In Texas, a Battle for Hispanic Voters Moves to the Cities

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/us/texas-hispanic-voters.html

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SAN ANTONIO — In the two years since Donald Trump drew far more votes than most Republicans ever had in South Texas, attention around the country has focused on Hispanic voters in the unique region along the border, where large-scale immigration has challenged many lower-income and often culturally conservative communities.

But the reality is that most of Texas’ growing Hispanic population lives elsewhere, primarily in the state’s booming cities. There, Hispanic residents have remained mostly loyal to the Democratic Party, providing a bedrock of support that will be critical to the party’s chances in the midterm elections.

Democrats are counting on huge turnout in cities like Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, particularly among young and new voters, to propel their struggling statewide campaigns, in the ever-present hope of winning one.

But Republicans are optimistic that the recent gains they have made in more rural areas near the border — once Democratic strongholds — will spread to the state’s sizable urban Latino population.

“From what I’ve seen, everyone is a Democrat here,” said Dorothy Borjas, 33, who came to a polling site on San Antonio’s west side as early voting in the state was underway this week. She was wearing a “Turn Texas Blue” shirt, her 11-year-old daughter at her side.

But she shook her head in disappointment at the absence of other younger people at the polls. Most voters appeared to be in their 50s or 60s or older. “I’m eager to get people my age excited to vote,” she said.

Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic former El Paso congressman who is running an uphill campaign to unseat Gov. Greg Abbott, has been counting on an improved turnout machine and on candidates like Rochelle Garza, a lawyer from the border town of Brownsville who is running for attorney general, to boost Democrats’ performance. He held a large rally along with Ms. Garza in a Hispanic neighborhood of north Houston this month.

Women’s rights and abortion have consistently been listed as top issues for Latinos who support Democrats — especially among women — as has the need for more gun regulation in the aftermath of the school shooting in Uvalde, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed.

“Even yesterday, the ladies brought it up: What about all the guns?” said Representative Sylvia Garcia of Houston, describing a gathering of seniors in her district, which is about three-quarters Hispanic. “They’re worried about their grandbabies.”

At the same time, Latino voters in Texas cities expressed many of the same concerns as other urban residents over crime and the rising cost of living, issues that appear to be playing better for Republicans this year. Republicans are hopeful that will help blunt what has been a rising Democratic advantage in urban areas.

Texas has been a majority-minority state for close to two decades, and recent estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau found, for the first time, that its Latino population has become slightly larger than its white population. Each accounts for about 40 percent of the state’s 29 million residents.

The largest counties, which include Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio and El Paso, contain about 6 million of the 11.9 million Hispanic residents in Texas, according to U.S. census figures. By contrast, around 1.3 million people live in the Rio Grande Valley, along the border.

Republicans are continuing to make significant gains in that area and across South Texas. The party appears poised to take some or possibly all of the three hotly contested races for the House of Representatives in that majority-Hispanic region of the state, which had previously been dominated by Democrats.

How much those successes will translate into votes in the big cities could determine much about the future of politics in Texas.

Urban Latino voters were a major base of support for Mr. O’Rourke in 2018, when he nearly unseated Senator Ted Cruz. But so, too, were voters in the Rio Grande Valley. This time around, his campaign recognized that it could not take any part of the electorate for granted.

“We’re not a ‘demographics is destiny’ team here,” said Jason Lee, a deputy campaign manager with Mr. O’Rourke. “You have to put in the work.”

Last week, Mr. O’Rourke held six events in a single day at polling places around San Antonio, trying to draw as many supporters as possible to come out and vote.

“Nobody likes Abbott here,” Velma Ortega, 70, said with a smile as she voted in San Antonio. “I’m all for Beto. Beto all the way.” She added, “He cares about us.”

Around the city, many Latinos said their views on politics had evolved as the situation in the country changed — and life in some ways got harder.

Columba Arellano, a 74-year-old retired hairstylist who immigrated from Mexico to San Antonio when she was 19, said she used to consider herself a “hardcore Democrat.” Ms. Arellano said she voted for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, but when Donald Trump came along, she switched up.

