州，”曾为两党候选人工作的得克萨斯州主要说客和政治战略家比尔·米勒表示。“你开了又开，开了又开，然后你仍然觉得自己还没到任何地方。而所有这些地方都有人，这些人坐在那里听福克斯新闻。女子体育项目？去他的。枪支管制？去他的。全国性的民主党信息在得克萨斯州不是一个能赢的信息。”
塔拉利科面临的数学计算与该党在佐治亚州、亚利桑那州和北卡罗来纳州等其他阳光地带州面临的挑战并无不同：他能否在最大的都市区最大化支持率，并在较小的地方将损失降至最低，从而足以挤出胜利？这对得克萨斯州民主党人来说更加复杂，因为即使是一些通常最支持民主党的群体——西班牙裔和受过大学教育的白种人——在得克萨斯州也比在其他阳光地带战场州更为保守。
得克萨斯州的一切都更大——包括即使是最有才华的候选人也难以建立一个获胜的民主党联盟的挑战。
Talarico just climbed a big hill in Texas. Now he faces a mountain
2026-03-08T10:00:33.889Z / CNN
The prospect of turning Texas blue is once again tantalizing Democrats. But the party still faces imposing obstacles to reestablishing a foothold in the state.
With the solid victory of state Rep. James Talarico in last week’s US Senate primary, Democrats have found a young and media-savvy candidate who both excites party activists and offers an opportunity to recapture some of the voters who long favored Texas Republicans. The GOP, meanwhile, faces the likelihood of a bitter run-off campaign through late May between Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton, even if President Donald Trump endorses Cornyn, as the incumbent’s allies hope.
Add in Trump’s eroding popularity in the state — particularly among Hispanic voters, who flocked to him in 2024 — and Democrats understandably see their best chance in years to win a Texas US Senate seat, something they haven’t done in nearly four decades.
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Yet Texas Democrats have repeatedly seen other candidates who have inspired such excitement falter before. They have long struggled to translate favorable changes in the state’s population — increasing diversity and urbanization — into electoral success. And Cornyn’s unexpectedly strong performance in the primary’s first round has lifted the hopes of Republican strategists who believe he would be a much stronger general election candidate than the scandal-plagued Paxton.
“The primaries definitely leave the Democrats ahead of where they have been relative to any time since I’ve been working in politics, which is 2008,” says Dallas-based Republican pollster Ross Hunt. But while Hunt said the state would “immediately be in play with Paxton at the top of the ticket,” he believes Cornyn’s odds of winning the nomination now look much better. If he does, “Cornyn stands a very strong likelihood of winning the general (election).”
Other Texas strategists and analysts believe the nationwide recoil from Trump and the likelihood of lingering wounds after the GOP primary guarantee that Talarico can stay competitive against either Republican. But remaining competitive and actually prevailing are very different things. “I still have no reason to doubt it’s going to be a good Democratic year nationally,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “But Republicans have a pretty good seawall here.”
Much of the Democratic primary battle turned on competing theories of electability. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, known for her slashing attacks on Trump and other Republicans, minimized the need to recapture former Trump supporters and argued that the key to Democratic victories was mobilizing mostly non-White nonvoters. “I don’t agree that we are a conservative state. We are a nonvoting state,” Crockett told CNN during the primary campaign.
Talarico acknowledged that Democrats needed to activate more voters but said it was misguided to assume they could flip the state solely through mobilization. “I think everyone can agree, even if you have the highest Democratic turnout imaginable, you’re still gonna have to bring in some people from the other side,” Talarico told Politico.
Crockett is correct that Texas is, relatively speaking, a nonvoting state. In 2024, only about 58% of eligible Texas adults voted, well below the share in other Sun Belt battlegrounds such as North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona, according to census figures. But while turnout is especially meager among eligible Hispanics (just 45%), it is relatively low for all major racial groups in Texas.
In 2024, Black, Asian and White adults without a four-year college degree all constituted exactly as large a share of actual as eligible voters in the state, according to an analysis of census data by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Metro think tank. Hispanic people represented 7 points less of the actual than eligible electorate, Frey found, and college-educated White people about that much more of actual than potential voters.
Those patterns suggest the limits to a strategy centered on mobilization. Black, Asian American and college-educated White voters — three of the groups Democrats rely on most — are already present in the Texas electorate in numbers at least equal to their representation in the population. Most political strategists agree it is difficult to base a political strategy on the hope of energizing a large voting group to the point where it durably makes up a larger share of actual than eligible voters (beyond the traditional differentials that affect turnout, such as age and education).
