Texas
After overlooking O’Rourke, national Democrats show early confidence in Allred
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WASHINGTON — With more than four months left before Election Day 2018, Democrat Beto O’Rourke had campaigned in all of Texas’ 254 counties in his bid to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. It was a novel strategy central to breaking through in a Republican-controlled state that national Democrats had largely written off.
Six years later, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred is taking a much more traditional approach to campaigning as he tries to do what O’Rourke couldn’t: topple Cruz. Allred has made only 125 campaign stops so far, focusing instead on getting his message out early and directly to wide swaths of voters in TV, radio and digital ads. The Allred campaign isn’t skimping on the state’s expensive media markets, booking ads in the Houston, San Antonio, Laredo and Rio Grande Valley markets last month, and placing English and Spanish ads on digital platforms statewide.
Most notably, national Democrats are showing their confidence by investing in the state more proactively than in the past.
The change in tactic shows how the landscape in Texas has evolved for Democrats since the last time they tried to oust Cruz. Democrats outside of Texas have long thought the state is just too big, too expensive and too Republican to bother pouring in money. But the near-success of the 2018 O’Rourke campaign, the development of Democratic campaign infrastructure and the roster of U.S. Senate seats up for election this year are pushing the party to take Texas more seriously.
“In terms of Texas, we have a real opportunity there. Colin Allred is a strong candidate. He won decisively a primary. He is a man who was able to win a tough seat in the Dallas area, beating an entrenched Republican,” Sen. Gary Peters, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a March interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “He knows how to win.”
To be sure, Democrats will be running uphill in the state, which Republicans have dominated for a generation. Cruz has made it clear he is not taking anything for granted after the 2018 scare when O’Rourke came within 3 points of beating him. That year was the closest Democrats came to breaking their long-running statewide drought.
Cruz maintains strong support among conservative voters in Texas, often polling close to Gov. Greg Abbott for most popular statewide elected official among registered Republicans. Cruz is better armed this cycle, with almost double the amount of cash on hand now than at the same point in 2018.
Cruz is also a more seasoned candidate than he was during his last run. He has greater seniority in the Senate and a roster of legislative accomplishments he is eagerly touting — many of which he achieved with members of the other party. As the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, he oversaw his GOP colleagues in passing aviation safety legislation, and he has worked with Democrats on issues ranging from sexual assault in the military to cross-border commerce. For the first time, he’s making his bipartisanship and less-celebrated work a core part of his campaign.
National Democrats show their interest
The DSCC identified the state as one of its top two pick-up opportunities this year along with Florida. The group is funding staffers in the state and funneling money into advertising. And with several months until Election Day, Democratic strategists alert that the pushes will only amplify exponentially as the summer months progress.
The DSCC included Texas in a $79 million ad buy announced last fall, including a seven-figure digital advertising investment for the state. It has financed new staff positions in Texas dedicated to finding and pitching opposition material on Cruz, and ran an ad casting Cruz as pushing legislation that would curb Medicare and Social Security benefits.
Veterans of the O’Rourke campaign say no such support existed from national Democrats this early in the 2018 cycle.
“There wasn’t as much of a presumption of coordination in 2018 as there is now because Texas hadn’t been competitive statewide in 25 years,” said Katherine Fischer, a Beto campaign alumna who is now deputy executive director of Texas Majority PAC.
It took years for Texas Democrats to get their national counterparts to take their runs seriously. Former state Sen. Wendy Davis remembers during her 2014 gubernatorial run — which got intense coverage following her historic filibuster against an abortion bill the year before — that national Democrats often used her story to fundraise, only to send the money to other gubernatorial candidates in other states.
“Now, not only do you have the verbal support for calling from these groups, but what you’re starting to see is they’re going to make significant investments in this race,” Davis said. “And that’s the first time that we’ve had this kind of national political money coming in to help one of our statewide candidates.”
Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project, said Democrats outside of the state were much more interested in House races in 2018 than helping O’Rourke. Several districts were competitive that year and attracted millions in investment from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, including Allred’s House race that year.
Meanwhile, the DSCC was faced with an unfavorable map for Democrats and more attainable pick-up opportunities in the far less expensive swing states of Nevada and Arizona (Democrats won in both races that year). Texas contains two of the 10 most expensive media markets in the country (Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston), and the sheer vastness of the state makes it a daunting prospect.
“Beto gets most of the credit” for his 2018 successes, Angle said. “Whatever the DSCC did, they did late. That’s not surprising. That’s what I would expect: The DSCC first would have to protect their incumbents and Texas is a giant investment statewide for them.”
