'As long as possible': Inside Republicans’ power play to keep Texas red amid wave of blue

Republicans in the Texas legislature recently passed two bills that will affect how elections will be run in the state’s largest county, Harris County — a Houston-centered Democratic stronghold.

The first bill gets rid of Harris County’s elections administrator entirely, and the second allows the state’s Republican secretary of state to directly oversee elections in the county. These moves have been referred to as a Republican “power grab” by Democrats in the state.

Republicans argue that they’re making these changes because of election problems in the county, but Democrats argue that they’re targeting Harris County simply because it’s large and blue. President Biden won the county by 13 points in 2020. It may be that Republicans are worried that Texas overall will turn blue, or at least a shade of purple, because of — among other things — changing demographics in the state.

“They’re targeting Harris County in an attempt to suppress the vote, put their elections under the control of the Republican statewide leadership and potentially risk future elections being overturned or results being questioned,” says Sawyer Hackett, a democratic strategist in Texas. “This is one of the bluest counties in Texas essentially being put under state control in a state that’s dominated by Republican politicians.”

Hackett says he believes Republicans are trying to keep Texas red “as long as possible.” Texas isn’t absolutely destined to turn blue, Hackett says, but he thinks Republicans are very concerned that it could turn significantly more blue in the not-too-distant future.

While Republicans in Texas have maintained a nearly 30-year winning streak of statewide offices, then-President Donald Trump won Texas by less than 6 percentage points in 2020 — the worst showing there for a Republican presidential candidate since 1996.

Republicans now appear to be doing whatever they can to defend against conservative vote erosion, he says.

“If you look at the trends that I think are triggering this: In 2018, the statewide deficit for Democrats was a little bit more than 200,000 votes. Harris County contributed 201,000 votes to Democrats, but it’s a county that’s growing amazingly fast,” Hackett says. “It also has a lot of people who don’t vote. If voter turnout was where it should be, you could flip the state with just that county. They see Harris County as the biggest threat to keeping control over the state.”

The Texas Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), who represents a district in Harris County that includes a large swath of Houston, tells Raw Story that she thinks Republicans’ targeting of Harris County is “unacceptable” and that politics, not election problems, are driving their effort.

“Extreme MAGA Republicans know that when minorities vote, they lose. This is yet another attempt to restrict voting rights in Harris County, one of the most diverse counties in the country,” Garcia said. “In 2020, voters were afforded greater accessibility to the ballot through measures like drive-thru voting, 24-hour voting and increased drop off locations for mail ballots. These measures increased voter turnout and put a Republican target on the county. MAGA Republicans are trying to push back against our constitutional right to vote, by adding barriers to voter registration and casting a ballot. They are more concerned with keeping people away from the polls instead of driving them to the polls.”

Texas is also a state that often sets legislative trends. The kinds of bills the Texas Legislature passes might be duplicated in other red states, Hackett says, so Democrats nationwide should be worried about what’s happening in Texas. He says there may be other blue-trending red states where conservatives get increasingly creative in a bid to diminish the Democratic vote.

“This is a new form of voter intimidation and voter suppression that Texas Republicans are trying, and Texas has always been ground zero for different forms of voter suppression,” Hackett says. “National political leaders on the right pay attention to what happens in Texas, because they’ve been able to stave off the state being flipped and put under Democratic control largely because of these efforts to suppress the vote.”

At present, there’s not much Democrats in Texas can do to stop Republican efforts to overhaul how elections are run in places such as Harris County, considering that conservatives significantly outnumber liberals in the legislature. But that doesn’t mean some won’t try: Last week, Harris County approved a move to sue the state of Texas over its targeting of its election administration.

Democrats are also raising the alarm to get more people to pay attention to what’s happening here and because they want Democrats around the country to see what could be coming their way.