The Democratic base isn’t in the mood to compromise
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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2018 United States Senate election in Texas
9 min read
Linked in the article (6 min read)
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2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries
19 min read
Linked in the article (26 min read)
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Texas Democratic Party
14 min read
The article extensively discusses Democratic electoral struggles in Texas, referencing the party's last gubernatorial win in 1990 and Senate win in 1988. Understanding the historical trajectory of the Texas Democratic Party—from its dominance during the 'Solid South' era through its decline—provides essential context for why the state remains such a tantalizing but elusive target for Democrats.
Texas has been a tease for Democrats. Despite being a diverse, urban, multicultural state, the last time it elected a Democrat as governor was Ann Richards in 1990. And the last Democratic U.S. Senator elected in Texas was in 1988, when Lloyd Bentsen won another term while simultaneously losing as Michael Dukakis’s running mate.
Beto O’Rourke came close to victory in 2018, finishing within 3 points of Ted Cruz. But since then, Texas has slid backward for Democrats. Joe Biden lost the state by just under 6 points in 2020, a year when pre-election polling had suggested a close contest. But Donald Trump blew out Kamala Harris by 14 points in the Lone Star State last year. As in Florida, Democrats have discovered that electoral improvement in the suburbs doesn’t outweigh the combination of a shift among Latino voters back toward Trump plus a solid base of Southern religious conservatives.
Still, if you had to design a Democratic candidate in a lab to break through the red wall in Texas, someone like Colin Allred might come pretty close to the ideal in a football-obsessed state. A civil rights attorney and former linebacker for the NFL’s Tennessee Titans — sure, the Cowboys or Texans would have been better — Allred has a strong electoral track record. In 2018, he upset Republican incumbent Pete Sessions in Texas’s 32nd Congressional District by an impressive 6.6-point margin in a district that Democrats hadn’t even bothered to contest two years earlier.
Indeed, in 2024, Democrats gave Allred a try as their U.S. Senate nominee. He performed considerably better than Harris, losing to Cruz by 8 points. It was a loss, but election nerds like me are inclined to point out that this was actually a pretty good performance. Last year obviously wasn’t a great electoral climate for Democrats, but outperforming Harris’s baseline by 6 points might be enough in a “blue wave” year, a distinct possibility next year considering Trump’s unpopularity and what is likely to be a substantial Democratic turnout advantage, as demonstrated by an excellent set of results for Democrats in off-year elections last month.
On Monday, however, Allred quit the Senate race to run for the House instead. Although he attributed his decision to wanting to avoid a “bruising” primary, the primary is likely to
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