Zack Malitz, who was the field director of O’Rourke’s 2018 campaign, said the campaign’s aggressive investments in recruiting a large volunteer network could help future Democratic candidates.
“One built-in advantage that Texas campaigns have now is that you have tens of thousands of people who have volunteered on well-managed field programs in Texas and so the upfront investment to activate those people is a lot lower now,” Malitz.
A bad map for Dems, a good map for Texas Dems
National Democrats are zeroing in on Texas to a certain extent because there are no better alternatives for their attention. The Senate map this year is generally unfavorable for Democrats, who have several vulnerable incumbents up for reelection, while all Republicans up for reelection are in generally safe states.
Democrats are spending considerable funds to protect Sens. Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Jon Tester in Montana — both representing states that voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 by significant margins. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who was previously a Democrat, is not running for reelection in her swing state of Arizona.
Sens. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, and Bob Casey, D-Pennsylvania, will also be up for reelection this year in states that voted for President Joe Biden by a margin of less than three points. In Maryland, the popular former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan has the backing of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in his bid to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin.
Meanwhile, the Republican Senate seats up for election this year outside of Texas and Florida are in Wyoming, Tennessee, Indiana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, Utah and Mississippi. None are states Democrats are particularly optimistic about flipping.
“While the Senate calculus for where we pick up the state is pretty narrow, the Senate calculus for where we have to hold is actually pretty wide,” said Tory Gavito, president of Democratic donor network Way to Win. “There’s a lot of money that needs to go into Montana, Nevada, Arizona, where we already hold Senate seats.”
Fischer notes that trends could point favorably for Democrats in the future. Of states Biden lost in 2020, Texas had the third smallest margin behind Florida and North Carolina. North Carolina has no open Senate seats this year, and Florida has demonstrated a considerable rightward shift in the last several years, Fischer said.
“Texas is by far the best pick-up opportunity,” said Fischer. “They have to play some offense, too, and if they’re looking at offense, then Texas is definitely their best opportunity.”
Confidence in Allred
Allred polls relatively close to where O’Rourke was at this point in 2018. By May of 2018, polls showed Cruz comfortably ahead of O’Rourke by as much as 11 points in a Quinnipiac poll. An April poll by the University of Texas and The Texas Tribune show Cruz ahead of Allred by 13 points.
But it’s still early in the cycle, and investments into Texas could expand considerably later in the summer. The Senate Majority PAC, Democrats’ largest independent spending group, has not yet made public any plans to invest in Texas, but its leadership hinted it could later in the year. The group has already reserved $239 million in ads focusing on defending its incumbents in vulnerable states.
O’Rourke’s momentum also didn’t escalate until much later in 2018. He had exponential growth in fundraising in the final quarter of the year before November, surging to $70.2 million by Election Day. He had reported under $25 million up to the end of the prior quarter.
Democrats emphasize Allred is a strong candidate in his own right and has been aggressive in his messaging efforts to attack Cruz. Allred is running on a decidedly moderate platform in contrast with past statewide candidates — a strategy on display ahead of the primary when state Sen. Roland Gutierrez tried to win the nomination on a much more progressive message. It’s an approach that Davis said makes Allred more appealing to male and moderate voters.
“He appeals to people in a way that is unique, not just to Democrats, but to independents and to moderate Republicans as well because he is a person who doesn’t need to be the center of attention,” Davis said. “He just wants to do the work.”
Allred also outraised both Cruz (and O’Rourke’s 2018 campaign) in the first quarter of the year. Allred raised over $9.7 million in the first three months of the year to O’Rourke’s over $6.7 million in the first quarter of 2018. In the first quarter of this year, Cruz raised over $6.9 million through his principal campaign, but that figure goes up to $9.7 million when including his other fundraising operations, some of which is for other candidates.
Allred also has a record of winning a competitive seat in his Dallas-based district in 2018 against U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, who was later elected in 2020 to represent Waco. Sessions was a formidable opponent, having overseen the National Republican Congressional Committee during the 2010 cycle — one of his party’s most successful in decades.
O’Rourke, who never represented a competitive district, did not have that track record to bolster confidence in his run among his D.C. counterparts.
“You don’t act on nostalgia. I mean, it’s cold blooded,” Angle said. “And you look at each election cycle in its cycle, and Beto gets plenty of credit for the success he had in 2018. But [national Democrats] are looking at what Colin Allred is doing.”
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Texas
Harris County attorney pushes for stronger laws to protect Texas renters from negligent landlords
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — It’s no secret that if you’re a renter in Texas, you don’t have the upper hand.
“It’s basically very friendly to landlords to be able to punish tenants, to evict tenants, and so it creates this, what I think is an overly favorable environment to landlords,” Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said.
