Is a "Blue McLennan County" a reasonable goal?
And if not, then what should local Democrats be working towards?
Hello, and welcome to the fourth edition of Waco Can’t Wait, a progressive newsletter focusing on McLennan County, Texas, and Federal politics. Waco Cant Wait’s inaugural month has been very humbling, and I am so excited for what the new year holds. In the meantime, I am looking forward to my two weeks of rest with my Wife, my Family, and my Schnauzer.
So that y’all can be prepared, I do not plan on releasing a full newsletter on December 26th (the day after Christmas). Joe Manchin willing, I do not anticipate anything newsworthy to happen over the next week. Instead, I will be releasing Waco Can’t Wait’s first interview!
A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to speak with Victoria Volker, a queer pastor and Co-Founder of Lady Justice House, an LGBTQ+ centered congregation in Waco. We spoke about her coming into her queer and christian identity, the challenges of starting a new church community, and what role the church can play in supporting LGBTQ+ youth in a state that is increasingly hostile towards their existence.
Finally, in a county as tough as McLennan, Democrats and Progressives need to think about the most efficient way to organize our efforts to get maximum results. A good way to do this is to set a goal, and for many that goal is to flip McLennan County blue. I would like to argue that this isn’t the best way to conceptualize how our time should be spent, and I will argue that we should be working towards more attainable short-term goals that are instrumental to eventually flipping McLennan County. But first, let’s look at the news!
Week in review (a collection of news from Waco, Texas, and beyond)
Waco:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and not just because the holidays are right around the corner. The deadline for candidates to file for partisan offices closed this last Monday, and we can now see the landscape of Democratic Candidates running for office1. Looking to the local seats with Democratic challengers:
Cuevas Peacock, Director of Community Relations at Baylor University, will face off against Cedric Davis, Marlin’s City Manager, in the Democratic Primary for Texas House District 13.
Erin Shank, a Waco bankruptcy attorney and Democratic activist, is challenging incumbent Republican Charles “Doc” Anderson for Texas House District 56.
Precinct 2 County Commissioner Pat Miller will run for reelection unopposed in the Democratic Primary, and will face her 2018 opponent, Republican D.L. Wilson.
Retiring Precinct 5 Justice of the Peace Fernando Villareal leaves an open seat for this coming November. Beverly Hills Mayor Lucy Sanchez and Cameron Fillmore will compete in the Democratic Primary.
Democratic Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace James E. Lee Jr. faces no opposition in the Democratic Primary, but will face off against Republican C.L. Chase in November.
Democratic candidate Aubrey Robertson has filed to run for McLennan County District Attorney, and will face incumbent DA Barry Johnson or attorney Josh Tetens next Fall.
Democrat Mary Jo Woods will be running against Congressman Pete Sessions for U.S. Congressional District 17.
Finally, longtime McLennan County Democratic Party Chairwoman Mary Duty has decided not to run for reelection, and Precinct Chair Mark Hays will step into this new leadership role. I would like to thank Mary for all of her hard work as chair, and I look forward to working with Mark during this transition.
Congressman Pete Sessions spoke at the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce’s State of the Nation lunch, where he proceeded to opine on why people aren’t going back to work, why so many insurrectionists are languishing in jail, and people not needing the child tax credit.
On Thursday night, the Waco ISD Board of Trustees considered the at-large trustee seat that was vacated by Cary DuPuy. There was not a single board member that had any interest in appointing someone to the seat2, and it appears that the board will schedule the special election for the at-large seat along with the regularly scheduled elections for Districts 4 & 5. This is a big win for the parents of Waco ISD and democratic norms.
In another surprising turn of events, Waco ISD Board President Angela Tekell announced that she would not be running for reelection in District 4, leaving a vacancy for the first time in over a decade. Hope Mustakim is planning to run for this seat3. She ran a tight race against Cary DuPuy in 2020, and her campaign focused on equity, centering students and parents in the decision-making process, and fighting for our kids.
