Democrats could gain control of the Texas House. Here are the seats in play, [View all]
The battlefield for the House is large. In addition to the 12 seats that Republicans are trying to reclaim from the 2018 midterm election, Democrats are targeting 22 Republican-held seats where Beto O’Rourke, the 2018 Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, won or lost by single digits. In 17 of those seats, the Republican incumbents won by fewer than 10 percentage points. Of those 17 seats, there are nine where both O’Rourke won and the incumbent won by single digits — those could be considered Democrats’ highest priorities.
Both parties are again calling North Texas ground zero for several of the House races considered to be in play by both parties, with the Austin and Houston areas also featuring clusters of competitive seats.
Even before the 2020 elections, Democrats have a chance to pick up a seat in the late January special election runoff to fill the seat of former Rep. John Zerwas, R-Richmond. Democrats were already targeting him before he resigned this fall to take a job with the University of Texas System.
Democrat targets have even grown to include once-unthinkable places like House District 32, where state Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, is facing his first challenger from either party since O'Rourke came within 5 points of winning the district.
The Democrat now running against Hunter, Eric Holguin, said the district has become younger young and more diverse since the lines were drawn in 2011 — and last year brought into focus Democrats' path to victory.
"In 2018, we were seeing such a seismic shift in our political landscape due to [President Donald] Trump already having been in office a couple years," said Holguin, who ran for Congress last cycle in the area. "Now that we saw the results of what happened in 2018, we could build off from there. We know where the new bar is set at more locally, and we could take it from there instead of not knowing what would happen post-Trump being elected."
Many of the competitive races are playing out in suburban areas that are changing demographically.
Republicans think their candidates can attract voters in those areas based on the pitch that the GOP is a “broad-based party” rooted in good governance and policies.
“The Republican Party [is not] not monochromatic,” said Steve Armbruster, chair of the Williamson County GOP, noting that the local party had recruited three Hispanic Republicans this cycle to challenge incumbent Democrats on the ballot. “The suburban districts are where the battleground is at, but the Republicans are ready for a fight.”
But changing demographics, said state Rep. Celia Israel, an Austin Democrat and the new chairwoman of the House Democratic Campaign Committee, “tell a progressive story” — and as the trend continues, “we’re electing more and more Democrats.”
“Our party is just as diverse as our electorate,” Israel said in a statement. “As these competitive House district change demographically so will their representatives. Our ideas and hopes are just as diverse as our candidates and I can’t wait for them to tell their stories in the coming months.”
Monday marked the last day for candidates to file to run for office. Both parties fielded candidates for all of the targeted seats, and in some battleground races primaries grew to include as many as five candidates.
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/12/13/will-texas-house-turn-blue-after-2020-elections/
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