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FORT WORTH — Fernando Florez nonetheless strongly believes that Hispanic Texans ought to stand with Democrats.
The 81-year-old neighborhood activist who grew up within the Rio Grande Valley and settled in Fort Price stated his dad and mom backed Democrats as a result of they benefited from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s job-creating New Deal insurance policies. He recalled becoming a member of his father as an adolescent harvesting crops in Wyoming and Colorado, and he nonetheless views Democrats because the social gathering of working folks.
However he sees how different Hispanic voters, together with those that immigrated extra not too long ago, are embracing Republicans.
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“They need to peddle the concept that the Republican Occasion is nice as a result of numerous Hispanics are small-business folks; that’s true,” Florez stated throughout an interview on his porch in South Hemphill Heights, a closely Hispanic neighborhood in Fort Price. “However with what the Democrats have finished for working folks, labor unions and all of these, it’s clear that’s the social gathering to be for.”
He stated he plans to assist the Democratic slate on this election all the way down to the native degree, which options unusually aggressive races for county places of work.
Florez’s feedback mirror what has lengthy been the case in Texas politics: The Hispanic vote shouldn’t be a monolith, and events that deal with it that approach achieve this at their very own threat. Nonetheless, Republican and Democratic candidates alike this election cycle have focused Hispanic voters as a key demographic they hope to win over. And for good cause: Hispanic Texans are actually the biggest racial demographic group in Texas, along with being one of many quickest rising.
A lot consideration has been given to Hispanic voters in South Texas, the place the GOP is poised for history-making breakthroughs. However lower than a 3rd of Texas’ Hispanic voters dwell in South Texas or in border counties. Practically half of Hispanic Texans dwell within the left-leaning metros of Austin, Dallas-Fort Price, Houston and San Antonio, the place polling reveals these Latino voters nonetheless overwhelmingly again Democrats.
Gov. Greg Abbott declared in April that he would win Texas’ Hispanic vote over Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke. Abbott bought 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2014 and 42% in 2018, based on exit polls printed by nationwide media shops.
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His marketing campaign stated they’re assured that their message is resonating with Hispanic voters no matter the place they dwell in Texas.
“On this specific election surroundings, the considerations of Hispanics who dwell in Houston or McAllen or Del Rio or in Midland or in Lubbock or in Amarillo or in Paint Creek, Texas — it’s the very same high three points: crime, inflation and the border,” Abbott’s chief strategist, Dave Carney, stated throughout a name with reporters Tuesday.
Fernando Florez, a longtime Democratic activist, discusses the shift of Hispanic voters in Tarrant County and Texas at his residence within the South Hemphill Heights neighborhood of Fort Price.
Credit score:
Jamie R. Carrero for The Texas Tribune
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O’Rourke has been beating Abbott amongst Hispanic voters in just about each ballot, typically by double digits, although a College of Texas ballot launched Friday discovered them tied amongst probably Hispanic voters. Abbott’s marketing campaign has argued the general public polls are usually not precisely gauging the Hispanic vote however has not supplied any different numbers.
State Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, dismissed the concept that Abbott may win half of Latino votes.
“In each Latino household, you’ll have two Democrats and a tio loco, a loopy uncle, and it simply hasn’t modified,” Anchía stated at The Texas Tribune Pageant in September. “Latinos are usually not dumb. We’ve seen what’s occurred since 2016, how we’ve been singled out. And each time Republicans get in bother they speak about scary brown folks coming over the border.”
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Republicans acknowledge that Hispanic voters in South Texas look like leaning their far more rapidly than elsewhere. However Republicans are already in energy throughout the state, they argue, and even a small shift within the Hispanic vote makes the GOP safer, whereas creating trigger for alarm for Texas Democrats.