Texas:
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in an 8-1 decision, held that Attorney General Ken Paxton cannot unilaterally prosecute election cases. The Court of Criminal Appeals held that this was a violation of separation of powers, and that the decision to prosecute should lie with the local District Attorney. Texas has been notorious for targeting minority voters for allegedly voting illegally, most famously in the case of Crystal Mason. Mason was charged by the Tarrant County DA’s office for voting illegally, even though her vote was cast as a provisional ballot and was ultimately rejected.
The Texas Tribune chronicled the anti-abortion activism of Pastor Mark Lee Dickson, the architect of “Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn” and the Texas abortion law that has recently been in the Supreme Court. This law allows private citizens to sue those who help others get an abortion after around six weeks of pregnancy, and if the lawsuit is successful, plaintiffs get at least $10,000 in damages. In addition to the statewide cause of action, other communities across Texas are starting to pass these local ordinances banning abortion within the city limits. In McLennan County, Crawford passed a “sanctuary city for the unborn law” back in August (despite their being no abortion providers in the small town).
The Dallas Morning News did a great piece on Prison Gerrymandering in Texas, where they found that Republicans in the state legislature represent two-thirds of incarcerated people. These prison populations are used to artificially inflate the size of rural districts, robbing political power from urban communities. If prisoners were counted where they are from rather where they are incarcerated, then over two dozen State House districts under the current map would be significantly underpopulated.
Elsewhere:
Equis Research released its Part Two of a post-mortem on the Latino Vote in the 2020 election. The report is about 105 slides long, but it is vital reading for candidates and organizations trying to understand what went wrong for Democrats in South Texas and other Hispanic communities.
Among the many conclusions reached in the report, here are some of the main takeaways: the economy as an issue created a permission structure for Latinos to support Trump, the threat of “socialism” was a salient issue for many Latino communities, Republicans benefited from one-sided communication to Latinos, and disinformation on platforms like WhatsApp contributed towards negative attitudes toward Democrats. There is more to be studied on this topic, and we should see it as a warning to never take our voters for granted.
The January 6th committee recently released a text message from a mystery Republican who argued that Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and other Republican controlled legislatures should send their own presidential electors before the voters were done being counted.
Well, according to CNN the text was sent by none other than former Texas Governor Rick Perry. The committee will likely continue releasing these communications over the next couple of months, giving us a fuller picture of the plot to steal the 2020 election.
What Should be McLennan County Democrats’ North Star?
Activists and candidates often ask me this: How are we going to flip McLennan County blue? It is this tantalizing goal that seems to elude us year after year. We are left to wonder whether it is a pipe dream, or if there is something we are missing.
I believe this discourse begs the question. While this goal seems to be aspirational and ambitious, it misses the mark of how we should be conceptualizing our path to victory. By focusing on a single goal that is a moonshot, we narrow the conception of what a win could look like. Not meeting this goal leaves us discouraged, and we become disenchanted with the process. We need to set goals that are attainable and that would also be in furtherance of a blue McLennan County in the long-run.
In this piece, I am going to argue for all of the victories that can be won (short of flipping the county to our preferred hue). While it will be challenging to flip our county over the longterm, we can still elect good Democratic candidates countywide, vigorously engage in the nonpartisan process, and make a case to statewide campaigns that they need to be organizing in McLennan County if they want to win statewide. These goals all dovetail with and are necessary to eventually “flip” the county, and with a sustained effort we will get there.
Here is why 50% is an unreasonable goal (at least for now):
McLennan County’s voting history has been remarkably steady over the past 20 years.
The highest performing Democratic Presidential Candidate in McLennan County in the last 20 years was Barack Obama (37.7%), and Joe Biden had the highest raw vote total (36,688 total votes) of any Democratic Presidential Candidate in McLennan County ever.4 These are good developments, but between these two races we saw the Democratic vote share drop to around 34%. We are going to need greater improvements cycle to cycle, and we will need to keep those gains after we get them.
