TX-24: The Unlikely Candidate Who Might Flip a Republican Stronghold
“It’s quite a leap,” Candace Valenzuela admits to me, laughing, while discussing her candidacy in one of the country’s most highly watched House races. The 36-year-old is talking on the phone from her makeshift study, a bathroom in her North Dallas home that is the only spot where she can find privacy. She tells me about how far she’s come since her childhood, when she spent nights sleeping in an empty kiddie pool outside a Texaco gas station after her family became homeless. She explains that what helped them get things together were food stamps, federal subsidized housing, and public schools. “These opportunities that allowed me to go from being homeless as a kid to become the first in my family to go to college,” she says in a soft voice, “should be available to everyone.”
Valenzuela, a Democrat, is running to represent the Dallas–Fort Worth suburbs of Texas’s Twenty-fourth Congressional District, which Democrats have identified as one of their best opportunities nationwide to flip a district from Republican control. A former board member for the Carrollton–Farmers Branch Independent School District, Valenzuela is an unlikely candidate for such a high-profile race. Just three years ago, she was a college preparation consultant, and she remained a relative political unknown when she announced her candidacy for the Democratic primary in 2019. But she quickly racked up endorsements from national liberal groups and leaders, including Emily’s List—a political action committee focused on electing Democratic women—and the late representative John Lewis and Senator Elizabeth Warren. She also won the support of the congressional Hispanic, Black, and Progressive caucuses. In March, Valenzuela placed second, beating out Jan McDowell, who had been the Democratic nominee in the district the two prior cycles, to qualify for a runoff. McDowell subsequently endorsed her, and in July, Valenzuela upset her rival in the runoff, a candidate with more name recognition, former Democratic nominee for state agriculture commissioner Kim Olson.
Though the district was designed to be a GOP stronghold when state Republicans redrew the congressional map in 2003, recent demographic changes and anti-Trump shifts have made it freshly competitive. After Republican Kenny Marchant won by seventeen points in 2016, his margin shrank to less than three points in 2018, and he announced he would not seek reelection. Nonpartisan organizations including Real Clear Politics, Five Thirty Eight, and the Cook Political Report rate the district as a toss-up. The Republican candidate in the Twenty-fourth, former Irving mayor Beth Van Duyne, has tried to frame Valenzuela’s liberal politics as out of line with those of her district, which rejected McDowell’s liberal positions two years ago. But in the primary, Valenzuela, was careful to stress representation as her central pitch rather than any specific left policy. While McDowell anointed herself the “most progressive” candidate and ran on raising capital gains taxes, and Olson ran as an outsider, Valenzuela highlighted her work with Republicans on the school board and her background.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/article/candace-valenzuela-race-dallas/
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