Tarrant County
Tarrant County has skilled fast progress since 2000. That progress was pushed by an enormous enhance in Latino residents, who went from 20% to 30% of the county inhabitants throughout that interval. This corresponded with a shift within the county citizens towards Democrats, culminating in President Joe Biden’s 1,800-vote victory there in 2020, the primary Democratic presidential nominee to win the county since 1964.
Tarrant County School professor Peter Martinez cautioned that doesn’t imply that Latinos are fully chargeable for the county’s liberal shift, as nationally, an urban-rural divide has more and more outlined the Democratic and Republican events.
“The north and south sides of Fort Price are historic Latino or Mexican elements of city. … That inhabitants does lean to the left, and progress there represents an growth of the Democratic Occasion,” Martinez stated. “I’d additionally argue that extra of the white inhabitants can also be leaning to the left lately due to folks coming in from out of state.”
In interviews with a dozen Hispanic voters in Tarrant County, many cited deep cultural ties to the Democratic Occasion, which their households have supported for generations. However there was additionally a way of apathy, and at occasions social gathering resentment, that left some voters transferring additional to the fitting.
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Virginia Murillo, 45, stated she used to vote for Democrats partly as a result of she was following the lead of her dad and mom, who emigrated from Mexico. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Murillo, who has owned the Straight Edge hair salon in Fort Price for 14 years, started questioning that allegiance. She stated Republicans appeared to higher perceive the wants of small companies battling working restrictions.
“That’s after I lastly grew to become conscious that views aligned with them,” Murillo stated. “I by no means actually thought that till considered one of my buddies pointed it out.”
Murillo stated she has additionally realized her non secular views could extra intently align with the Republican Occasion.
Regardless of steadily changing into a bigger share of Tarrant County’s inhabitants, Hispanic folks have had little political illustration right here. There has by no means been a Hispanic member of Congress representing the county and there is only one Fort Price metropolis council member.
Ricardo Avitia at his brother Rudy’s barbershop, The Barber, within the South Hemphill Heights neighborhood in Fort Price.
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Credit score:
Jamie R. Carrero for The Texas Tribune
Ricardo Avitia, 43, stated he worries the Democratic Occasion takes Latinos with no consideration and doesn’t do sufficient to make sure they’ll develop their very own political energy.
“After we see Democrats not taking our communities into consideration — communities that they’re traditionally purported to be representing, then there’s a problem with that,” Avitia stated on the barber store owned by his youthful brother, Rudy.
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Avitia stated he considers himself an impartial and seeks out candidates to assist who can characterize his pursuits on points like zoning, infrastructure and financial improvement. Regardless of his curiosity in politics, he doesn’t plan to solid a poll on this election.
“Events don’t characterize us,” he stated. “It’s decide your poison.”
Florez, the devoted Democrat, stated Hispanics could be rather more motivated to vote if there have been Hispanic candidates on the poll.
The county will probably elect its first Hispanic county commissioner this yr: Republican Manny Ramirez. The Fort Price police officer and native police union president is working in closely conservative Precinct 4, the place the incumbent Republican commissioner is retiring after 30 years.
Ramirez stated he doesn’t focus a lot on his Hispanic identification within the majority-Anglo precinct and stated his marketing campaign pledge to make sure infrastructure retains up with the county’s fast progress is broadly interesting to voters there. He acknowledged that Democrats have traditionally captured nearly all of Hispanic voters however he stated the Republican Occasion’s social and financial ideas could also be a greater match for his or her values.
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“It’s not about politics, it’s about conservative insurance policies that truly produce outcomes,” Ramirez stated. “What sorts of insurance policies make financial circumstances a lot better for work and investing and all the pieces else Hispanics must concern themselves with? It’s the identical points that different Individuals must take care of.”
Republican optimism
Republicans are making an enormous push down-ballot in South Texas. They’re focusing on three U.S. Home seats there, a state Senate seat, not less than one state Home seat and a bunch of native places of work which are at the moment held by Democrats.
