GOP Agenda Has Suicide Potential
for Suburban House Republicans

Capitol Inside
September 5, 2021

GOP State Rep. Jeff Leach of Allen could have been a character in the 1998 film Pleasantville - the black and white half - when he made a pitch for a bill to ban school mask mandates before a Texas House committee earlier this week. Leach argued that the intelligent, responsible and respectful way that he and his wife have advised their three kids to behave amid a furor on school masks is a testament to his core belief that parents always know best with decisions that are made around the kitchen table.

Life hadn't been as idyllic outside the halcyon bubble of House District 67 just a few miles away where State Rep. Matt Shaheen of Plano would more likely be in the part of the movie when some of the townfolk start turning to color as they discover things like sex, anger, independence and other feelings that are setting them free from programmed repression.

The newly-colored people in the mostly all-white cast are banned from the town square by the mayor and others who have been left behind in black and white. Shaheen can empathize as a white man who's been portraying himself lately as a minority voter of Lebanese descent in response to claims that he and his GOP colleagues had been referred to as racists by Texas House Democrats when they were boycotting a restrictive voting measure in Washington D.C. Shaheen - like the Pleasantville mayor - may have transformed from black and white into a man of color with his outrage about the way the other colored people had been talking about him.

But Shaheen and Leach - whatever color they may be at this time next year - better get used to be branded as racists constantly in re-election races in 2022 in suburban House districts where Democratic President Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by more than 9 percentage points last fall.

The Collin County duo are two of nine House Republicans who plan to seek new terms next year in the suburbs in districts that Biden carried in 2020. Nine more GOP representatives expect to be on the ballot again in 2022 in suburban districts that Trump won by 4 points or less.

All of the swing district Republicans and all but one of their colleagues will need thick skins when most if not all of them will be denying accusations of racism for the first times in their lives. They need to prepare to carry the fruits of a radically conservative special summer session around their necks like an albatross in a way that they are going to hate and probably regret.

It will only get worse in the districts that Democrats will be targeting as they take another shot at the state House majority that they incorrectly thought they would reclaim in 2020 if Biden ousted Trump. The Republicans in swing districts haven't appeared up to now to recognize the potential for devastation in the suburbs they've made it harder for people to vote as one of an array of new reasons for independents and moderate Republicans to back Democrats in legislative races.

The Republicans in Austin approved a prohibition on critical race theory that will be much easier to depict as racist than the voting bill itself. Suburban voters by and large want their children to attend public schools where they learn the truth about the world. Texas Republicans had no clue about critical race theory until Trump pointed them to it less than a year ago. The legislation appears to be an attempt to reframe Texas and American in fantasy lights with restrictions on teaching about slavery and race.

Democrats will be contending that a group of mostly white Republican men who've failed to maintain a reliable election grid are telling woman what they can do with their bodies in a move that will be portrayed in campaigns next as the booting of females back to the kitchen. The backlash on this is just starting to percolate in a way that could cost Republicans in competitive races the support from the business establishment on which they've depended until now.

The Republicans' closest thing to an accomplishment that's good for all of Texas came when the Legislature made some tweaks to the antiquated Texas electricity grid that the Republicans failed to maintain for an entire decade. This will hurt Republicans in the suburbs the most. GOP leaders and lawmakers could be doomed if the bandaid that they applied in the wake of an epic February freeze fails to keep the lights and heat on throughout the entire upcoming winter.

What's worse for the Republicans is the fact that they simply won't have the surplus of GOP voters to shuffle around to prop up districts that are on the verge of going blue for good. The Republicans probably won't be able to offset and to overcome explosive minority population growth with redistricting - a decennial process that the Legislature plans to take up later this month.

Leach - an attorney who's evolved from ineffective Texas Freedom Caucus member to one of the GOP's more talented and likeable lawmakers in Austin - will have the added burden of House Bill 141 to shoulder with the school mask mandate ban that he says parents are best equipped to navigate without government interference.

Leach filed the measure early last month on the day before the first poll of a number of August polls found strong support for the mask mandates that he'd been trying to prohibit. HB 141 would have effectively extended an executive order that Governor Greg Abbott has in effect in attempt to make it harder for public schools to protect children from the delta variant that's left hospitals across the state with a shortage of intensive care beds for pediatric patients.

That probably wouldn't be the case if all of the parents in the suburbs in the northern half of the Dallas-Fort Worth area behaved as responsibly as Leach and his wife as he seemed to suggest to the Public Education Committee before it refused to even vote on HB 141 with Democratic State Rep. Harold Dutton of Houston as the chairman.

Abbott's popularity is at a record low due in large part to his mask mandate ban. That could be contagious in the suburbs on top of all the new challenges that House Republicans have created for themselves in districts with unprecedented numbers of independents who used to be moderate Republicans.

Based on conventional wisdom before the emergence of the coronavirus, the Republicans would expect a boost in 2022 in a midterm election with the rival party in charge of the White House. Nothing is predictable now, however.

more to come ...