We have also seen a decrease in ticket splitting5 since the Republican Wave in 2010. This means that there are fewer conservative leaning persuadable voters, and that most of our gains will come from unregistered voters and people who have recently moved here. Though there are some interesting trends happening in places like West Waco, Woodway, and Hewitt, these changes are marginal and will need to be sustained over the next couple of cycles.
To bridge the current gap, we would need about 20,000 new, reliable Democratic voters. Netting 20,000 new Democratic votes to fill in the gap is a humongous undertaking. It would not be as simple as registering that many new Democrats, but also includes turning them out to vote. There simply are not enough unregistered Democrats in McLennan County to reach that number.
Any efforts to boost our Democratic vote share will not go unmatched by the McLennan County Republicans.
Joe Biden got 9,625 more votes in 2020 than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, which by itself is a huge accomplishment; however, Trump got 11,283 more votes in 2020 than in 2016. This means that Biden got 46% of new votes and Trump got 54% of new votes.6 While it is encouraging that almost 50% of new votes were for Democrats, we need to be out-registering and organizing Republicans every cycle to bridge the gap.
The Republicans here have sufficient resources, and they are not going to go quietly into the night. As it stands, they have a stronger infrastructure, more incumbents, and more money than we do. If they feel that we are making gains above and beyond what they’ve come to expect from us, then they will respond in kind.
We lack the demographic characteristics of Texas counties that are quickly trending left.
The counties that saw some of the largest swings toward Biden in 2020 have many common characteristics. They are…
suburban counties surrounding historically blue metros;
seeing huge influxes of out-of-state residents and Texans of color (Hays and Williamson county both grew by around 50% in the last decade);
highly college educated; and
seeing tremendous levels of investment from down ballot candidates and local democratic groups.
McLennan County is nestled right between Austin and DFW, which is too far away to be feeling any residual effects from the growing metros. We are diversifying and growing at a good rate (10.9% population growth from 2010 to 2020), but it does not appear to be at the same magnitude as these places growing by as much as 25-50% over the last decade. Even though we have several institutions of higher learning, our college educated adult numbers still lag other counties. Lastly, we have not seen a seriously contested race at the county level since Karen Matkin in 2014.
Here is why we do not need to be a “Blue County” to achieve a lot of our progressive goals:
We can elect a countywide Democrat in McLennan County without a statewide candidate winning at the same time.
If we can get to an attainable 42-45% Democratic vote share in the near future, I believe that we can put up candidates that can persuade Republicans to vote for them on a countywide basis. Even though ticket-splitting is becoming less and less common, there is still a lot of room to persuade folks if we can find the right wedge issues that are salient with the median voter.
By elevating existing community leaders and people already serving in nonpartisan seats, we can demonstrate to skeptical swing and conservative-leaning voters that these aren’t the fire-breathing liberals characterized in conservative media. These are your neighbors and current leaders in the community that have always done great work in the interest of everyone, and will continue to do that work as a Democrat.
We still have the opportunity to support progressive candidates in non-partisan races like city council, school board, or the local community college board. We can also take issues straight to the voters with ballot initiatives.
Without a D or an R next to these candidates names, we can run campaigns focused on policy that serve the broader electorate, rather than a narrow partisan audience. With races that turn out voters in the low teens, we could make an outsized impact on the operation of local government with smaller campaign budgets. A lean, mean race for school board or city council shouldn’t cost more than $4-5,000. While this is still a considerable sum, it pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to run for Texas House, or the millions to run for Congress.
Ballot initiatives are another great way to engage with the community on a shoestring budget. We could bring popular policies straight to the voters that current elected officials refuse to address. This gives us an opportunity to talk directly with people on single issues, continuously keep them plugged into the political process, and create substantive change closer to home.
In a world where Texas is a battleground state, counties like McLennan will become hotbeds of activity, even though they may not turn that beautiful shade of blue come election night.
If a Democrat is able to win Texas statewide in the near future, it will be by the tightest of margins. In a game of inches, every single vote is going to be important, and campaigns will be looking around for counties outside of the major metros where they can shore up the Democratic vote. Why not McLennan County?