Whereas Biden’s South Texas numbers set off the regional offensive, Republicans additional helped themselves via redistricting final yr. Republicans within the Legislature redrew one of many congressional districts to be favorable to the GOP — and most controversially, they created the state Home seat in a slim, late-night vote that drew fierce pushback from neighboring Democratic lawmakers.
Nonetheless, redistricting doesn’t inform the complete story. In one of many congressional districts that Republicans ostensibly shored up for Democrats — the thirty fourth District — U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, has discovered himself in a race that has been labeled a toss-up. If the brand new thirty fourth District had been in place in 2020, Biden would have carried it by 16 proportion factors.
Republicans have lengthy seen Hispanic voters in South Texas as extra gettable. They view them as extra culturally conservative and targeted on financial points — and maybe extra akin to the typical rural voter than the typical city or suburban voter.
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However there’s a extra well timed principle, too: Republicans are partaking South Texas greater than ever earlier than, and their funding this election cycle — properly into the eight figures — is paying off.
The largest public ballot of probably Hispanic voters in Texas to date, with 625 respondents, discovered that “Brownsville/McAllen” was simply probably the most aggressive area within the governor’s race, with O’Rourke main Abbott by 11 factors there. O’Rourke routed Abbott within the ballot by not less than double that margin in each different area that was damaged out past the Rio Grande Valley.
“There’s a little one thing occurring down there,” stated Brad Coker, the pollster whose agency, Mason-Dixon, did the survey for Telemundo. “However are we taking a look at this huge tidal wave [of Latinos shifting statewide]? … Eh, I believe that’s an actual stretch.”
Pollsters warn that such regional breakdowns must be handled with further warning on condition that the pattern sizes are often so small and thus topic to vast variation.
However extra not too long ago, a Texas Hispanic Coverage Basis ballot additionally revealed regional variations within the statewide Hispanic vote. The survey of 468 probably Hispanic voters discovered O’Rourke main by over 20 factors within the Dallas-Fort Price and Houston areas, however dropping to Abbott within the San Antonio space and working a narrower 10 factors forward of him in South Texas.
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State Rep. Ramon Romero Jr., D-Fort Price, at Los Zarapes Restaurant in Fort Price’s North Facet. Romero said the important thing to profitable over Hispanic voters within the upcoming midterm election is being an activist in the neighborhood, not merely proposing laws.
Credit score:
Jaime R. Carrero for The Texas Tribune
In state Rep. Ramon Romero’s view, Democrats can nonetheless rely on strong assist from Latinos within the largest city areas in Texas. The Fort Price Democrat stated regardless of a concerted push by Republicans to court docket Latinos on this yr’s midterm elections, the fast-growing voting bloc nonetheless principally sees the Democratic Occasion as representing the pursuits of working folks.
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And Romero stated the social gathering is continuous to end up voters who haven’t historically participated. He recounted how his marketing campaign not too long ago helped a person with a prison historical past register to vote who thought he was ineligible.
“So he votes and he comes out crying,” Romero stated. “These are the form of folks I see now on the polling sales space on a regular basis. And so they’re not voting Republican; they’re voting Democrat.”
Chris Wilson is a GOP pollster who has labored for Abbott and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. He’s additionally at the moment working in numerous South Texas races.
“It’s actually the case that the Latino vote within the cities isn’t transferring towards Republicans as quick because the vote in South Texas and amongst different rural Hispanics is. However it additionally doesn’t must,” Wilson stated. “Texas is already a purple state.”
“Democrats can’t afford to commerce ‘not too long ago arrived in a couple of suburbs’ for Hispanic votes in a state like Texas,” Wilson stated. “Combining South Texas and different working-class Hispanics with rural voters and voters in additional conservative suburbs makes Republicans much more safe statewide whereas placing an entire new area in play on the legislative and congressional degree.”
