Texas
Texas Governor Race: Greg Abbott, Beto O’Rourke battle for state’s top job
This Election Day, Nov. 8, voters will determine who will function Texas’ governor for the subsequent 4 years.
Greg Abbott is working for a 3rd time period, whereas his challengers are vying to flip a place that has been held by Republicans since 1995.
These working for Texas’ prime spot additionally embrace Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who’s making a 3rd run for workplace in as many election cycles, Libertarian Mark Tippetts, and Delilah Barrios for the Inexperienced Get together.
Polls have persistently proven Abbott with a lead heading into election day.
Right here’s a more in-depth take a look at the candidates and the place they stand on some scorching button points.
Texas Governor Candidates
KATY, TEXAS – OCTOBER 27: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks throughout a ‘Get Out The Vote’ rally on the Fuzzy’s Pizza & Italian Cafe on October 27, 2022 in Katy, Texas. With lower than two weeks away from the midterm election, Gov. Greg Abbott contin
Greg Abbott, Republican (Incumbent)
Incumbent Greg Abbott is at the moment serving his second time period as governor after first being elected to the place in 2014.
Abbott graduated from the College of Texas at Austin after which earned a legislation diploma from Vanderbilt College Regulation College. Earlier than being elected governor, Abbott additionally served as Lawyer Normal of Texas, a Texas Supreme Courtroom justice and a state district choose in Harris County.
In keeping with Abbott’s marketing campaign web site, he goals to maintain Texas “protected and safe, encourages higher job development, reins in skyrocketing property taxes, elevates our training system, takes care of our veterans, and reforms authorities to unleash the total potential of our nice state.”
Gov. Greg Abbott heads to the border for election evening, with immigration a prime challenge for Texans
His platform additionally requires “defending the 2nd Modification.” As governor, Abbott has loosened firearms restrictions. Simply final 12 months, he signed “open carry” into legislation which supplies most individuals in Texas aged 21 and older the choice to hold a handgun in most public locations and not using a allow.
Within the wake of the Uvalde Elementary College mass taking pictures in Might, some victims’ households have demanded the governor increase the minimal age to buy an AR-15-style rifle just like the one used within the taking pictures from 18 to 21 years previous.
Throughout a gubernatorial debate in September, Abbott stated his fingers are tied on the subject of altering the legislation on so-called assault weapons.
“It’s unconstitutional for a state to boost the age from 18 to 21 for an individual to purchase an AR-15,” stated Abbott.
In keeping with his marketing campaign web site, Abbott pledges to “proceed to battle any federal authorities overreach” on the subject of gun rights.
Abbott’s platform additionally requires “defending the unborn” – with abortion on voters’ minds this 12 months following the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the following ban in Texas.
Gov. Greg Abbott says he might cease busing migrants if Republicans take Congress
In July 2021, Abbott signed the so-called “set off legislation” which might ban all abortions from the second of fertilization if the Supreme Courtroom dominated to overturn Roe v. Wade, which occurred this summer season. The legislation makes an exception solely to avoid wasting the lifetime of a pregnant affected person or stop “substantial impairment of main bodily operate,” however makes no exceptions for circumstances of rape, incest, or extreme fetal abnormalities.
Through the debate in September, Abbott spotlighted his actions taken on the Texas border. Abbott boasted a few $4 billion operation that has included migrant jails and buses to New York, Chicago and Washington and criticized President Joe Biden by title.
He didn’t say the place Texas would subsequent ship buses which have refocused the race on immigration however defended the locations to a number of the nation’s largest Democratic-led cities as sensible and never political.
Click on right here to learn extra of Greg Abbott’s marketing campaign priorities.
HOUSTON, TX – MAY 27: Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke speaks to a crowd supporting gun management at Discovery Inexperienced throughout from the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation Annual Assembly on the George R. Brown Conference Heart, on Might 27, 20
Beto O’Rourke, Democrat
Beto O’Rourke is a former El Paso congressman and presidential candidate. He was elected to the U.S. Home of Representatives in 2012 and served six years.
