When Texas Republicans redrew the state’s congressional map over the summer season, they aimed to flip 5 districts held by Democrats and had been guided by the 2024 presidential election outcomes, which confirmed voters shifting to the suitable.
But successful all 5 of these seats below the brand new map is much from a lock for Republicans subsequent November.
With Hispanic voters displaying indicators of souring on President Trump in particular elections this 12 months and considerations mounting over the price of residing, Democrats consider they might maintain on to as many as three of the redrawn seats in Texas, two within the Rio Grande Valley and presumably a 3rd centered in and round San Antonio. The occasion can be taking a look at flipping a Republican seat within the Valley, little modified in its partisan make-up by the brand new map, the place a preferred Tejano music star is operating as a average Democrat.
The battle in Texas is in the end about whether or not Republicans can preserve their slim management of the U.S. House into the second half of the Trump administration. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the brand new map to enter impact final week.
Success for Democrats would imply bucking the voting pattern that led Republicans to attract the brand new congressional district round San Antonio, Texas’ thirty fifth. Its new strains embody a variety of recent Texas communities, together with the southern working-class neighborhoods of town, its jap suburbs and a few of the surrounding and fast-developing rural counties, the place cows nonetheless graze alongside neatly organized housing developments. The majority of residents are Hispanic, and a few third are white.
Such creating suburban areas have been among the many most hotly contested within the state, with Democrats making beneficial properties in some current elections, together with within the suburbs and exurbs of Houston and Dallas. But Republicans surged again in 2024. Had the thirty fifth existed in its redrawn type final 12 months, it could have voted for Mr. Trump by a margin of somewhat over 10 proportion factors.
The largest query for subsequent 12 months’s midterm elections is whether or not the rightward pattern will maintain, or 2026 will look extra just like the 2018 midterms, throughout Mr. Trump’s first time period, when Democrats made beneficial properties throughout the state.
“The assumption that Latino voters who voted for Trump in 2024 would proceed to vote Republican is doubtlessly a foul assumption,” stated Michelle Lowe Solis, the chair of the Bexar County Democratic Party, which incorporates San Antonio. “We have an excellent shot at this.”
Ms. Solis pointed to native races in final month’s election, together with within the Houston suburbs, the place voters ousted hard-right conservatives from a faculty board, and a State Senate race outdoors of Fort Worth, the place a Democrat got here inside 3 factors of successful a district that had favored Mr. Trump by a large margin, regardless of being significantly outspent. “That was actually a shock,” she stated.
On Wednesday, the state occasion, together with Texas Majority PAC, which works to elect Democrats in Texas, introduced that it had signed up candidates in each state home and senate race in 2026 in addition to all of these for the U.S. House — what the occasion stated was a primary.
“We intend to battle for each single seat in 2026,” stated Katherine Fischer, government director of Texas Majority PAC.
At the identical time, Republicans have made inroads in Hispanic communities alongside the border in areas previously managed by Democrats. Two of the seats focused within the redistricting which Democrats assume they nonetheless have a shot at belong to average Democratic representatives, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. Both have held on whilst their districts have voted for Trump.
Since the 2024 election, their districts had been drawn to be much more Republican, primarily based on these outcomes. Still, Mr. Gonzalez stated in an interview, he and Mr. Cuellar consider they’ll win. “The I.C.E. raids are fairly surprising to folks, even those that had been robust on the border, once they see, you realize, blind previous males getting tackled on the sidewalk,” he stated. “I really feel assured we’re going to win it.”
The thirty fifth District round San Antonio is extra of a tossup — albeit one which favors Republicans — as a result of there is no such thing as a incumbent. (Representative Greg Casar, a progressive Democrat, represented the previous thirty fifth, when it stretched from San Antonio to Austin. He determined to run for re-election in an Austin district.)
Some of the district’s Republican major voters are in search of candidates who not solely backed Mr. Trump however wish to see his insurance policies taken additional. Sam Hines, a 32-year-old occasion activist in Bexar County, stated he thought the Trump administration’s deportation program wanted to be accelerated.
“I really feel prefer it’s lots of picture ops to make it appear like an motion film,” Mr. Hines stated. “It’s probably not what he promised.”
Mr. Hines, who labored for a number of months as a state-employed monitor on migrant buses as a part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s program sending new arrivals to Democrat-led cities, stated that the Democrats’ message of affordability was a legitimate difficulty.
“Anytime I’m on the grocery story or a restaurant, that’s once I discover it,” he stated, including that, in distinction, gasoline costs had been fairly low, at the least in Texas. Still, he stated, that difficulty is not going to sway him away from supporting Republicans subsequent fall.
The district additionally features a pair of deeply conservative rural counties, and its city areas are close to army bases, lately electing a Republican to the state home after supporting Democrats for generations.
“I had a bunch of individuals saying, ‘I voted for you, and never your stinking occasion,’” John Lujan, a former San Antonio firefighter, stated of that election, by which he flipped the state home district for Republicans within the southern a part of town 4 years in the past.
Mr. Lujan is one in every of a number of candidates operating in a crowded Republican major within the thirty fifth. While he stated there was nonetheless pleasure for Republicans within the space, he was additionally fast to emphasize his bipartisan strategy and skill to get together with Democrats — together with taking part in common pingpong video games with a Democratic colleague within the legislature.
“One hundred p.c, I wish to work collectively,” he stated throughout an interview at a newly constructed business strip close to the rising city of Schertz. “It’s gotten so divisive,” he stated.
At the identical time, he stated that making an attempt to win the Republican major — by which candidates are vying to win over a extra conservative occasion base — may complicate that message of cross-party unity. “Right now, within the primaries, I’ve to be far proper, Mr. Lujan stated.
Democratic strategists nationally have seen the district as doubtlessly winnable, regardless of the Republican benefit, partly due to what they hope is the power of a first-time candidate, Johnny Garcia, a cowboy-hat-wearing deputy sheriff and hostage negotiator in San Antonio.
At a Mexican restaurant within the metropolis’s south facet, Mr. Garcia harassed his dedication to public security as a regulation enforcement officer, and his perception that the district, regardless of the brand new boundaries, was “very a lot in play,” and that the Republican Party had “overplayed their hand.”
Increasing costs on the grocery retailer, immigration raids, the price of well being care — all of these had been points within the race, he stated. “Treating folks humanely, justly, like human beings and residents ought to be, is my fundamental focus,” he stated.
Ralph Gutierrez, 69, the conservative former mayor of Schertz who misplaced his bid for re-election in November, stated his space remained solidly Republican, even when he and others didn’t help the president’s push for the mass deportation of these with out legal information.
“I’ve somebody that I’ve identified for 20 years, he has adopted three women, and if he will get deported, what’s going to occur to the three little women?” he stated. “Where do you draw the road?”
Still, Mr. Gutierrez added, it was not sufficient to make him help Democrats. He blames the occasion for permitting so many migrants into the nation within the first place.