RETURNING STARTERS: Offense – 5; Defense – 7, Special Teams – 1
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PLAYERS TO WATCH: QB Quinn Ewers, RB Jaydon Blue, WR Silas Bolden, WR Isaiah Bond, LT Kelvin Banks Jr., Edge Ethan Burke, LB Anthony Hill, S Andrew Mukuba
VERSUS GEORGIA: October 19 (Darrell K. Royal Texas Memorial Stadium)
Quarterback Quinn Ewers leads what should be an explosive Texas offense. (USA Today)
Will the Texas offense just reload?
Last year’s Longhorn offense averaged 36 points. Can Texas keep that up in its first season in the SEC?
The fact quarterback Quinn Ewers is back after a year that saw him complete 69 percent of his passes for 3,479 yards and 22 touchdowns bodes well.
So does the fact Texas returns four of its starting offensive linemen.
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The team has to replace Jonathan Brooks – the first running back taken in last April’s NFL Draft – but features some excellent returnees in CJ Baxter and Jaydon Blue, who combined for 1,057 yards last season.
There are some questions at wide receiver, but only because so many are new to the program.
Otherwise, Alabama transfer Isaiah Bond, Houston transfer Matthew Golden, and Oregon State transfer Silas Bolden accounted for 140 receptions for 1,818 yards and 15 touchdowns combined for their former teams.
Can Texas replace some key losses on its defensive front?
Gone are defensive tackle Byron Murphy II and T’Vondre Sweat, selected in the first and second rounds of the NFL Draft.
As they did at wide receiver, the Longhorns dipped into the transfer portal to hopefully fill the voids, adding former Georgia player (Bill Norton via Arizona), Tia Savea (Arizona), and Louisville flip Jermayne Lole.
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The Longhorns also hope fifth-year player Alfred Collins will be able to make a jump, and if he can, then the unit may be able to do the job.
Still, it might be a bit unfair to expect the same production as Sweat and Murphy provided a season ago.
How will the Longhorns do in their first year in the SEC?
A Week Two trip to defending national champion Michigan will give the Longhorns an excellent early test before hosting Mississippi State in its first game as an SEC member on Sept. 28.
The two weeks that follow, however, will tell the tale.
Texas and fellow SEC newcomer Oklahoma in Dallas on Oct. 12, followed on the 19th by the highly-anticipated game with Georgia.
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If the Longhorns can survive that, the rest of the conference schedule is certainly manageable.
Home games against Florida and Kentucky highlight the remaining part of the conference schedule, before closing at arch-rival Texas A&M on Nov. 30.
BALTIMORE — A philosophical question: If a closer doesn’t hit 100 mph, can he still get noticed? You know, kind of like a tree falling in the woods. If nobody sees it, did it actually happen?
We may get an answer to that question in the next week when All-Star rosters are revealed. Rangers closer Kirby Yates has seemingly done everything necessary to make the AL All-Star team, other than light up a radar gun.
Marcus Semien only Texas Ranger moving on in All-Star Game voting
As players wrap up their voting for the All-Star pitching staffs this weekend, choosing three relievers, it’s hard to make a convincing case against Yates reaching the medal stand. Unless, of course, you factor in his fastball. It doesn’t light up Statcast metrics. It’s only good for getting him ahead in counts and setting up his devastating forkball. Among qualified relievers, Yates’ 93.1 mph average fastball ranks only 60th in the AL. The guys getting all the national buzz are Oakland’s Mason Miller and his 100.8 mph fastball and AL saves leader Emmanuel Clase with his 99.8 mph heater.
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“I know I don’t have a fastball that lights up the radar guns,” Yates said. “But the league is filled with stuff and guys who are throwers. Guys who pitch are the outliers. But if you pitch and execute your pitches, you can be successful. I don’t think that will ever go away.”
He has pitched exceptionally well. There is not a performance-based stat in which he is weak. He began Saturday perfect in his 11 save chances this year, the only AL reliever with at least 10 opportunities and no blown saves. His ERA (0.99) was second. His batting average allowed (.134) was second. He had a WHIP below 1.00 (0.95).