In 2018, he ran for U.S. Senate however misplaced to incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz by lower than 3 share factors.
O’Rourke then entered the presidential race in 2019 however dropped out eight months later. Now-President Joe Biden finally received the Democratic Get together nomination.
In keeping with his marketing campaign web site, O’Rourke has plans to “totally fund public faculties,” broaden Medicaid, decrease property taxes, create high-paying jobs and legalize marijuana whereas expunging the data of these arrested for marijuana possession.
Beto O’Rourke will get help from Barack Obama forward of Election Day
Through the debate in September, O’Rourke pledged tighter gun legal guidelines and accused Abbott of doing little to cease one other Uvalde-style faculty bloodbath.
“It has been 18 weeks since their children have been killed, and never a factor has modified on this state to make it any much less seemingly that another little one will meet the identical destiny,” stated O’Rourke.
In keeping with O’Rourke’s marketing campaign web site, he’s “pleased with Texas’ lengthy custom of accountable gun possession” however needs to alter “how simple it’s for folks to make use of firearms irresponsibly” in Texas.
“And whereas it may not be the simple or politically protected factor to say, I don’t consider any civilian ought to personal an AR-15 or AK-47,” his marketing campaign web site states.
He additionally requires different “commonsense options that the majority Texans agree on” like closing the personal sale background examine loophole, an efficient purple flag legislation system, protected storage and little one entry prevention legal guidelines, and stronger home violence reporting legal guidelines, based on his marketing campaign web site.
Beto O’Rourke discusses weapons, abortion and Pres. Biden not doing sufficient concerning the border
On the hot-button challenge of reproductive alternative, O’Rourke pledged in the course of the debate to revive it. His marketing campaign web site states he’ll use “each software out there to repeal Abbott’s harmful abortion ban” and vows to veto “any future laws that seeks to additional management girls,” like limiting entry to contraception.
Through the debate, O’Rourke referred to as the billions of state {dollars} spent on border safety wasteful.
“What we’d like is a protected, authorized, orderly path for anybody who needs to come back right here to work, to affix household, or to hunt asylum,” stated O’Rourke.
Click on right here to learn extra of Beto O’Rourke’s marketing campaign priorities.
Source: Mark Tippetts Marketing campaign
Mike Tippetts, Libertarian
In keeping with his marketing campaign web site, Mark Tippetts is a world authorized and enterprise marketing consultant for individuals who personal property or do enterprise in Mexico and Latin America. He served as a council member in Lago Vista, Texas, in 2017.
Tippetts helps faculty alternative, legalizing marijuana and advocates for “the discount of taxation to the bottom possible degree.”
On his web site, Tippetts additionally requires the enacting of a “good complete immigration coverage, making it simpler for sincere, hardworking folks to come back work and reside right here legally.”
Tippetts additionally opposes mandates and says companies, church buildings and different organizations ought to be capable to set their very own well being and security polices, whereas folks have the selection on the place to do enterprise.
Click on right here to learn extra of Mark Tippetts marketing campaign priorities.
Delilah Barrios, Inexperienced Get together
In keeping with her platform, healthcare is Delilah Barrios’s prime concern. She says will probably be her “precedence to do no matter it takes to make sure medical care to each citizen of our nice state.”
Barrios additionally requires a increase within the minimal wage to $20/hr and a fundamental earnings assure.
“What I consider is that when you can’t work, and occur to be on incapacity for instance it is best to find the money for to help your self,” her marketing campaign web site states. “Ideally we’ll provide supplemental earnings to folks to assist them with obligatory bills to incorporate: shelter, meals, water, web, and transportation.”
Barrios additionally views abortion as medical care and says “any makes an attempt to discourage, discriminate or stop entry to obligatory care will probably be penalized,” based on her marketing campaign web site.
Click on right here to learn extra of Delilah Barrios’s marketing campaign priorities.
The Related Press contributed to this report.
