TEXAS HOUSE RACES TO WATCH CASH

State Chair Who's Been Firing Darts at Gov
Foresees Handful of House Gains for GOP

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor
October 28, 2020

Texas GOP Chairman Allen West lifted the spirits of party loyalists across the nation's sickest state when he predicted on Wednesday night that the Republicans would win back close to half of a dozen seats that Democrats flipped in the Legislature's lower chamber in the last election cycle in 2018.

West's forecast for an expanded Texas House majority gave the party faithful new cause for optimism in a state where other Republicans have been bracing for a Lone Star State demolishing with President Donald Trump in a spectacular nose dive just six days before the general election.

While Democrats would reclaim the wheel in the House with a net gain of at least nine seats on Tuesday, the state Republican chief said in an interview on Spectrum News that he believes that the GOP will successfully protect the nine seats that Democrats have in their sights. West estimated that the Republicans would pick up about five House seats that Democrats pulled out from under the GOP with the first Trump wave in the midterm vote two years ago.

Problem is, the Democrats actually are targeting at least 18 House seats on a list that has to be growing amid the increasing possibility of a monstrous blue wave with national experts quickly moving Texas into toss up territory with the most improbable and unpredictable American election approaching at the speed of light.

Austin State Rep. Celia Israel - the chair of the House Democratic Campaign Committee that's been on a record-smashing fundraising spree - saw a completely different ending on the oncoming horizon while appearing in a separate video screen in the same discussion with West on the cable news station that's based in the Texas Capital City.

Israel predicted that Democrats would indeed take the House back without getting specific on the final potential scoreboard. But Israel could have access to better polling than West as the director of the HDCC that had raised almost $11 million by late September for the majority quest in 2020.

While some Republicans still think they have a chance to hang on to the majority in a very close vote, the prevailing sentiment on both sides of the aisle inside the statehouse beltway is the Democrats will pick up 10 to 12 seats at the ballot box less than a week from now.

West had not appeared to be all that interested in politics at the state level when he capitalized he unseated James Dickey as the state party chair in the fallout of a state convention meltdown on Zoom in June. West has had a nose for the spotlight, however, having taken the lead in a rebellion by conservatives against Republican Governor Greg Abbott and the actions that he's taken to protect the public health during the coronavirus crisis.

West spearheaded a protest at the Governor's Mansion this month where some fellow dissidents encouraged him to run for the state's top job himself in two years when Abbott will be up for re-election if he runs again after a brutal year as the state's lone pandemic director.

West's loyalty to President Donald Trump has been unwavering, however, despite the disastrous effect that he had on down-ballot Republicans in the last two cycles after his emergence as the national party's owner and chief executive. West's source for optimism on the Texas House battlefield is more of a mystery when considering that Republicans simply have no reason not to expect the worst despite a frantic flooding of GOP campaigns in swing contests with cash that they won't have time to spend effectively.

But West's positive outlook and moral support might not be as valuable to Republicans who are running as underdogs in districts that appeared safely red less than five years ago than the cash that Abbott has been lavishing on them with contributions to GOP nominees in the most competitive House races in the $2 million vicinity in 2020.