Put this another way. He is the only pitcher in baseball — regardless of league — to begin the statistical second-half of the season perfect on at least 10 save chances, with a WHIP and ERA both below 1.00. There is more. He’s averaging 12.07 strikeouts per nine innings thanks to a filthy splitter and hasn’t allowed a homer.
The closest comp to Yates from a year ago was Minnesota’s Jhoan Duran, who ended June with 11 saves in 13 chances, a 1.91 ERA and a 0.94 ERA. Perhaps, it’s not best to bring this up. Duran still didn’t make the All-Star team. There were six relievers either selected or named as replacements. It included each of the top five in saves and Baltimore’s Yennier Cano, who had a 1.14 ERA and 0.86 WHIP entering July. Moral of the story: Yates’ relatively low number of saves may work against him.
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If other players rely on a singular number such as saves or WAR, Yates may get overlooked. He is tied for 11th in the AL in saves and is eighth in WAR among AL relievers at 1.0, though only three-tenths of a win separates him from the No. 2 spot, which belongs to Clase.
On the other hand, if AL manager Bruce Bochy has any input, Yates will get a firm endorsement. That doesn’t carry the weight it once did. Once upon a time, the manager had a big hand in selecting the pitching staff. Now, it’s almost entirely reliant on peer votes. Bochy said this week that he would heartily endorse Yates as a reliever.
So, too, will David Robertson, the AL’s senior reliever at age 39. Robertson was an All-Star in 2010 as a setup man with the New York Yankees.
“His case is great,” said Robertson, who has a pretty solid case of his own. “His WHIP is good. His strikeouts are high. If you aren’t giving up walks and hits and you are striking out guys, what else are you supposed to do? I hope he goes.”
Yates admits it, he’d like to. He’s been an All-Star before and was even named the NL’s closer in 2019. Only problem: NL didn’t have a lead. He didn’t pitch. Since then: He missed most of three seasons with elbow issues and eventually surgery.
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“I think making the team would validate a lot of things,” Yates said. “I’d love a chance to pitch, but the fact that I was named the closer that year was a real sign of respect and I appreciated that. In a perfect world, you’d get a chance to do both.”
And if everybody sees it, well, then it definitely happened.
Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant
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Two county jail guards have been indicted on murder charges for the asphyxiation death of an inmate in Texas.
The indictments, dated Tuesday, charge Joel Garcia, 48, and Rafael Moreno Jr., 37, in the April death of 31-year-old former Marine Anthony Johnson Jr. at the Tarrant County jail in Fort Worth.
Attorneys for Garcia or Moreno did not immediately return phone calls and text messages for comment Friday.
Randy Moore, an attorney for Garcia, has previously said that Garcia’s role in the fight was limited and that the use of force was necessary.
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“The wheels of justice continue to turn in this case,” Sheriff Bill Waybourn said in a statement. “I said from the beginning that we hold accountable anyone responsible for Mr. Johnson’s death and we are doing that.”
Waybourn, who has said Moreno wrongly placed his knee on Johnson’s back after Johnson was handcuffed and that Garcia was the supervisor, initially fired the two, but both were reinstated and placed on paid leave because the sheriff’s office said the dismissals did not follow official protocol.
The force used in Johnson’s death is intended to stop and subdue people without killing them, yet increasingly it has come under scrutiny following the 2020 death of George Floyd.
Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer restrained him face down on the ground for nine minutes and pinned a knee to the back of Floyd’s neck, an incident that sparked outrage nationwide.
The family of Johnson, who had been arrested two days before his death for allegedly using a knife to threaten the driver of a vehicle, has called for a federal investigation of the jail. The family has told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that Johnson was suffering from a mental health crisis.
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On Friday, four Missouri prison guards were charged with murder, and a fifth with accessory to involuntary manslaughter, in the December death of a Black man who was pepper-sprayed, had his face covered with a mask and was left in a position that caused him to suffocate.