Texas has the blessing and curse of holding one of the earliest primaries in the country. Long before March primaries and May runoffs, Democrats scrambled to field as many candidates as possible before the December 2017 filing deadline, and we did pretty good (updated map https://demprecincts.org/tx-house-2018/) There are candidates running in dark-red districts around the state that haven't seen a Democrat on the ballot in over a decade. While the conventional wisdom out of power brokers in Austin is dismissive of wasted time and money, common sense would point to conventional wisdom's dismal track record; if you don't run Democrats and don't even present the Texas electorate with options, the data will obviously reflect a one-party state.
Tandem fundraising for the rural challengers in House Team Purple and House Team Purple part 2 is an effort to change that narrative.
This is a year for offense and outreach and pressure rather than hunkering down in "safe Dem" districts and fighting with establishment types over table scraps left over from heavy gerrymandering. Our urban areas are primed to flex their muscle, and that certainly applies to the six congressional districts that the GOP decided to carve out of Travis County. Let's hope they learn to regret it.
This is the year to realign state legislatures and congressional delegations everywhere, and the stakes in Texas are highest: a new Census in 2020 projects to grow our federal representation by 3 or even 4 new seats. What kind of state legislature will get to decide the new maps, and will we have any shot at a Governor or Attorney General that can oversee the redistricting process with any degree of bipartisan fairness?
Drawing from this compilation of 2012 and 2016 election data, you can see congressional, state senate and state house districts broken down into columns ranging from "Solid R" to "Longshot" to "Very Winnable." Regardless of probability, what each of these districts has in common is that even the reddest of the distant red counties will include rockstar Democrats like Beto O'Rourke, Kim Olsen and Mike Collier. The very presence of qualified Dems running at all levels on the ballot introduces a synergy we haven't enjoyed in several cycles.
There's a snowball's chance in hell of winning big enough to course-correct a generation of Texas politics, so snowball is exactly what Democrats must do. We must empower people and challenge them to personally bring at least three other friends to the polls: family, co-workers, neighbors and a generation of the newly registered. A rolling snowball groups snowflake after snowflake, shaking out pockets of the disenfranchised as it gathers into an avalanche.
But the data shows that it’s not all longshots and underdogs that we’re backing: there are “very winnable” self-starter contenders in like Democrats Dee Ann Torres Miller in Kingsville (R+5) and Amanda Jamrok in Galveston (R+8) that are already part of House Team Purple 1. There are dark horse candidates like Erin Zwiener in Hays County (R+7) that have already worked to gather real momentum with an affirmative netroots chorus of social media adds and shoutouts.
House Team Purple 2 ranges from R+32 “Solid R” to R+11 “Tough but Winnable.” Each and every one of these amazing people deserves encouragement and support, they are the audacious rising tide that will lift Texas Democrats to victory in the fall. This is the year.