If we have up-to-date data, high registration rates in our democratic precincts, and have demonstrated a competency for organizing at the local level, statewide races will feel more than comfortable to invest here knowing that it could net them the 5-10,000 votes they need to win.
Here is what we can aim for in the meantime:
Engage with our core Democratic constituencies, and reverse any of the trends from 2020.
McLennan Democrats need to get back to basics by doing the work of registering voters, asking them what issues they are passionate about (rather than assuming we know), and then helping our candidates run on those issues. 2016 and 2020 have proven that there is a huge disconnect between what voters want and what the Democratic Party thinks they want. The simplest solution is to engage with voters early and often so that we can have a total understanding of their attitudes and how those attitudes change over time.
Let’s do some deep, year-round canvassing in our most heavily Democratic, Black, and Latino voting precincts, including registering folks at every door and having in-depth conversations with them.
In 2018 and 2020, many Republican voting precincts made some big shifts to the left, but we also saw some concerning trends in some reliably blue voting precincts. For example, in West Waco some precincts swung as far left as 16 points, while precincts in predominantly Latino South Waco shifted between 2 and 13 points to the right. We need to work hard to keep these new voters and also maintain our strength with our most reliable voters.
Support nonpartisan/local candidates and progressive ballot measures so that we can build the bench of candidates to run for higher office and so to engage our broader electorate.
If you have ever considered running for office, but are intimidated by the impending doom of a partisan general election, you do have other options. Across the county we have tons of local races that go uncontested, including: school board, city council, McLennan community college board, or county commissioner’s court. These races are great opportunities to make decisions that directly affect city services, local taxation, and how we enjoy our daily lives.
Groups like Ground Game Texas are working with activists in cities and towns across Texas to bring policy decisions straight to voters. Instead of relying on our local elected officials to pass these bold policies, we the people have the power to pass things like: marijuana decriminalization, banning no knock warrants, and raising the minimum wage for our city employees. These kind of initiatives allow us to engage with voters year-round, rally around popular issues, and ensure we have up-to-date voter data.
Give statewide races a reason to invest here by showing them that they will not win statewide without making an investment in the Heart of Texas.
We need zealous advocates from the county democratic party and local democratic groups to encourage statewide campaigns to set up field offices and visit McLennan County. Let’s make a case that there are voters here to win over and that organizing in McLennan County is vital if these candidates want to get to 50% + 1.
I hope this piece doesn’t discourage you, but instead gives you hope that there is a viable path forward. Everything I have said today is with all the love and deep respect for those who came before us and for those who continue to work tirelessly to make our community a better place for all. We must learn from those who’ve organized and fought before us, and build off of their wisdom and victories.
We have so many reasons to be excited about the future of the Democratic Party in McLennan County in 2022 and beyond. Going into the 2022 cycle, we have new leadership in soon-to-be McLennan County Democratic Party Chair Mark Hays and in candidates like Erin Shank (running for House District 56). With Beto at the top of the ticket, we can bank on some kind of activity from his race in the Heart of Texas, and I will do what I can to encourage other races to take an active role in campaigning here. We have a tough road ahead, but all long journeys start with the first step. Let’s walk together.
To see a full list of all of the congressional, statewide, state house, state senate, and state board of education races, check out Patrick Svitek’s 2022 Texas Races Google Sheet. Also, Svitek wrote a great piece after filings had closed providing an overview of the statewide landscape.
Could it have something to do with my letter to the editor? Who knows.
I will be managing and advising Hope’s campaign for school board.
Fun Fact: Chet Edwards holds the record for most raw votes (47,406) and highest percentage (59.81%) of any Democrat that has run in McLennan County since 2008. In that same year that Edwards got that many votes, John McCain got 61.56% of the vote and 49,044 votes.
I would go back further, but the county only has digital records as far back as 2008.
Ticket-splitting: when a voter chooses candidates from both political parties in an election with multiple offices up for election.
I do not want to say that these numbers are necessarily representative of “new voters", because those numbers would look different than votes in excess of prior vote totals due to deaths, changes in voting behavior, or people who have voted before not voting now.