Not a single candidate in Texas is running on immigration, and what Trump and Abbott are doing. That failure could be why Texas Democrats remain the party of losers. The odds are already against the statewide candidates, so what do they have to lose by having some juevos and trying something different? Here in Harris County, at least early voting indicates that Spanish-surname voters are not coming out to vote. I recently asked someone I know why he voted while his wife didn’t; he told me it really didn’t make a difference. He and his wife are Mexican-American: Salinas v. Boykin, a Latina v. an Afro-American. If the Latina can’t get Latinas to vote for her, one would think there is a problem.
Those running county-wide, what do they have to lose? Are they afraid that some Democrats won’t vote for them in the primary? Are they worried that if they win the primary, then the Republicans won’t vote for them? Democrats in Texas have mastered the art of losing.
Higgins ran hard on Trump’s ongoing ICE raids and on DeSantis’ embrace of that cruelty, including his grotesque Alligator Alcatraz detention center.
“We are facing rhetoric from elected officials that is so dehumanizing and cruel, especially against immigrant populations,” Higgins told the Associated Press after her victory. “The residents of Miami were ready to be done with that.”
Miami voters certainly were, and it doesn’t look like a case of base turnout. All indications are that Republican voters flipped.
… “If you thought the raw percentages looked bad for Republicans, this map is even more alarming,” tweeted Miami-based data scientist Raidel Nabut. “In the Miami mayoral race, Democrats erased the GOP’s gains from last year in Shenandoah, The Roads, and parts of Little Havana. Cuban precincts shifted 15–20 points to the left and Republicans were crushed in Anglo areas like Coconut Grove.”
Little Havana has long been a fortress of Cuban American Republicanism, rooted in decades of preferential immigration treatment and hardened by Cold War-era grievances. That preferential treatment ended in 2017 under President Barack Obama, yet Cuban immigrants still benefited from the Biden administration’s Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans.
