A handful of Republican-held House seats in the Texas suburbs represent fertile ground for competitive races in 2020, according to recent Democratic polling.
The surveys in six GOP districts, shared first with CQ Roll Call, are a sign that Democratic outside groups are willing to spend resources in the Lone Star State, where party leaders believe they can make gains next year. The polls were commissioned by House Majority Forward, the nonprofit arm of House Majority PAC, a super PAC tied to the chamber’s Democratic leadership.
Three of the districts surveyed have GOP incumbents running for reelection, including Reps. Michael McCaul in the 10th District, Chip Roy in the 21st and John Carter in the 31st. Polls were also conducted in three open-seat races in the 22nd, 23rd and 24th districts. Republicans won all six seats in 2018, all by margins of 5 points or less.
The surveys, conducted by Public Policy Polling, tested a generic Democrat against a generic Republican in each of the districts.
Here’s some more info:
A little more info about the polling:
The polls surveyed between 523 and 656 likely voters in each of the congressional districts and had margins of error between plus or minus 3.8 and 4.2 percentage points. They were conducted Sept. 19-21 via landline telephone interviews using IVR technology, also known as automated phone polling.
One Democrat running for one of these seats is already kicking ass in fundraising:
Gina Ortiz Jones, the leading Democratic candidate to replace U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, raised over $1 million in the third quarter, her campaign announced Tuesday morning.
The figure represents a massive haul that her campaign described as the "largest off-year quarterly fundraising total the district has ever seen."
"I’m honored by the groundswell of support we’ve received and together we’re building a grassroots campaign to stand up to the corporate special interests and bring commonsense priorities like quality, affordable health care and lower prescription drug costs to Washington, D.C.," Jones said in a statement.
Jones' campaign expects to report having about $1.4 million cash on hand — a hefty stockpile for a race that is at the top of national Democrats' priority list this cycle in Texas.
Wendy Davis (D. TX) is also making the 21st district a competitive race as well.
And the DNC is already smelling a lot of GOP blood in the Lone Star State:
The Democratic National Committee announced Monday that it is funding full-time staff in eight presidential election battleground states, showing its commitment to state-level investment early in the election cycle.
The central party body, which oversees the presidential nominating process and provides support for general-election efforts across the country, is financing the hiring in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. Though the DNC is funding the new personnel, the Democratic Party in each of the individual states will employ them.
The funding for those states’ organizers, which will be responsible for outreach to voters in key constituencies, comes from the DNC’s State Party Innovation Fund. The DNC did not provide a dollar figure for the investment, but said it was larger than comparable investments at this stage in the 2016 election cycle.
Emphasis Mine.
While I would also like North Carolina, Iowa, and Georgia added to the list, it’s very encouraging to see Arizona and Texas on the lists. The only major Texas Republican who hasn’t gotten the memo that traditional Texas Republican voters hate Trump seems to be U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R. TX):
Texas Sen. John Cornyn has been one of President Donald Trump's fiercest defenders on Twitter in the face of a formal impeachment inquiry sparked by Trump's July phone call with the president of Ukraine.
Cornyn has directly tweeted or retweeted criticism of the inquiry more than 50 times from his personal Twitter account over the course of the past week. The tweets question the motivations of the whistleblower, who first called attention to the phone call, criticize Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who announced the inquiry last Tuesday, and accuse media coverage of the inquiry of being "disinterested in gathering the facts."
The Twitter defense comes as scrutiny builds over a July phone call where Trump asked Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky for "a favor" to investigate former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's son, Hunter, according to a rough transcript of the call.
Trump withheld $300 million in military aid to the Eastern European country prior to the phone call but has denied doing anything improper.
Sunday morning, Cornyn tweeted he was "skeptical of anonymous allegations" by the whistleblower, who was a CIA officer stationed in the White House at the time of the complain, according to the New York Times.
Stay tuned for more news out of Texas. In the meantime, please do continue to help build momentum for Gina Ortiz Jones’ (D. TX-23) campaign by clicking here to donate and get involved with her campaign. Let’s also help Wendy Davis flip the 21st district by clicking here to donate and get involved with her campaign.
Also, below is the list of Democrats running for the U.S. Senate in Texas. Please do donate and get involved with the Texas Democrat’s campaign you support: