As Democrats dream of a blue Texas, tight House race will give a glimpse of how far they've come
The party flipped one U.S. House seat on the outskirts of the country’s fourth-most populous city in 2018. Democrats have set their sights in the Nov. 3 election on a couple of other area seats, including the state’s 22nd District, which spreads out to the south and southwest of downtown Houston.
Republican Rep. Pete Olson has won six straight elections there. He carried the district by nearly 20 percentage points in 2016. But his decision not to run for reelection has left a Republican, Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls, vying for the open seat with Olson’s 2018 opponent, Democratic former foreign service officer Sri Preston Kulkarni.
After Kulkarni lost to Olson by only about 5 percentage points in the midterms, the district became one of the most closely watched House battlegrounds in the country. The race has seen a flood of outside money — more than $12 million for and against Nehls and Kulkarni — putting it among the most expensive contests in the country.
Texas’ 22nd District is one of the most racially diverse congressional seats in the country. The presence of the energy sector, the health-care industry and NASA have sent the area’s education levels and median incomes soaring.
It’s exactly the type of place where Democrats have seen success in the Trump era. It’s also one of about a dozen potentially competitive U.S. House races in Texas where the party still has to overcome years of GOP success to win.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/28/texas-house-election-sri-kulkarni-troy-nehls-22nd-district.html?__source=sharebar%7Ctwitter&par=sharebar
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