When problems go without repair for months, the law says you still cannot withhold rent, and there are hoops you have to jump through to hold your landlord accountable.
Through Action 13’s Renters’ Rights, we hear about these problems often.
So, what can be done?
It’s a long process and rare for a city or county in Texas to step in and hold negligent landlords accountable.
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee is determined to change that. He says he knows what it’s like.
“Like many other folks in Harris County, I came up in a working-class family, and part of my upbringing was living in an apartment complex. This was a complex that had units that were routinely infested with roaches, that had cars being broken into all the time. My mother’s car was stolen multiple times from this apartment complex,” Menefee explained.
He’s seen it and wants to stop it.
“Here in the state of Texas, there just aren’t laws on the books that allow us the opportunity to go after landlords,” Menefee said.
He says that come January when the legislature reconvenes, he’ll be in Austin, pushing for a fix. “What I’d like to see is a law that allows the government to step in and immediately call these folks to account, whether that’s through an administrative procedure, through fines, through a lawsuit, anything to push them in the direction of doing the right thing,” Menefee explained.
His office found a creative way to sue a local complex earlier this year.
The Palms on Rolling Creek in north Harris County had severe sewage issues for years. Months after the lawsuit was filed, the owners did make progress in fixing it.
Menefee is putting negligent landlords on notice, and you can help.
“My ask to you is if you are living in an apartment complex that is not treating you right, or you know someone who is, have them report that to us and also reach out to your local, state representative or state senator,” Menefee said.
They need to know about the problems to help them make their case for why they believe these laws need to change.
“I understand your experience. I have lived through that myself. My family has lived through that. We hear you, and we are going to keep working on those issues,” Menefee said.
For more news updates, follow Courtney Carpenter on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Copyright © 2024 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.
Texas
Nate Germonprez: Texas' Un-Real Breaststroker Becomes #7 Performer in History
2024 Texas Hall of Fame Invite
- November 20-22, 2024
- Where: Lee and Joe Jamail Swimming Center — Austin, TX
- When: 10 am CT prelims/6 pm CT finals
- Participating Teams: Pitt, Stanford, Texas (host), USC, Wisconsin, BYU, Cal Poly
- Meet Info
- Live Results
- Results on Meet Mobile: “Texas Hall of Fame Swimming Invite”
- Day 1 Prelims Live Recap | Day 1 Finals
The Texas Longhorns entered the summer with a lot of weaknesses on paper that needed to be addressed, and via the addition of high profile transfers and international recruits, they have addressed many of those.
The big question mark, though, was the breaststroke leg and whether the Longhorns had someone good enough to challenge for an NCAA title.
The group was led last season by 5th year Jake Foster, who swam 51.22 at a dual meet, and Will Scholtz, who was 52.09 at Big 12s. 52.0 is a nice time by almost any measure, but for a team hoping to climb several rungs on a ladder and challenge for an NCAA title, it wasn’t going to be enough.
The comments read things like “where are the Longhorns going to find a true breaststroker,” referencing the fact that Texas didn’t have a swimmer finish higher than 16th at NCAAs in the 100 breast last year.
But on Thursday morning, they may have found their guy as Nate Germonprez, now a sophomore, turned a corner with a 50.39.
That makes him the 7th-best performer in the history of the event with the 15th best performance ever in a flat-start 100 yard breaststroke. Every time ranked ahead of him was done at a season-ending championship, making Germonprez’s swim the best mid-season time in history.
Top 10 Performers all-Time, Men’s 100 SCY Breaststroke
- Liam Bell, Cal – 49.53 (2024 NCAAs)
- Ian Finnerty, Indiana – 49.69 (2018 NCAAs)
- Max McHugh, Minnesota – 49.90 (2022 NCAAs)
- Caeleb Dressel, Florida – 50.03 (2018 SECs)
- Kevin Cordes, Arizona – 50.04 (2014 NCAAs)
- Carsten Vissering, USC – 50.30 (2019 NCAAs)
- Nate Germonprez, Texas – 50.39 (2024 Texas Invite)
- Caspar Corbeau, Texas – 50.49 (2022 NCAAs)
- Van Mathias, Indiana – 50.57 (2023 NCAAs)
- Brian Benzig, Towson – 50.59 (2024 NCAAs)
Germonprez is a bit of a paradox as a swimmer. He was a very good breaststroker in high school, winning an NCSA title in the 100 breaststroke in 2023. But he was so versatile that his 52.59 as a high school senior was almost overlooked, when in most classes that would make him a big ‘breaststroke’ signing.
We wrote several articles and did interviews in tribute to his versatility (here and here, for example).