Improving Hispanic turnout is undoubtedly an important component of any potential Democratic revival in Texas, but Trump’s gains among them since 2020 mean Democrats can’t assume that activating more irregular Hispanic voters will necessarily benefit them. Texas Hispanics who don’t reliably turn out “may be predominantly Democrats, but they are not predominantly liberal or progressive,” said Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project, a PAC that supports Democrats.
Given all these constraints, Angle said, the debate between Crockett and Talarico represented a false choice for Texas Democrats. “I’m in the camp that you have to build a coalition to win and you top out trying to just win people who think of themselves as Democrats,” he said. “But it is reasonable to think that you do need that type of energy and type of emotion to max out the Democratic turnout. That’s why it is hard in Texas — you have to do both of those things.”
Republicans have faced a mirror image of this debate. Cornyn’s allies argue the nationwide Democratic eagerness to vote against Trump creates such a risk of losing the Senate seat that Republicans can’t risk nominating someone as polarizing as Paxton. That is the central argument Cornyn supporters are hoping will persuade Trump to endorse the senator.
Paxton’s allies in turn maintain that Talarico will ultimately prove no more viable than other Democratic hopefuls (largely because of his liberal views on social issues) and that warnings of his strength are just a ruse to scare both Trump and primary voters into supporting Cornyn. “The establishment wants you to believe … Talarico is a huge threat in Texas, and that only RINO John Cornyn — who was rejected by 58% of his own party yesterday — can defeat him,” one conservative group supporting Paxton posted on social media the day after the primary.
The coming contest between Talarico and Cornyn or Paxton marks the latest round in the long struggle by Texas Democrats to restore their relevance. Texas Democrats last elected a US senator in 1988, a governor in 1990, and last won any statewide office in 1994. They haven’t controlled either state legislative chamber since 2002.
Without power, the Democratic infrastructure and ability to fundraise has atrophied. Though Talarico has attracted torrents of small donations, the Democratic infrastructure across the state remains skeletal. “When you haven’t won statewide elections for so long, there is no permanent in-state political apparatus,” said Hunt, the GOP pollster. “Republicans have lots of organizations that have become extremely adept at winning elections.”
But even during these lean years for Democrats, Texas has been reshaped by the same tectonic economic and demographic forces that have boosted the party in other Sun Belt states. One is growing racial diversity: From 2000 to 2024, when Texas added more than 10.4 million residents, people of color accounted for 92% of that growth, according to the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California.
Another is increasing urbanization: The state’s four largest metro areas —Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio — accounted for more than 80% of the state’s population and job growth since 2000, according to analysis by Richard Murray, a senior research associate at the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs.
This combination of diversification and improved performance in growing metros is the same formula that allowed Democrats to flip Colorado and Virginia blue after 2000, and more recently has allowed them to compete more effectively in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.
For much of the 2010s, Democrats felt optimistic that Texas appeared to be moving, albeit more haltingly, along a similar trajectory.
Calculations by Murray tracked the change. He and his colleagues have divided the state into three large geographic buckets: the 27 counties that make up its four big metropolitan areas; 28 counties in heavily Hispanic South Texas; and 199 non-metro counties across the state.
Democrats first marked notable gains in the big metros in the 2016 presidential race (when Hillary Clinton narrowly carried them against Trump), and then advanced further in 2018, when Democratic US Rep. Beto O’Rourke ran an electrifying Senate campaign that fell just 2.6 percentage points short of ousting Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
O’Rourke posted a solid margin over Cruz in the four large metro areas, winning 54% of their combined vote, Murray found. O’Rourke also ran well in heavily Hispanic South Texas, drawing about two-thirds of the vote there.
But even that wasn’t enough for O’Rourke because Cruz, according to Murray’s calculations, carried over 72% in the state’s sprawling expanse of smaller cities and rural places — enough to provide him an insurmountable cushion of more than 875,000 votes.
O’Rourke’s close call against Cruz turned out to be the modern high point for Texas Democrats. Though Joe Biden in 2020 and O’Rourke in his 2022 gubernatorial race also won the combined vote in the four large metros, neither matched O’Rourke’s 2018 total share. By 2024, Trump carried each of the big Texas metros except Austin and pushed back past 50% of their combined votes.
