He was defeated over the once blue Rio Grande Valley. Reduced margins for large cities such as Houston and Dallas. Lost seats at the state capitol.
The drabs, taken by Texas Democrats in the 2024 election, were bad enough to rob any party of their stubborn feelings. After all, the long-standing belief that demographic changes, population growth and rapid urbanization have been at the forefront of turning the country's most populous Republican nation since November has been tattered.
But Ken Martin, the newly elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, shook the country with one of the first stops this week and his first swing. And the message he conveyed was against. Texas, the second largest state, could still be the linchpin for the revival of the Nationalist Party.
“The Democratic future will run through Texas,” Martin pointed to a national change in population from democratic coastal hubs to the south. “We're here now.
Martin spoke on Wednesday during a meeting with local democratic activists who heard about the need for an annual investment in campaign infrastructure. Democrat challenger Colin Allred, just a few months ago.
As Texas is a tall hill for Democrats to climb, Martin's pitch this week has said a lot about the party's struggle nationwide, like his hopes of turning the nation over. Democrats need to open new ground as solid Democrat states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are once competitive and their population continues to shift towards the Sun Belt.
For now, the ground does not seem particularly fertile in Texas. Republicans control all branches of the state government, Democrats have not been elected to statewide offices since 1994, and the party can effectively organize across vast and expensive states. It shows little.
Demography was once considered a political fate in Texas. There, current residents are currently Hispanic. The state has five of the five largest cities, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth, with its population being more diverse. Democrats believed that these trends would eventually shift Texas from red to blue.
But it didn't work that way.
Instead, Hispanic voters in traditional Democratic bases shifted to the right, with many Democrat voters in the city simply staying home in the last election.
Vice President Kamala Harris won more than 400,000 votes in Texas in 2024. President Trump's total vote in Texas has increased by 500,000.
“After Cycle Cycle” Democrats “selled the dream of turning this dream over,” says Delilah Ago Otogire, executive director of the Texas Future Project, working with donors who are eager to invest in the state. He said that.
“The way we lost in November provides an inflection point that didn't exist before,” she says, and Democrats are trying to change their fate, not a natural voter-based trend. He added that campaign investment is required.
Despite the rough defeat in 2024, the changing patterns of demographics, particularly where Americans live, have come to Texas, where it could win four or more house seats after the 2030 census. It continues to promote unfair interest from the Democrats. Martin and others argue that Democrats need to be much more competitive in places like Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and even Missouri, where Martin traveled this week.
“We have to be present,” he said of his party. “We have to give people a sense of not just their vote, but actually caring about their lives.”
Texas Democrats are debating exactly what went wrong in the last election and what they need to do accordingly. The initial efforts were not smooth.
Shortly after the loss in November, party leader Gilberto Hinojosa suggested that Democrats should take a more gradual stance on social issues, particularly when it comes to transgender rights.
He faced an immediate pushback and apologized. Soon he said he wouldn't run for reelection.
In the race to replace him as party leader, the candidate offered a set of approaches, but a common theme. The Democrats have lost contact with working-class bases.
“We've forgotten the marginalized people, the underdogs,” said Steve Miller, pastor of Henderson, the East Texas town of Henderson, who is seeking a post.
Democrat activists acknowledged that the party did poor work in 2024, especially among Hispanic voters. As a result, Democrats lost a once solid blue county in South Texas.
“We have to be honest about the fact that we don't work in South Texas,” said Lily Schector, another candidate who is formerly chairman of the Harris County Democrats, including Houston. . “The Republicans are there all year round and we have nothing.”
In a sign of the gap, the Texas Democrats have filled a position that is just over 3,000 of the local party organizers, a kind of local party organizer. Republicans fill more than 4,200 such positions.
Tania Gonzalez Ingram, a Democratic organizer who managed the reelection campaign in South Texas, who won the slightest November, said that some of the party's issues have been nationwide in the message about abortion and immigration. He said he was fascinated. I believe these issues resonate with Hispanic voters.
“I'm not all Latino queens, but socially, we're not progressive,” Gonzalez Ingram said. “We see Latinos heading towards the Republican Party because they're having a conversation about money.”
Beto O'Rourke, a former El Paso lawmaker who considered a raucous and hopeful Senate campaign in 2018 to take on the race where Cruz leads the Texas Democrats, barely escaped Cruz.
But after weeks of speaking with elected officials, candidates and party members, he said in an interview that “it was not clear that we were allied.” So he opposed running.
“From my point of view, this is not rocket science, it's common sense, and Democrats have lost it,” said O'Rourke, who is sitting in the living room in El Paso's home. “You have to listen to people. Their concerns must be yours.”
Despite the defeat of Democrats, including himself, O'Rourke reiterated the message from Democrats' chairman Martin.
“Without Texas, there really is no way to the White House for Democrats after 2032,” he said. “We have no choice but to understand that.”
For years, it appeared that Democrats were profiting in the state. The party bridges the gap in the presidential election, and in 2018, O'Rourke's competition to settle Cruz was under three percentage points during a wave of waves against Republicans during Trump's first term. There was a shortage.
Along the way, Democrats were holding back the Republican advantage in the Texas Legislature. In 2018, a wave of energetic New Democrat representatives took office. Then President Biden came within six points of winning the state in 2020.
The change in Texas seemed to be approaching.
But that wasn't the case: O'Rourke ran for governor in 2022 and was defeated. Democrats lost their seat on the Capitol last year. Harris lost Texas to Trump with more than 13 percent of points.
