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AUSTIN, Texas – Republicans in America’s largest Conservative state have won years of victories under the slogan “Keep Texas Red,” a promise to quell a coming blue wave that Democrats argued was inevitable given changing demographics.
Now these population changes have arrived, and the 2020 census confirms that the state has gotten bigger, more suburban, and much more diverse. A more fitting call for the GOP for today, however, could be “Make Texas Even Redder”.
In the face of mounting demographic threats to their party’s dominance, the Republicans of Texas have advocated a bevy of cross-border conservative policies that dramatically expand gun rights, curb abortions, and tighten electoral laws – and steer a state that was already far to the right even more.
Far from tiptoeing to the center to appease the democratically-minded Texans who are driving population growth, the party embraces its base and vows to conduct a new round of redistribution to ensure it does so by 2030 remains – and becomes a national model for staying on the offensive, no matter how the political wind turns at some point.
“Texas is obviously a national leader in the laws we make that other states follow,” said Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who likes to vow to make Texas the “freedom capital of America.”
Up for re-election next year and often mentioned as a possible 2024 presidential candidate, Abbott signed an electoral law Tuesday that empowers partisan election observers and bans a variety of measures that have facilitated voting in highly democratic cities amid the coronavirus pandemic. Republicans argue that the new rules will increase electoral security and hurry to pass them even as Democratic state lawmakers fled the state for weeks to block them.
The electoral law was almost overshadowed by the national debate over another new Texan law – the country’s toughest abortion restrictions. By banning the procedure in most cases and not allowing exceptions for cases of rape and incest, the State of Roe v. Wade, made the 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing a woman’s right to abortion perhaps the most serious threat yet.
Another new law allows virtually every Texan age 21 and over to carry weapons without a license. Other laws banned schools from teaching about institutional racism and restricted the state’s own cities from making decisions about police funding, environmental budgeting, and masking mandates.
These political victories will solidify for the foreseeable future. With Republicans in control of both houses of the legislature, the party will decide on new congressional and statehouse districts based on the 2020 census figures – to keep the boundaries as low as possible so that the GOP will become the statehouse for the next decade and beyond. Can hold majorities.
The new maps must counter the seemingly unfavorable census data for the Republicans of Texas. The state’s Hispanic population grew by nearly 2 million, according to 2020 census figures, which is half the total population growth of Texas. Although the GOP saw gains in Hispanic voters, around 6 out of 10 Hispanics in Texas voted Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump in November, according to AP VoteCast, a poll of voters.
Republicans also see warning signs in the suburbs. The state is home to four of the ten fastest growing cities in the country, powered by booming communities outside of Houston, Dallas, and Austin. After years of GOP benefits in these places, Biden split voters in the suburbs in Texas with Trump, found AP VoteCast, and won the state’s five largest counties.
The Democrats blame Trumpism for unreserved conservatism. The former president initiated “a new Republican party that is more resolute. It’s more on the fringes, ”said Ron Reynolds, vice chairman of the Texas Legislature Black Caucus.
“The cow has left the barn and it’s hard to bring her back,” said Reynolds, whose district includes the booming suburb of Houston. “They have to entertain and they have to appease because these people are excited to vote in the Republican primary.”
Democrats like Reynolds warn of voter backlash. But they have little history to back this up: Republicans haven’t lost a nationwide race in 27 years, saying it’s a bitter commitment to conservatism, not a pragmatic compromise, that has preserved the nation’s longest streak of electoral victories.
“If anyone was expecting this, their head is way too high in their, uh, philosophy,” joked Corbin Casteel, the Texan director of the 2016 Trump campaign, of the notion that census numbers put Republicans of the state in the middle could move.
Even more moderate Republicans in Texas say previous announcements about the demographic shift that has helped Democrats were exaggerated. “The rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated,” said Travis Clardy MP from Nacogdoches, east Texas.
“We continue to win with really strong numbers,” added Clardy. “I don’t think we had shrill, extreme, right-wing positions. I think we ruled conservatively. “
Yet the party has shown its ability to moderate in the not too distant past. After a wave of Democrats swept across Texas and the nation in 2018, the GOP had an extremely quiet legislature, centered on traditional issues like property tax cuts and public education.
It was only after the party held the legislature and won seats in Congress last November that it turned hard to the right in expectation that the greatest threat to its members in the future elections would be the main challenges, rather than being ousted by the Democrats.
“I’ve heard that all of this demographic shift is going to catch up with the old whites’ party, but I don’t think it happened,” Clardy said. “The numbers can change, but they may not be as trending as you think they are.”
The move to the right is perhaps best illustrated by Abbott, a former state Supreme Court Justice who was once considered a more measured and deliberate, business-friendly approach to the job, but has recently gone even further to the right than the legislature – especially in relation to immigration.
The governor recently ordered state police to arrest people suspected of being illegally in the country and ordered a state agency to pay $ 25 million for two miles of wall along the nearly 1,300-mile-long Texas-Mexico border to raise.
No big Democrat has announced a candidacy against Abbott yet, although former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke – who upset Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by just 3 percentage points in 2018 – could. The governor has already pulled a key challenge from former Congressman Allen West, a former tea party darling known for likening Democrats to Nazis.
Casteel said the doubling of conservative values works for Republicans in Texas and beyond. He referred to Abbott and another governor and possible 2024 presidential candidate, Florida Republican Ron DeSantis. Both have earned national support by being ready to oppose unpopular policies such as universal mask mandates. And that’s despite the fact that Democrats in both states insist that governors’ failure to tackle the pandemic more vigorously could ultimately jeopardize their re-election aspirations – let alone the White House.
“He has faced circumstances that few governors have, the pandemic and all sorts of other things that put the conservatives in a difficult position,” Casteel said of Abbott. “It’s about security versus freedom, and he – and people like Governor DeSantis – threaded that needle very nicely. And I think the results speak for themselves. “
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