Beto O’Rourke
A month after ending his presidential campaign, Democrat Beto O’Rourke has turned his attention to state politics — namely, an effort to help flip the Texas House of Representatives from Republican control to the Democrats.
With Texas Democrats nine seats away from retaking the majority of seats in the Texas House, O’Rourke is trying to convince his donor base to send money to an organization called Flip The Texas House, which has targeted 17 House Districts in which Republican candidates won by fewer than 10 percentage points last year. More than half are districts in which O’Rourke won the majority of votes as he ran for U.S. Senate.
“In 2018, I carried nine of the 17 districts now represented by Republicans. So we know that we can do this,” O’Rourke said in the email. “We just need your help to make sure that we make the most of this opportunity.”
Ten of the targeted districts are in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and five are in and around Houston. One is in San Antonio and one is in Killeen.
As always, my analysis of the interesting House races is here. Those five Houston-area districts are HDs 134 and 138 in Harris County, HD29 in Brazoria County, and HDs 26 and 28 in Fort Bend. HD26 is now an open seat after incumbent Rick Miller said some deeply stupid things that even Greg Abbott condemned. It’s not even 2020 yet, and things are already off the chain.
Let me just say, we’re really not ready for the amount of money that’s going to be spent on campaigns in Texas next year. Ads – on TV, on the internet, on Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and Instagram and everywhere else – and mailers and texts and calls and canvassers, it’s going to be nuts. We as a non-swing state for many years are not prepared for this. I feel like we all need to spend a week in Iowa or New Hampshire to get a taste of it. Just brace yourself, that’s all I’m saying.
That’s why we went back and thanked certain precincts earlier this year that we swarmed with door knocks last fall. The CD 7 race was but a small taste of things to come.