Dec. 10, 2024, 2:50 p.m.
I just spent nearly a week in Texas, which means I speak like a Texan again.
When I moved to New York after spending 21 years in Texas, five years in Oklahoma, and a year in North Carolina, I was resoundingly mocked for the way I talked. My speech was full of phrases and idioms my coworkers had never heard before. If I said we were “fixin’ to have a come-to-Jesus meeting out by the woodshed,” no one had a clue that I was about to rip someone to shreds.
I trained my accent out and changed the way I talked, even giving up “y’all” while I lived in New York. Now that I’m in D.C., though, I am less guarded with how I speak—it’s closer to the South.
Still, in a lot of circles—particularly on the Left—the same disdain for Texas exists: It’s just a state full of right-wing hicks who brag too much about its brief stint as an independent country. The general animosity toward Texas is kind of ubiquitous, except among those of us from the state. And I get it—Texans have a reputation as pretty arrogant for thinking it’s the best place on Earth. I used to be one of those people.
But it would be wise to get over that, at least from a political standpoint. Texas is already a heavy political counterweight to the coastal population hubs in California and New York. It is set to become an even more dominant force in U.S. politics over the next decade.
If the current rate of growth continues, Texas could gain four congressional seats in the 2030 reapportionment, bringing its Electoral College vote total to 44, which could creep up on California’s 50 (down four given current trends) and which is approaching double New York’s 25 (down three) under that scenario. That also means New York and California combined lose seven electoral votes. With the projected loss of two more seats in Illinois and one each in Oregon and Minnesota, that is an automatic shift of 11 votes away from solidly blue states in the Electoral College toward states that are currently solidly red.
Texas has been solidly red since 1994, when George W. Bush defeated the last Democratic governor, Ann Richards. Hopes of a “blue Texas” in recent election cycles have proven to be pipe dreams so far, even as Democrats have made some gains over the last decade. In 2020, President-elect Trump only won by 5 points after a 9-point win in 2016, and in 2018, Sen. Ted Cruz had to sweat it out to win by 2.5 points over then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke.
Then 2024 happened, setting the clock back a couple of cycles with Trump’s 14-point win and Cruz’s 9-point win.
But that doesn’t mean Republicans should think they have Texas forever or that Democrats should write it off. The state is too politically important for anyone to take it for granted. Its red status seems well ingrained, but time has a way of changing political maps.
So what does taking Texas seriously look like for Democrats? Step one is letting go of the stereotypes. There is no one profile.
Texas is large. It’s so large that my accent from growing up in rural East Texas was mocked as funny when I went to college in the Panhandle. Then I would adjust and go back home, only to get mocked again. East Texas is the Deep South; the Panhandle is a unique mix of Southwestern and Midwestern. And the central part with the cities is an altogether different beast, with its mix of four major metro areas, suburbs for hundreds of miles, and rural Hill Country. Then there are the southern and southwestern parts of the state, which are heavily Latino, reliant on the oil and gas industry, and the site of Trump’s biggest gains in the state.
Step two is not waiting for population change to accomplish political change. The folly of the “blue Texas” prediction was that it rested on two big, yet flawed, assumptions: that the constantly growing Latino population would continue to lean Democratic and that the influx of new residents from California and other states would lean more Democratic than existing Texans. Neither of those have panned out.
The Democratic brand in Texas has to look different than the national brand if the party hopes for any long-term success. The state is fundamentally conservative, and its economy depends heavily on the oil and gas industry. You can’t get beaten by 60-80 points in rural areas and expect the cities to make up the difference—the cities aren’t blue enough for that. Figuring it out has to start now, not in 2030, when the state gains more power. The state’s Democratic chair resigned shortly after the election. A new one needs to start fresh.
