About that “ Blue Wave” in Texas.
Didn’t happen.
Wasn’t even a ripple.
Karl Rove has the details.
Democrats seemed to do everything right to turn Texas blue this year. Joe Biden won 5,211,406 votes, 1.3 million more than Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 1.9 million more than President Obama in 2012. The Democrats’ Senate candidate this year, M.J. Hegar, received the second-highest vote total ever for a Democrat in Texas: 4,844,433.
Democrats also mounted well-funded campaigns to flip six Texas congressional seats, outraising Republicans $28 million to $17 million. Anticipating a 2022 gubernatorial bid, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke ran the Democrats’ registration and turnout efforts.
Even more astonishing, Mr. Obama and his former attorney general, Eric Holder, led an effort to mobilize a galaxy of outside groups against a dozen Republican state representatives, aiming to take control of the Texas House by defeating at least nine. These groups spent $61 million.
It all came to nothing. President Trump received 5,860,096 votes, 1.2 million more than four years ago, and beat Mr. Biden by 648,690. Though Sen. John Cornyn was outspent late in the race, he defeated Ms. Hegar by more than one million votes. Republicans kept those six congressional seats, most by big margins, and Messrs. Obama and Holder didn’t win the Democrats any new state House seats, leaving the GOP majority intact for next year’s redistricting.
Not to mention a sizable Hispanic plurality for the GOP which, when when added to the massive GOP voter registration and get out the vote campaigns, looks to make Texas Redder than ever for a long time.