A Hispanic outreach center that the National Republican Committee opened on San Antonio’s Southeast Side in 2021 is among numerous minority outreach offices across the country that have been shuttered for the 2024 election cycle.
Democrats say the closures are a signal the GOP no longer cares about courting Hispanic voters, while Republicans say the investments in traditionally blue territory didn’t make sense in this year’s challenging national political landscape.
The now-shuttered Hispanic outreach center in the Highlands neighborhood, which served as a gathering point for congressional candidate Cassy Garcia in 2022, offers some evidence for both perspectives.
Its closure — part of an overall scaled-back presence in South Texas this election cycle — is in stark contrast to the optimistic message national Republicans were sending here just two years ago.
[…]
The RNC plans to maintain one South Texas Hispanic outreach center this year to support U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz in Texas’ 15th Congressional District — the only one of the 2022 targets Republicans successfully flipped last cycle.
Redistricting in 2021 turned that seat from slightly favoring Democrats to slightly favoring Republicans, but De La Cruz faces a potentially contentious rematch with Democrat Michelle Vallejo. National Democrats are targeting that race and putting big money into Latino voter outreach nationwide.
I suspect this is partly about prioritizing incumbent protection over seeking targets to flip, especially after neither CDs 28 nor 34 proved to be particularly reachable for them in the favorable-in-Texas environment of 2022, and one part the reality that the RNC now exists to funnel money to Donald Trump and his lawyers. Not a whole lot of money left for anything else after that. There may be some downstream effects in their efforts to hold onto State House districts like HD37 and HD118, and their effort to flip SD27, which again is all fine by me. This also doesn’t mean there won’t be money from other sources in these areas and doing this work, it just won’t be RNC money. I hope we look back on this as a bad decision by the GOP. The Current and Reform Austin have more.