Simultaneously during the Biden years, Democrats retreated in the other two big buckets of Texas places. Both Abbott in 2022 and Trump in 2024 swelled the GOP vote share past 76% in the state’s smaller and midsize counties, Murray found, while the GOP’s vote in heavily Hispanic South Texas soared from only about one-third for Cruz to just over half during Trump’s reelection in 2024.
Rather than building on the Democrats’ modest but measurable Texas momentum, the Biden presidency punctured it. “Biden was a classic East Coast guy who rarely, if ever, had visited Texas, knew nothing about it, and totally botched the immigration issue,” Murray said.
The Biden years left Texas Democrats in a deep hole. But the rapid backlash against Trump’s tumultuous second term has them eyeing Talarico’s Senate bid with energy and optimism unmatched since O’Rourke’s race in 2018.
Compared with O’Rourke then, Talarico has several potential advantages — but also several enduring, and in some ways deepening, challenges. The advantages start with Trump, whose position today is weaker both in Texas and nationally than it was in 2018.
Trump’s approval rating in University of Texas polling hasn’t exceeded 45% since last June. And in contrast with Trump’s first term, when voters mostly expressed satisfaction with the economy, today he is facing widespread disapproval of his economic record in Texas. Henson of the University of Texas says Trump faces discontent over “a very similar set of (economic) concerns” to those that motivated “a lot of voters who changed sides or didn’t turn out for Democrats in 2024.”
The other big change that has strengthened Democrats since 2018 is the state’s continuing diversification. Even with lackluster Hispanic turnout, the sheer growth of minority voters in the population is inexorably transforming the electorate. People of color accounted for 39% of actual voters in Texas in 2018, but 46% in 2024, with Black, Latino and Asian American voters all recording gains, Frey found. (White people with and without a four-year college degree each provided almost exactly half of the remaining votes in 2024.) As of January, non-Whites now make up over 53% of all eligible Texas voters, up almost 3 points just since 2024, Frey found.
Murray said the electorate’s growing diversity alone could tip the 2026 outcome. If all the major racial groups vote as they did in 2018 but compose their current shares of the electorate, Talarico would win the Senate race, he has calculated. “If you can just perform at that level, you are very competitive,” Murray said.
For Democrats, the rub is performing at the same level. Democrats haven’t equaled O’Rourke’s 44% showing in 2018 among college-educated White voters in either the 2020 and 2024 presidential races or in O’Rourke’s own 2022 gubernatorial bid, according to the exit polls. (That contrasts with Arizona and North Carolina, other Sun Belt battlegrounds where Democrats have reached majority support with them.) More ominously for Democrats, their support among Texas Hispanics has nosedived.
Virtually all Texas observers agree that Republicans this year are unlikely to match Trump’s 2024 showing with Hispanics, when exit polls showed him winning a stunning 55% of them. But most still doubt Democrats can roll the clock back all the way to the nearly 2-to-1 advantage O’Rourke amassed with them in 2018.
The GOP’s 2024 success with Texas Hispanic voters “was a moment in time, it was economics,” said Sergio Garcia-Rios, a professor at the University of Texas’ LBJ School and former pollster for Univision. But while Garcia-Rios said, “I wouldn’t now be surprised to see a swing back to Democrats, especially in the (Rio Grande) Valley,” he added, “I don’t know if (Democrats) can get back” to matching the higher level of Hispanic support they enjoyed earlier this century.
With his religious background and calm demeanor, Talarico appears well positioned to regain ground in the big metros, and his primary showing signals he can help Democrats climb at least partly out of their hole with Hispanic Texas voters. But even if he does both those things, he still must scale the state’s vast expanse of staunchly Republican midsize and small communities, which together cast about one-fourth of all Texas votes.
“The big Texas is not the populous urban Texas,” said Bill Miller, a leading Texas lobbyist and political strategist who has worked for candidates in both parties. “You drive and drive and drive and drive and then you’re still not fcking anywhere. And all those places have people, and those people, they sit around and they listen to Fox. Men in women’s sports? Fck that. Gun control? F*ck that. The national Democrat message is not a winning message in Texas.”
The equation for Talarico is no different from the math the party faces in other Sun Belt states such as Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina: Can he maximize support in the largest metros, and minimize his losses in smaller places, enough to squeeze out a win? The problem is complicated for Texas Democrats because even some of the groups generally most favorable to the party — Hispanics and college-educated Whites — are more conservative there than in the other Sun Belt battlegrounds.
Everything is indeed bigger in Texas — including the challenge for even the most talented candidate to build a winning Democratic coalition.
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