Democrats and Republicans nationwide are going all in on these Fort Worth area races
This election season is historically strange in Tarrant County, and not just because of the pandemic.
Democrats have their sights on picking up five Republican-held House seats that are consistently on national groups’ target lists — and one of the party’s favorite sons, former Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, is working the Tarrant County phone banks.
Republicans, meanwhile, are marshaling grassroots support to help with campaigning in the Fort Worth area and its surrounding suburbs, many of which were once solidly Republican red but today are believed to be at least moderately purple, if not Democratic blue.
President Trump’s tour bus recently rolled into Bedford for a campaign stop, where the president’s surrogates simultaneously downplayed any concerns about losing some of the races in Tarrant County while also calling for supporters to begin going door-to-door.
Long seen as a bellwether county that mirrors the state’s voting patterns, it remains to be seen if Tarrant County will be a deciding factor for the 2020 election. And the stakes are high with Democrats targeting five House seats in Tarrant County, as part of their effort to regain control of the Texas House and have a greater say in redrawing political boundaries for the next decade.
“It’s a major urban county on the one hand, with Fort Worth as the 13th largest city in the country as its focal point. So it’s relevant just by sheer size,” said Jim Riddlesperger, a political science professor at TCU. “But it’s also relevant because it really is, in some ways, a microcosm of the contest going on, not just in Texas, but nationally.”
Democrats see momentum
In 2018, Tarrant County made headlines after it went blue for O’Rourke by less than 4,000 votes over Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. Working off their progress in 2018, Tarrant County Democrats say they have the momentum necessary to make Democratic wins not just an occasional headline, but a trend.
“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time,” said Deborah Peoples, the chair of the Tarrant County Democratic Party. “We’ve been working on picking up gains for some time now.”
Peoples pointed to Tarrant County Commissioner Devan Allen and state Sen. Beverly Powell both unseating Republican incumbents in 2018. And since then, Peoples said the party has been recruiting candidates in an effort to fill the ballot from judicial races up to congressional contests.
Having competitive primaries on the Democratic side hasn’t historically been the case in Tarrant County — not since the county, and the state overall, began to favor Republicans in the 1990s. From 2008 to 2018, Tarrant County races for the Texas House have seen only a handful of competitive Democratic primaries, while Republicans have had more than 20.
With Tarrant County’s recent rapid growth has come changing demographics and a large increase in minority populations, especially in the Hispanic community, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.
Rick Barnes, the chairman of the Tarrant County Republican Party, said getting candidates to run is one thing.
“There’s a big difference between putting a name on the list and putting a name on the list of a qualified candidate,” Barnes said, pointing to Republican candidates like Mansfield Mayor David Cook who have over a decade of experience in public office.
Cook has served as mayor since 2008 and was endorsed Wednesday by Gov. Greg Abbott in his race against Democratic opponent Joe Drago to replace retiring Rep. Bill Zedler to represent House District 96.
While many of Tarrant County’s Democratic House candidates haven’t held elected office, they have a history of public service and have gained the support of national groups who are pouring millions into Texas ahead of Election Day.
“I think this last election with no money and not a lot of resources, we were able to come so close and people realize that had we invested a little time and energy and money, we might have been able to win,” Peoples said.
On Tuesday, Forward Majority, a Democratic super PAC, announced it would be spending $6.2 million in the form of ads and mailers for 18 Texas House races, with Tarrant County’s five Republican-held seats that were won by less than 10 points in 2018 on their list.
According to July campaign finance reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission, the five Democratic candidates running to represent House Districts 92, 93, 94, 96 and 97 raised a combined $677,149 — more then the Republican total of $572,136. But many of the Republican candidates still have larger campaign war chests to dip into.
Federal election reports show that, in the race for congressional District 24, which includes much of Northeast Tarrant County as well as parts of Dallas and Denton counties, Republican candidate Beth Dan Duyne had raised $1.4 million and Democrat Candace Valenzuela stacked up $1.11 million.
And those were just the federal filings from June 30. Those following the race — which falls in an increasingly diverse district that was once safely Republican but in 2018 voted for O’Rourke — say they expect both candidates to amass much more funding before the next federal filings are due at the end of the month.
Ultimately, Barnes said, “money doesn’t vote.”
“The national groups can target us all they want, but we’re still going to make the decisions that are best for Texas,” Barnes said.
A battleground state?
Whether Texas is a swing state depends on who you ask.
Peoples said that the Trump campaign’s bus tour stop in Bedford last week is evidence that Tarrant County — and the state — is in play. But Barnes waved off those suggestions, and said that, “the reality of it all is that when you have a guy running for president of the United States, you parade him around the state and parade his information.”
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who was among those riding in the Trump bus and is Trump’s Texas chairman, said he has no worries about Democrats making gains in Texas.
“This is a very populous state with a lot of Republicans. It’s clearly not a battleground state,” Patrick said. “If you want a battleground state, go to Florida, a state the president carried. They need to worry about their own math — Minnesota, Colorado, New Hampshire, Nevada. All those states could fall into Republican hands in 2020, with the president.”
He added: “If they want to come spend money in Texas, and they think this is a battleground state, let them come spend their money unwisely.”
Patrick told reporters late last month that he predicts Trump will win Texas by an even larger margin than the 9 percentage points in 2016, this time with “double digits.” But recent polls suggest a closer race, pinning Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden within a few percentage points of each other.
“The Democrats and the Republicans are looking at the same data. And the same data that encourages Democrats scares Republicans,” Riddlesperger said. “They would not be spending time and money in Tarrant County if they didn’t think that Tarrant County could conceivably be in play.”
But ultimately, Riddlesperger said he thinks the most important factor to consider will be the percentage of voters who are still undecided.
“Voters don’t always act in the way that you want them to. They don’t always act in a way that the polls seem to indicate that they might,” Riddlesperger said.
And which way voters may sway may be compounded by the pandemic.
According to an August poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, just 31% of Americans approve of how Trump is handling the pandemic — a drop from the 44% approval he had in March. Overall, most Americans think the government is not doing enough to help small businesses, public schools and individuals weather the economic effects of the outbreak, according to the poll.
Virtual campaigning
The pandemic has already changed how candidates campaign.
The Tarrant County Democratic Party has shifted to fundraisers on Zoom, virtual town halls and dropping off campaign signs at people’s houses overnight, Peoples said.
In the race for Congress, Valenzuela and her Democratic supporters are doing less door-to-door campaigning than they might have in previous campaigns, mainly because of concerns about social distancing. Valenzuela said she is relying heavily upon phone calls with prospective voters.
But Van Duyne and her Republican backers aren’t shying away from appearing in public, including visiting residents in their homes and neighborhoods.
And, interviews with a handful of Trump supporters shows that they have few qualms about campaigning door-to-door, many without face masks.
“It’s not too difficult,” said Cathy Hartman-McAfee, who lives in far north Fort Worth and runs a Trump neighborhood support group. “You just give people a little space.”
Becky Sublett, who lives in the Roanoke area, offered a similar sentiment as she waved a large flag with the message “Texas For Trump” during Trump’s bus rally in Bedford.
“People are still going door to door,” Sublett said. “People are starting to be less afraid, which they should be.”
Getting in front of potential voters is what Barnes said will make a difference.
“They may be outspending, but we’re outworking,” he said.