Texas
Texas Democrats underperformed yet again. Now what?
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Texas Democrats are starting to sound like the little boy who cried “battleground state,” after yet another election cycle where they shouted from the rooftops that Texas should be viewed as capable of going blue and then drastically underperformed expectations.
President-elect Donald Trump won Texas by 14 percentage points over Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday — a surprisingly wide margin that bested his 2020 and 2016 performances in the state. Texas has for decades reliably gone for the Republican presidential nominee, but Democrats have been heartened that for the past several election cycles, the margin had been steadily narrowing.
The party’s Senate candidate, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas, out performed Harris but still lost to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz by 9 percentage points, according to unofficial results published by The Associated Press. That’s more than three times the margin that Beto O’Rourke lost to Cruz six years ago, and a wider loss margin than a majority of polls put the race in recent months. It also came after Senate Democrats and other national party officials visited Texas and invested in Allred’s race, citing him as one of the best chances to flip a seat in the upper chamber to protect their majority — which they lost on Tuesday.
The minority party also lost ground in the Legislature where Republicans now control 88 seats in the House and 20 in the Senate. And in South Texas, Republicans made historic gains in the predominantly Hispanic region that has reliably supported Democrats, and they lost their challenge to retake a South Texas congressional seat the GOP had won in 2022.
“This to me is a complete disaster. They underperformed everywhere,” said Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas San Antonio. “They are disorganized. They are a party in the wilderness.”
State Democrats have been especially hopeful since 2018 — after they rode a blue wave down the ballot off of O’Rourke’s history-making Senate run. That year they flipped Texas House districts, local government seats and state appellate courts. Republicans still controlled the Legislature and occupied every statewide office, but Democrats saw that year as the beginning of a new era.
It led to high hopes in 2020, when Democrats fell far short of their goal of flipping the Texas House blue. And then again in 2022, when O’Rourke ran for governor and lost by double-digit margins to Gov. Greg Abbott. That was a midterm election where Republicans underperformed nationwide — everywhere, that is, except for Texas and Florida.
Republicans on Tuesday night relished running up the score against their political foes. Gov. Greg Abbott’s top political adviser pointed at a potentially larger problem for Democrats going forward: How will they get donors to continue funding their campaigns after losing again?
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“So do you think national Democratic donors will ever believe these Texas Democrat grifters again?” Dave Carney said on social media.
Soul searching
Democratic operatives were left licking their wounds Wednesday morning on numerous debriefing calls to figure out what had gone wrong Tuesday.
Among the issues they identified: a national red wave that delivered massive wins for Trump as well as GOP control of the U.S. Senate; a lack of infrastructure and coordination between federal and local campaigns across the state that left Democrats underperforming at every level; and a refusal to acknowledge the increasing realignment of parts of the electorate that were previously the core of the Democratic base, namely working class voters and Latinos.
Ali Zaidi, a Democratic political operative who ran Mike Collier’s campaign for lieutenant governor in 2022 said many in the party are rooted in a “pre-2012” belief that an increasingly diverse Texas would lead automatically to Democratic gains. But many voters of color this cycle cast their ballots for Republicans, like Latinos in South Texas.
Zaidi said Democrats need to either adjust how they connect with Latino voters in the state or look for votes in other places.
“Campaigns are not magical things that change how people feel about the world,” he said, adding that campaigns need to meet people where they are. “If an electorate is no longer a reliable electorate for you the answer as a campaign is to find a new electorate that works for you.”
Several Democrats said the catastrophic election, not only in the state but around the country, should compel the party to do some serious soul searching on what their message should be. Matt Angle, a veteran Texas Democratic operative and director of the Lone Star Project, expressed frustration that the party focused more on what drove the base than kitchen-table issues that were actually on the minds of many voters, such as the economy.
“One of the things that annoys me a lot of times about Democrats as progressives [is] that they say we need to decide what we stand for, and we need to then go push that on voters,” Angle said. But “we need to find out where voters are and meet them where they are.”
