I heartily approve of this.
Elizabeth Warren
As Elizabeth Warren climbs the polls — threatening Joe Biden’s lead in the Democratic primary — her campaign is turning its attention to Texas, a state she called home for a decade and a place her campaign has deemed the “future of our party.”
Warren announced this week she’s soon to dispatch staff to Texas, and her campaign manager says her commitment to the state includes pouring money into down-ballot races here, part of a broader national strategy to help candidates in other races.
“We’re targeting our resources to invest in places that will be critical to keeping the House, taking back the U.S. Senate, and regaining ground in key state legislatures in 2020,” Roger Lau, Warren’s campaign manager, wrote in a strategy memo this week. And he vowed that the campaign is “continuing to build the future of our party by investing in states like Texas.”
The memo comes as Warren rises in the polls, surpassing Biden to take the front-runner spot in several, including a Quinnipiac University poll released this week that showed Warren with a lead of 2 percentage points over the former vice president.
It’s also the latest example of national Democrats paying serious attention to a state they long saw as a Republican stronghold beyond their reach. The party picked Houston to host a presidential debate earlier this month. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has opened an office with senior staff in Austin and has operatives working in the half-dozen GOP-held congressional districts they’re targeting for the 2020 election. And the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a Washington entity headed by former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder, has said it plans to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in hopes of seizing the nine seats that Democrats need to take back the Texas House.
Warren’s campaign manager summed up the effort: “If we want to make big, structural change, we need to make sure Democrats control the U.S. House and Senate and win important gubernatorial and state legislative races across the country.”
That was from a couple of weeks ago; I forgot I had it in my drafts. We don’t know what the shape of this effort will be, but so far Team Warren is saying all the things I’d want a Democratic frontrunner to say. She has already endorsed in the CD28 primary, which is either bold or meddling, depending on one’s perspective. This is a different type and level of commitment, and it won’t be clear what it means till some time next year. I’ve said before that putting real resources in Texas is a must-have for me in a Presidential candidate. This is a good example of what I’m talking about. Well done.