Democrats didn’t flip enough of Texas, and why did they bring Kamala Harris here?

I can tell you why Texas had such a big election turnout.

This is what happens when the Cowboys stink.

Left to other diversions, voters across Fort Worth, Arlington and Dallas took more interest in politics than they have in 30 years.

The result: a few area incumbents thrown out of office, the closest area presidential vote in decades and a slightly more purple tint from the courthouse to the Texas House.

But one thing didn’t change. Most of the “new voters” everybody talked about in Texas are just as conservative as the regular Texas voters, if not more so.

So Texas still has U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, and Tarrant County apparently is still represented in Congress by Republicans Kay Granger of Fort Worth, Ron Wright of Arlington and Michael Burgess of Lewisville, plus Democrat Marc Veasey of Fort Worth.

When the night began, Tarrant County was considered the largest reliably red Republican urban county in America. But now, the county is ever so slightly more purple.

President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden were neck-and-neck in Tarrant County early, with thousands of mail-in votes still to be counted by a short-staffed county election board.

“It’s shocking just to see Tarrant County that close,” said Dallas Republican Jason Villalba, a former state representative and president of the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation.

“The story of the night is that Texas is unquestionably purple,” he said as Biden took a preliminary lead in city returns from early voting, with much of Trump’s rural vote still outstanding.

“The Democratic Party challenged in all these races, and it’s razor-thin. ... They are making inroads they weren’t making four years ago.”

A few Democratic challengers flipped seats, particularly in bluer-than-ever Dallas County. But mostly, Democrats didn’t gain as much ground as in they did in 2018, when Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke spent $90 million against Sen. Ted Cruz, some of it on criss-crossing the state visiting all 254 counties and eating at Whataburger.

Let’s just say Biden 2020 was no Beto 2018.

Up and down the Texas ballot, Democrats did not run as close to Republicans as they did in 2018, and may have slightly lost ground in some counties.

Maybe it was a mistake to bring a “Biden bus” and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris into Fort Worth on the last weekend of the campaign.

There is no indication that Harris’ visit helped lift Democrats in Tarrant County, and the rumbles around the visits seemed to wake up Republicans, as did the president’s fervent national rallies in the final days.

Without the energy and $90 million that O’Rourke brought in 2018, and up against a statewide Republican campaign with Gov. Greg Abbott putting money behind his party’s control of the Texas House, Democrats fell short in the local Texas House races they hoped to win.

Democrats wanted to flip nine House races statewide, and had their eyes on five in Tarrant County.

But incumbents state Rep. Craig Goldman, Rep. Matt Krause and Rep. Tony Tinderholt seemed to be holding onto early leads, and former Mansfield Mayor David Cook had an edge in an open seat in that area. A fifth seat in Hurst-Euless-Bedford was leaning toward Republican Jeff Cason with thousands of mail ballots still out.

Colleyville Democrat Kim Olson was the party’s toughest statewide challenger besides O’Rourke in 2018, but she lost a congressional primary this year.

“Texans certainly turned out to vote. Texas is no longer a non-voting state,” she wrote in a text message.

But plenty of those votes are still red.

This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 10:17 PM.