Chad Wilbanks, a Republican strategist and former Texas GOP executive director, said the Democratic party is out of touch with the state because they care more about “political correctness” than what voters are telling them.
“They have lost the battle of ideas,” he said. “In Texas, we want a secure border, we want to feel safe in our homes and in our schools. That’s important. [And] inflation plays a major role.”
But even if Democrats were to coalesce behind a persuasive message, the state party faces the challenge of not having the long-term infrastructure to support their candidates running for statewide office. Years of neglect in the decades since the party lost control has left much of its functions outsourced to outside groups, including activist organizations and super PACs, Angle said.
Without a leader Angle said there needed to be an “alpha” elected official to lead the effort as Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen did when he was in office, to coordinate the disparate efforts working to elect Democrats. Allred began to fill that role during the campaign, heading the first Senate-led coordinated campaign in Texas in decades, which consolidated resources up and down the ticket.
The Texas Majority PAC, which is backed by billionaire George Soros, was among the groups that also tried to fill in this cycle and help coordinate Democratic efforts. The group spent more than $600,000 in Cameron County and $700,000 in Hidalgo County – both of which are located in the Rio Grande Valley and were flipped by Trump at the top of the ticket in a stunning upset.
Katherine Fischer, the group’s deputy executive director, said Tuesday’s results were “devastating” and not the results Democrats had wanted. But she found a silver lining in the party’s ability to hold on to the seat of U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, in Hidalgo County, through coordination with the congressman’s campaign and the local party operations.
Fischer said her group will pick apart the election and issue a report but given the margin of victory for Republicans, it’s hard to pinpoint what Democrats could have done to change the outcomes.
“You lose by 10 or 15 points or something shifts by 20 points, [and] there’s no amount of strategy that can combat that,” Fischer said. “There’s some major issues within the Democrat party writ large that we need to reckon with like how voters perceive the Democratic party and how that perception has come to differ so wildly from reality and what we do to recover that.”
Fischer said her group always envisioned its project being one dependent on multiple cycles. The PAC is focused on continuing to build out sorely needed Democratic infrastructure for years to come, she said, acknowledging there are no easy answers from this cycle.
Democrats in Texas often bemoan the lack of investment from the top of the ticket in the state, which is largely written off as unwinnable by national groups. Tides changed this cycle, as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Senate Majority PAC invested over $15 million in Allred’s Senate race as election day approached. National Democratic groups also invested over $1 million in protecting Vicente’s congressional seat.
U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, said it’s not enough to plead for a massive influx of cash at the last minute.
“Texas needs long-term paid organizing efforts like in other battleground states, where we communicate those everyday, working people issues to disaffected voters, and I think it gives us a lot to learn from this election,” Casar said. “Because a strategy where we’re just trying to persuade a small number of voters on television cannot compete with the kind of on-the-ground organizing efforts that Republicans have put in.”
Luke Warford, a former strategist for the Texas Democrats who now runs a fund to create party infrastructure, said the party needs to invest in candidate recruitment, staff training, communications and how to successfully target voters — all things the Texas GOP excel at.
“If we do that and still lose, then we need to go back to the drawing board,” he said.
Fischer said Democrats needed to be honest with donors about the election’s results but also communicate a long-term plan.
“I hope donors who gave to the Allred campaign or to any other project in Texas understand their dollars were not wasted and most states don’t flip over night,” she said. “They don’t flip in one cycle or two cycles, it takes time.”
Texas Democrats aren’t counting themselves out yet. They plan to be back in the spotlight in 2026 when Sen. John Cornyn’s seat is up for reelection, along with statewide elected seats like governor. “If history is right, Trump will have done enough to upset enough people,” Angle said. “You know we shouldn’t look forward with dread. We need to have real clear eyes and really accurately assess what happened this election, but to be hopeful moving forward.”
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Texas
2024 Presidential Election: How Texas voted by county
Donald Trump won Texas early in the night on his path to winning the presidency.