He didn’t even swim a breaststroke race at the Olympic Trials, instead opting for the 50 free (53rd) and 200 IM (12th). He would later swim the 100 free (49.46), 200 IM (1:58.11), and the 100 breaststroke (1:00.48) at the Austin Futures meet, winning and going best times in each. His 100 breaststroke time would have put him into the semifinals at Trials.
Is he a real breaststroker? He’s not a pure breaststroker, if that’s what we mean when we say “real,” which is understandable because for most of swimming history, breaststrokers were sort of a different breed.
But he broke the school record of Caspar Corbeau (50.49), who is most certainly primarily a breaststroker (though he can sprint a little bit too).
When Germonprez and Modglin both committed to Texas, it was fun to daydream about what that tandem of versatility could bloom into in the college ranks, and now we’re seeing it happen. As much as Texas needed guys like Chris Guiliano and Kacper Mawiuk and Hubert Kos to move back into the national title picture this quickly, they really needed a breatstroker, and now they have one.
Texas
How To Spend An Overnighter In Fort Worth, Texas
If you’ve been one of the 10.8 million annual visitors to Forth Worth, Texas, you already know it’s worth a multi-day stay. But sometimes, you don’t have that luxury, and the best you can swing is an overnighter. I’m here to tell you, that’s not a bad thing. Fort Worth, a pleasantly compact city in comparison to its sprawling neighbor, Dallas, turns an overnight stay into an opportunity to immerse yourself in Texan culture while luxuriating in the finer things in life.
Start with a semi-private flight via JSX, which operates out of its own terminal outside of Dallas-Love airport. This streamlined service provides private-flying ease and comfort at a fraction of the cost (a typical flight from Houston to Dallas costs about $500 round trip and gets you there in about an hour). After an extremely comfortable flight, you’ll touch down in Dallas, and it is a matter of minutes to deplane, collect your bag, and hail a ride. Opt for a rental car from JSX onsite provider Go Rentals or just use a ride app for the day.
The heart of Fort Worth is 40 minutes away – you’ll leave the hustle and bustle of the big city behind and find tree-lined (and impeccably clean) streets. You’ll also find the new Crescent Hotel Fort Worth, which Conde Nast Traveler recently dubbed the #1 Hotel in Texas. Service is on point – when I arrived feeling a little queasy, the staff managed to rustle up a bowl of soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, and that was with the dining room temporarily reserved for a television crew shooting on the premises.
Which apparently is a thing in Fort Worth. It’s becoming an increasingly popular destination for movie and TV filming, and it’s clear why. The landscape is quite pretty, made all the prettier in the Cultural District, where Crescent Hotel is located. It features lovely museum buildings and wide streets that will beckon you outside to explore, and that exploration should include the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, the oldest botanic garden in Texas. It boasts 23 specialty gardens, such as the Japanese Garden ideal for a serene stroll, along with sculptures, ponds, waterfalls, and a don’t miss greenhouse.
If you prefer the indoors, just across the street from the Crescent Hotel is the Kimbell Art Museum, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary and features works by creative legends like Rembrandt, Picasso, and Cezanne. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is a stone’s throw away, as is the Amon Carter Museum, currently featuring an exhibit entitled “Cowboy.”
And speaking of cowboys, you must set aside time to witness an authentic and historically accurate cattle drive, which takes place twice daily at 11:30 am and 4:00 pm on Exchange Street in the historic Fort Worth Stockyards. Watch as wranglers outfitted in boots, chaps, and hats reminiscent of the early American days drive cattle through the town. You can learn more about Fort Worth’s cowboy culture at The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame, and the Cattle Raisers Museum.
If you haven’t noticed by now, Fort Worth is a bit of a dichotomy with its attention to ranch life every bit as important as its evolution to modern city. That’s why a day here is a study in contrasts, and one of the best ways to see – and taste – that is through the food. Start with lunch on the hacienda-style patio at Joe T. Garcia’s, a popular Tex-Mex restaurant serving up margaritas and family recipes like bean chalupas since 1935.
For dinner, dive into Waters Restaurant for a fine dining experience helmed by Chef Jon Bonnell. Appetizers like crab cakes and tomatoes topped with fried goat cheese are about as close to perfect as you can get. And foods that depend on being cooked just right, like scallops and filet, are indeed just right. Waters is located in Sundance Square, a walkable entertainment and business district that is especially lovely at night and offers live theater, shopping, an historic Chisholm Trail mural, water features, and over 30 restaurants, in case you decide to stay.
That’s the only problem with Fort Worth – one day and night will give you a taste that will have you hustling to get back. So maybe not such a problem after all.
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