The following is from Texas Monthly; there is a paywall, but it is cheap, so if you live in Texas, it is $15 for one year or $35 for three years. That is digital; if you want printed copies, extra.
The Biggest Lie in Texas Politics
Ahead of the midterm elections, Democrats in the state are leaning on an old message.
Here’s a story about politics that might challenge your assumptions. It’s about the race for the U.S. Senate in Texas in 2018, the last blue wave, when a large chunk of the electorate was angry enough at Donald Trump to show up at the polls in numbers not seen in a midterm in the modern era. By the time voting locations closed at 7 p.m. in El Paso on November 6, the campaign staff of both Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke had reason to be anxious: O’Rourke because no Democrat had won a statewide seat in Texas since 1994, and Cruz because his opponent had conducted a ferocious tour of the state and raised more than twice as much money, amassing a war chest that might have made Genghis Khan jealous. Then, before ballots were tabulated, the total vote count of 8.3 million was recorded—a turnout of 53 percent that shattered the percentage in all midterms in the state since 1970. As a person familiar with one of the campaigns relayed to me years ago, one candidate began to celebrate.
… Cruz was right. He did win. It was the closest statewide election since the nineties, but this was not, as Democrats often argue, because O’Rourke activated masses of onetime nonvoters. The real magic trick of his campaign was convincing hundreds of thousands of Texans who also voted for Republican Governor Greg Abbott to support him simultaneously—not enough, but no small measure.
Is the writer of the article correct? I believe he is; therefore, the right candidate is James Talarico. I just don’t see Jasmine Crockett convincing Republicans or too many Independents to vote for her. She may do as well as Kamala Harris did statewide against Donald Trump, and slightly better if the opponent is Ken Paxton. Ken Paxton is a flawed candidate, but he is not as bad as Donald Trump, and Texans voted for him.
President-elect Donald Trump’s projected win in Texas in the 2024 presidential election was not a surprise, but the size of his victory was greater than polls had indicated. Trump scored the biggest margin of victory in a presidential race in the state in two decades.
As of Wednesday morning, Trump was ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris by 1,604,749 votes, with 99% of votes in. Trump won 6,558,319 votes, or 56.2% statewide, compared to 4,953,570 votes, which is 42.4% for Harris.
Remember, Jasmine Crockett is to the far left of Kamala Harris. It certainly does not help that Crockett may have alienated Latino voters in Texas before deciding to run for Senate. She did not need Hispanic support in the Congressional District she represented, but she would need their support statewide. If Jasmine Crockett wins the Senate primary, I expect that, come November, she will drag down many other Democrats across the state. That happened with the down-ballot votes last year with Kamala at the top of the ticket in Texas.
Beto O’Rourke created a circus around his campaign, which he started a year before the election. Talarico did not do that; thus, he lacks name ID. Jasmine Crockett has name ID, but not the type of ID she would want to use to convince people who tend to vote Republican to vote for her.
Probably the best-known last name of a candidate running for office is Pulido, and Talarico has already gotten his endorsement.
Bobby Pulido is the son of a well-known Tejano singer, Roberto Pulido. Bobby Pulido is also a Tejano singer. Bobby is the English version of Roberto. Roberto is Robert in English.