Analysts gave little hope of Texas turning blue in the presidential race on Election Night, and they were right.
According to unofficial vote totals, Trump earned 56.3% of the vote in Texas. His opponent, Kamala Harris, won 42.4%.
Harris won just 12 of Texas’ 254 counties, including Harris, Dallas, Travis and Bexar counties.
Trump flipped many of south Texas counties that he lost in his 2020 race against Joe Biden.
AP estimates show Trump won 57.7% of Starr County in South Texas, along the border.
He is the first Republican presidential candidate to win the heavily-Hispanic county since 1892.
Trump lost Starr County to Hillary Clinton by 60 points in 2016.
Texas has not voted for a Democrat in a presidential election since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Texas
Ted Cruz wins third Senate term, defeats Democrat Colin Allred in Texas
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz was reelected on Tuesday, defeating U.S. Rep. Colin Allred in this burgeoning state that was thrust to the center of the 2024 election in battles over immigration and abortion.
This outcome marks a setback for Texas Democrats, who have now gone three decades without a statewide victory—the longest losing streak for any party in the nation.
Sen. Ted Cruz, 53, clinched a third term in office after a high-stakes and costly reelection campaign, in contrast to his nail-biting victory over Beto O’Rourke six years ago. This time, Cruz appealed to his party to take his race seriously and reshaped his image to Texas voters, presenting himself as a pragmatic legislator focused on getting things done—an effort to pivot from his past reputation as an uncompromising firebrand with aspirations beyond Texas.
How Did Cruz Gain His Texas Victory?
Though votes were still being counted early Wednesday, Cruz held a comfortable lead over challenger Colin Allred, appearing close to a double-digit advantage—an impressive jump from his narrow win over Beto O’Rourke by less than three percentage points six years ago. Cruz’s victory not only secured his seat but also contributed to Republicans regaining control of the U.S. Senate for the first time in four years.
Cruz addressed his supporters Tuesday night at his watch party in Houston by first walking out to the song “Eye of the Tiger.”
“I want to say to all of those who didn’t support me, you have my word I will fight for you, your jobs, your safety and for your constitutional rights,” he said.
Cruz Law and Order Agenda for Texas
On the campaign trail, Cruz emphasized a strong stance on law and order. In a notable moment, he appeared on stage flanked by Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, a prominent Democrat and the chief prosecutor of Texas’ largest county.
Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker, sought to become Texas’ first Black senator by running a moderate campaign. He maintained a measured distance from Vice President Kamala Harris and progressive factions, instead highlighting endorsements from Republicans such as former Rep. Liz Cheney. Allred positioned himself as a staunch advocate for abortion rights in a state known for its stringent bans.
What is Allred’s Message to Cruz?
In his concession speech at his watch party in Dallas, Allred said he called Cruz and congratulated him on his victory.
“It shouldn’t be remarkable to have to admit defeat,” he said. “You can’t just be a patriot when your side wins. Tonight we didn’t win, but we will continue to be patriots.”
Colin Allred’s campaign faced early criticism from some Democrats who were dissatisfied with his strategy. They expressed frustration over his decision to avoid scheduling numerous large rallies and his limited investment in smaller regions of Texas, including cities along the Texas-Mexico border.
Cruz, however, performed notably better against Allred than he did against O’Rourke six years earlier, showing particular strength in predominantly Hispanic counties along the U.S.-Mexico border.
What Led to the Cruz Victory in Texas?
Insights drawn from the AP VoteCast survey that included over 4,500 voters in Texas, showed that the economy and jobs were foremost concerns among Texas voters, with 40 percent identifying it as the nation’s top issue. Immigration was cited by 20 percent of voters as the most pressing matter, while 10 percent pointed to abortion as their primary concern.
Cruz, a former presidential candidate in 2016, first joined the Senate after serving as Texas’ solicitor general. In 2020, he expanded his reach with a popular podcast, Verdict, where he voiced strong support for then-President Donald Trump during his impeachment, solidifying his influence within conservative circles.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press
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