Texas Democrats suffered their worst collective defeat in two decades of GOP rule here when Republicans flipped two state House districts and one Senate seat in the general election on Tuesday with a massive lift from Donald Trump in a successful comeback bid for the presidency.
Trump carried 10 Texas counties that President Joe Biden won in 2020 including eight that had been longtime Democratic strongholds on the U.S. border with Mexico. The former and future president took Tarrant and Williamson counties back for the GOP in Tuesday's election when he crushed Democrat Kamala Harris by almost 14 percentage points in the Lone Star State.
But Trump also managed to turn the entire border east of El Paso red for the first time with novel victories in Hidalgo, Cameron, Webb and five smaller counties on the Rio Grande. Trump beat Harris by nearly 3 points in Hidalgo County while edging out the Democrat by almost 6 points in neighboring Cameron County in the Rio Grande Valley. Trump also flipped Maverick, Starr, Duval, Willacy and Culberson counties for the GOP in border areas in Texas as well.
President Joe Biden defeated Trump with 58 percent of the Hidalgo County vote in 2020 when he carried Cameron County with more than 56 percent. Trump scored a 2-point victory over Harris in Webb County where Laredo is the population center. Biden beat Trump in Webb County with 61 percent of the vote there four years ago.
Trump reaped almost 53 percent of the Cameron County vote on Tuesday when he beat Harris next door in Hidalgo County with 51 percent. Trump carried Tarrant County, which is anchored by the Fort Worth area, with nearly 52 percent of the vote while winning Williamson County back for the GOP with 50.4 percent.
Biden won 23 Texas counties in 2020 before Harris emerged victorious on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning in only 13 counties here in the nation's second largest state. Trump's victory margin was almost three times larger in Texas than it had been in 2020 when he defeated Biden here by less than 6 points. Trump won Texas by 9 points in his initial bid for the White House in 2016.
Trump had failed to have coattails for down-ballot Republicans in Texas in his first two races for president. But that wasn't the case this time around as Trump gave the entire ticket below him a substantial boost in Texas and other states en route to a blowout victory in the Electoral College.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz appeared to be a significant Trump beneficiary - beating Democrat Colin Allred by almost 9 points on Tuesday in a bid for a third term in the upper house of Congress. Republicans picked up a seat in the east wing of the statehouse in Austin when Adam Hinojosa of Corpus Christi unseated Democratic State Senator Morgan LaMantia of Brownsville in a race that he tentatively won by 1 point.
Republicans - thanks to Trump for the most part - picked up Texas House seats on or near the border when Don McLaughlin of Uvalde and Denise Villalobos of Corpus Christi won open races at the polls on Tuesday. The GOP appeared poised to flip another border district before Democratic State Rep. Eddie Morales of Eagle Pass came from behind to beat Republican Robert Garza of Del Rio by more than 3 points at the finish line.
McLaughlin trounced Democrat Cecilia Castellano of Von Army while Villalobos defeated former House Democrat Solomon Ortiz Jr. by almost 11 point in the biggest upset for the Republicans here.
Texas Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick won another term on the state board that regulates the oil and gas industry when she clobbered Democrat Katherine Culbert by 16 points.
more to come ...
John Lujan (I)
Mihaela Plesa (I)
