Gina Ortiz Jones
Several of the most truly competitive House races in the country are in Texas, which could wind up providing Democrats three or more of the 24 flipped seats that they need for control of the chamber. The state tells the tale of the November midterms as well as anywhere else.
The appeal of youth, of first-timers, of women, of veterans and of candidates of color will be tested here. And a bevy of compelling characters have emerged from the primaries on March 6 and are poised to prevail in runoffs on May 22.
There’s Gina Ortiz Jones, for example. Jones, 37, is almost certain to be the Democrat challenging Representative Will Hurd in the 23rd District, which sprawls from San Antonio to the outskirts of El Paso. Despite its large numbers of rural voters, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the 23rd by more than three points. (Clinton lost the state by nine.)
Jones was an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq. Like Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania, she drew the support of the Serve America PAC, which promotes veterans as candidates on the theory that they can help Democrats forge a cultural connection with working-class voters in swing districts.
She’s Filipina-American. She’s also openly lesbian, and while Texas political analysts told me that they weren’t sure whether that would affect her bid, Jones has figured out precisely how to handle it: with brief acknowledgment and no special focus.
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Colin Allred
Democrats also have an excellent shot at victory in the 32nd District, a collection of Dallas neighborhoods and suburbs. Its Republican incumbent, Pete Sessions, has been in Congress for two decades, but the district has become more diverse and less white over those years, and his likely opponent, a black civil rights lawyer named Colin Allred, should benefit from that.
Allred is 34. Like Jones, he’s making his first run for office. Also like her, he has an unconventional professional biography. Before getting his law degree at the University of California, Berkeley, he played professional football for the Tennessee Titans, and before that he was a football star at Baylor University in Waco and at a high school in his Dallas district. Many of its voters remember watching him play.
And more of them voted for Clinton than for Trump in the presidential election, a sign of the district’s evolution and an outcome for which Democrats were so unprepared that not a single Democrat challenged Sessions in 2016. This time around, seven Democrats entered the race. Allred got 38.5 percent of the votes in the primary, more than twice that of the second-place finisher.
[…]
Democrats are even eyeing a few districts that Trump won, like the 21st and 31st. The 21st attracted the party’s attention largely because its Republican incumbent, Lamar Smith, isn’t seeking re-election. He decided to retire after more than three decades in the House.
And the 31st? Well, it’s hard not to indulge in some optimism when your party’s leading candidate is a female war hero whose story is possibly becoming a movie, “Shoot Like a Girl,” starring Angelina Jolie. That candidate, M. J. Hegar, 42, did several tours of duty in Afghanistan as a search-and-rescue pilot and won a Purple Heart after she was wounded while saving fellow passengers when the Taliban shot down her helicopter.
Richard Murray, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, told me to keep an eye as well on the 22nd District, a largely suburban swath of the Houston area that he described as a microcosm of demographic changes that are making the state ever more hospitable Democratic turf.
“The suburban counties that led Republicans to dominance here 25 years ago are getting significantly less Republican fast,” he said, adding that Fort Bend County, in the 22nd, is roughly 20 percent Asian-American now. The first-place finisher in the district’s Democratic primary, Sri Preston Kulkarni, is Indian-American. Murray said that if Kulkarni wins his runoff, that could be a significant boost to Democrats’ chances to nab this House seat.
Couple things here. All these matchups are contingent on the outcome of the runoffs. While Ortiz Jones and Allred are solid favorites in May based on their performances in March, the others are less clear. Kulkarni led runnerup Letitia Plummer 31.9 to 24.3, which is far from insurmountable. Hegar drew 44.9%, better than either Ortiz Jones or Allred, but second place finisher Christine Eady Mann had 33.5%, so her lead is much smaller. And then there’s the 21st, where the more establishment (and big money) candidate Joseph Kopser trailed the less-heralded Mary Wilson by two points. It will be interesting to see how this one is perceived if Wilson prevails in the runoff.
There are other districts that author Frank Bruni could have included as well, mostly CDs 02 and 06, both of which are open seats. Plus, you know, CD07. It’s important to remember that with the exception of CD23, all these districts were drawn to withstand a strong Democratic year, though that will be tested in November. Candidate quality does make a difference in tough races, and the basic thesis that the Dems here have collected a quality slate is accurate. From here on out it’s all about execution.
Maybe there is no mention of CD07 until there is a chosen Dem candidate since, at this point, it is unknown whether it will be Moser of Fletcher, which will be telling as to the potential of the Dems winning this district.
The mentioned races are in runoffs, and therefore don’t have chosen Dem candidates. The article is just highlighting the front-runners for the nominations.
Dems are getting smarter, putting up ex military candidates, instead of just ceding patriotism to the Pubs.
Republicans aren’t about patriotism. Republicans are about the machine.
And clearly patriotism’s connection to support for the military is flexible. See Kerry-Bush, and Trump crapping on the military and law enforcement.