Texas Democrats seek to rebuild their Blue Wall in South Texas after years of neglect

The region once dominated by Democrats for over century has been trending red for decades as the Texas Democratic Party lost touch with its rural Latino base.

The Democratic Party has always been a loose—often confused coalition of various interest groups and this story is no different in Texas. The party was able to bring together staunch conservative Democrats like Lyndon Johnson, bleeding-heart liberals like Ann Richards, and fiery populists like Jim Hightower. Yet several key events in our political history have fractured this coalition to the point where nowadays Democrats can only really get elected in major population centers, and that is true beyond Texas.

The first major event to fracture the Democratic Party’s coalition was the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. While this legislation was undoubtedly the correct moral and political position for Democrats to take, it led to a fracturing of the Democratic Party’s historic coalition across the country. Here in Texas, it led to a decline in popularity for the Democratic Party in rural communities. Yet somehow the Democratic Party was able to defy the odds and hold onto power in South Texas, an undeniably rural and poor region, thanks to the vigorous support of rural Latino voters. Unfortunately, this vigorous support would wane over the decades due to other political and historic events.

The second political event that really shaped the political climate of South Texas was the historic election of Barack Obama in 2008. This event ironically had the opportunity to solidify Democratic control in South Texas for another half century. Although we now know that’s not how things panned-out. There was undoubtedly a lot of positive energy for Obama, he won South Texas counties by wide margins and voters supported his progressive-populist rhetoric about the banks, Wall Street, and healthcare. However, a combination of Obama’s political shortcomings and the Texas Democratic Party’s lack of effort and messaging in South Texas during and after the Obama years led to the rise of right-wing politics in the region.

President Obama’s two terms produced some of the most toxic and misinformed political propaganda that spread on social media like wildfire. The propaganda worked so well that Texas’ own Republican Governor actually fell for a Russian psy-op and deployed Texas troops to monitor federal armed forces. There was no shortage of pink slime websites that popped up to spread fear and misinformation about President Obama and Democrats more widely—and it was effective. The lack of Spanish-language messaging from statewide Democrats left an information vacuum for bad actors to fill the space. These bad actors spread fear and misinformation about every trending political and social issue and the goal was always clear: to deflate the popularity of Obama and Democrats post-2008.

The third political event that truly shifted the politics was the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Just as we saw with the election of Barack Obama, these bad actors came out in full force to spread fear and misinformation about public health warnings, public health officials, and especially Democratic politicians. Spanish-speaking communities were among those hit the hardest by misinformation and public health skepticism, thanks in large part to social media misinformation. Without any Spanish-language programing from the Texas Democratic Party, bad actors filled the space and pushed many longtime latino Democrats to the Republican Party.

With the resignation of long-time Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa, a native of the Rio Grande Valley, the party ironically now has the opportunity to get its act together and truly invest in South Texas like it matters. The party’s new Chair Kendall Scudder has embarked on a series of town halls in South Texas to hear from voters and show the region that the party has not abandoned them. Scudder has also gone a step further and committed to starting a Spanish-language communications department, vowing not to hire other new staff until this department is filled.

Time will tell if these efforts are a day late and a dollar short, but one thing is clear: these investments are long overdue for South Texas. There is not a single path to victory for Democrats in Texas that doesn’t run through South Texas first, so it is imperative that these investments are taken seriously and implemented by people who are familiar with the region and its voters.