Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was in San Antonio on Saturday touting the candidacy of two radical left candidates for the House. Jessica Cisneros and Greg Casar joined AOC on stage at a local San Antonio club as they campaigned for the March 1 primary.
“Here’s what’s exciting about Jessica’s race and Greg’s race … is that if we flip Texas, we flip the country” she claimed.
That’s an interesting assumption, but can it be done? Can Democrats really flip Texas from red to blue?
If trends that began ten years ago had continued, it would have been very possible that Texas would flip to blue. But Democrats have lost the moment. And some Republicans — Donald Trump comes to mind — have figured out how to appeal to the Hispanic electorate in ways that Republicans previously did not.
The facts are clear. The Democrats’ share of the Hispanic vote is falling and the GOP’s share is rising. That doesn’t mean Texas will stay red. But the calculations and timetable used by Democrats to flip Texas have proven to be inaccurate.
During the rally, Ocasio-Cortez said she believes Texas will turn blue soon. Touting it’s only a matter of time before the state turns blue, she threw in her support of Cisneros and Casar – calling them progressive leaders who are here to fight for Texas families.
“Here’s what’s exciting about Jessica’s race and Greg’s race, is that if we flip Texas, we flip the country,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “…Texas turning blue is inevitable. The only question is when. We are going to fight for a living wage, we are going to make sure we unionize the hell out of this state… and we’re going to make sure that not one dime is made exploitatively across any worker, especially the undocumented.”
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As Fox News points out, AOC isn’t the first politician to predict a Texas switch.
The New York representative is not the first politician to imagine a world where the Republican Party loses Texas’ crucial 38 electoral college votes, which is a nightmare for the party. In September 2019, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said the state would be close in the 2020 presidential election. (Former President Trump carried the state, winning 52.1% to President Biden’s 46.5%)
“If we lose Texas, it’s game over,” Cruz told a Christian Science Monitor breakfast at the time. “I don’t believe Texas will turn blue but central to that is we’re going to have to work to communicate and turn people out.”
It is well to look back and remember that in 1984, Ronald Reagan carried Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, and New Mexico, all by comfortable margins. Donald Trump lost all of those states in 2020. The intervening decades saw a migration from California into each and every one of those states that turned them from red to purple, to blue.
It’s not a certainty that the same thing could happen in Texas now that the Lone Star state is the target for more California migration. But forcing the Republicans to pour resources into a previously safe state like Texas only means the party can spend less on other battleground states.
And in a tight race, that might mean the difference between victory and defeat.
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