She said she liked Mr. Abbott’s effort to bus migrants from the border to Democratic cities in the northeast. “I’m an immigrant,” she said. “We are all immigrants, but I wish more people came here legally.”

She added that she voted for candidates who opposed abortion, which she viewed as “committing murder,” though she said she would like to see exceptions in cases of rape and incest, something that Texas law does not currently allow.

There were plenty of Latinos in the crowd when Mr. Abbott held a recent rally in the San Antonio neighborhood of Beacon Hill, accompanied by his wife, Cecilia, the first Hispanic first lady of Texas, and several members of her family.

“I’ve got my family, mi familia, right here,” Mr. Abbott, who is seeking a third term, told his supporters. “Hispanics, African Americans, Asians, Anglos, everybody in this state, we care about one thing, and that is keeping Texas Texas.”

Some of those backing Mr. Abbott said he shared their own priorities.

“We have conservative values,” said Daniel Barajas, a 26-year-old landscaper who moved to Austin from Portland, Ore. He said he worried about the drug fentanyl coming over the border with Mexico and opposed new gun control measures.

In Austin, perhaps Texas’ most progressive city, Latinos make up about a third of the population, a smaller voting bloc than in Dallas, Houston or San Antonio, but one that has equally remained largely loyal to Democrats. During the primaries in March, Latino voters helped to propel Greg Casar, the son of Mexican immigrants and a darling of prominent liberals in Washington like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, over a more centrist Democrat, and he is expected to coast to victory on Election Day in a solidly blue district.

Pedro Hernandez Jr., 50, said that for the last few weeks he had been walking around with his iPad in Austin asking friends and family members whether they had registered to vote, and if so, to vote for Democrats. “I asked my uncles, cousins, any person I talk to,” he said. “We can’t let our guard down.”

At a polling place in the city’s Montopolis neighborhood, Meliza Soto and Gabe Salas, both 29, said they were voting in order to get Mr. Abbott out of office. Ms. Soto laughed at the seeming impossibility of the task.

“All we can do is our part,” she said, adding that she worried misinformation was driving many Latino voters along the border and in rural areas to vote for Republicans. She said she hoped that young and more progressive Latinos like her would outnumber them.

If the Republicans are making inroads, it is far from becoming a red wave — at least so far.

Roughly two-thirds of Hispanic likely voters live in the state’s major urban areas, according to a recent survey by the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation, while about 20 percent live in the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas.

Mr. O’Rourke did better among likely voters in the state’s large urban areas than he did in South Texas, with the exception of the San Antonio metro area, where Mr. Abbott was ahead among those surveyed. The canvass found a large advantage for Democrats among young voters and Hispanic women, while men had only a slight preference in the governor’s race for Mr. O’Rourke over Mr. Abbott.

“It makes sense for the G.O.P. to encourage the story line that because they’ve made gains in some areas that they must be shifting the entire body of the Hispanic vote,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “And there’s not much evidence for that.”

Joe Gonzales, a progressive district attorney seeking re-election in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, did not appear concerned. He said he was elected precisely because the city’s voters shared his progressive values, which include focusing on violent criminals and less on low-level offenders, a policy many Republicans decry as soft on crime. “Voters want someone who is smart on crime, not tough on crime,” he said.

Still, something appears to be happening among Latino voters even in urban areas, said Nelson Wolff, the top executive in Bexar County for more than 20 years.

For as long as he can remember, he said, fellow Democrats have been able to win elected offices in the county with relative ease.

But as Mr. Wolff prepares to retire, he is not sure that will hold true in the future. Support for Democratic candidates like Mr. O’Rourke abounds. But Mr. Wolff said he had found recently that the more he criticized the conservative policies of Mr. Abbott and Mr. Trump, the more he noticed some Latino voters disagreeing with him.

While he is confident that the San Antonio region, like other urban centers in Texas, is safe for Democrats for now, he wonders: For how long? “Let’s see if these young people vote,” Mr. Wolff said.