Rep. Filemon Vela
U.S. Rep. Filemón Vela sees his new leadership role in the Democrats’ national campaign arm as being “the voice of caution, reason and taking the middle ground” as the party seeks to hold power through the 2022 midterms and beyond.
The Brownsville Democrat, who on Thursday was elected vice chair of the Democratic National Committee through 2025, said Democrats have a lot of work to do in Texas — especially in areas of South Texas, including his own district, where he says the party’s messaging on energy and guns cost them ground in November.
Vela will be one of four vice chairs helping to guide Democrats’ campaign efforts in 2022 and 2024. He said the party needs to figure out better ways of talking about those issues to keep from backsliding further in a state Democrats have long hoped to flip. The party is getting hammered by more effective Republican messaging, he said.
In the final weeks of the election, the Texas GOP raised alarms about Joe Biden’s plan to phase out fossil fuels in a state where 162,000 people were directly employed in oil drilling and related services.
“Clearly the DNC has work to do in Texas,” Vela said in an interview with Hearst Newspapers. “You can’t just tell people like that — we’re going to take your jobs away — and think they’re going to vote for you. If we’re serious about climate change and job creation, we have to be able to tell those individuals and those families, you know what, we’ve got alternatives.”
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Vela said he doesn’t expect Biden’s moves so far to have the dire effects for Texans that Republicans are claiming. But it’s an area where Democrats need to do a better job explaining what they’re doing.
“There are jobs in the energy industry that are not necessarily oil and gas — whether it be solar, wind, electrical, whatever — that is going to make your life better,” Vela said. “You won’t have to leave your family for two or three weeks, you won’t have to bust your ass waking up at 3 in the morning and working until late at night. And you’re going to make more money in a safer and more efficient environment.
“We don’t have that message,” he said. “That’s the puzzle.”
The same is true for guns, Vela said.
“Those of us who grew up in South Texas, we grew up with our grandfathers and fathers and uncles and cousins and friends hunting and fishing. If the Democratic message is going to suggest that you’re not going to be able to do that, we’re going to continue to lose a lot of these voters,” he said.
But, he said, Democrats aren’t trying to actually do that as they seek stricter background checks and other measures meant to stop mass shootings.
“Clearly Republican messaging on the subject is not being countered — we’re not countering that message appropriately.”
Rep. Vela has direct reasons to be concerned about this, as his CD34 shifted strongly towards Trump in 2020, though he himself still won by a comfortable margin. That may make him a redistricting target, though it may also be the case that the Republicans overestimate their strength in that part of the state. But I think he’s right about what happened in 2020, and he’s in a long line of people who have been complaining for years about Democrats’ lack of messaging and engagement in South Texas. As a DNC Vice Chair, he’s now in a position to do something about it.