My favorite catchphrase as the voters head to the polls is the assessment that “this is a turnout election.” Well, aren’t they all? It’s like a football coaching staff assembling a game plan, concluding that “we have to score more points than they do.”
But there is an assignable meaning to that broad truth, around the country and in Texas. It involves the occasional race that seems headed in a certain direction, only to deliver a surprising result because one side rallied a higher percentage of its troops.
By that definition, the statewide races in Texas will not be “turnout elections.” We simply do not have enough Democrats for a plausible swell among their ranks to turn any key race from red to blue. Before everyone leaps to the fairly narrow Ted Cruz defeat of Beto O’Rourke in 2018, the intervening years have brought us election cycles that have revealed Texas as an even deeper red state, including the decisive Cruz win over Colin Allred two years ago.
And let’s just recognize that as election night draws near, Talarico makes Beto look better in the rear-view mirror. Even as he was being thumped by Greg Abbott in 2022, no one was finding clips of Beto wistfully musing about child sex changes or crafting false Biblical foundations for his support of abortion and open borders.
In that win, Abbott had endured primary challenges from two critics to his right, Don Huffines and Allen West. Today, he has bridged the gap in his relationship with more staunch conservatives by wisely moving in their direction.
There is one key Texas Senate race where turnout earlier this year yielded an odd result that needs correcting Tuesday. In District 9, which includes much of Fort Worth and its most thriving northern Tarrant County suburbs, momentary incumbent Taylor Rehmet benefited from a low-turnout special election in January to fill the seat of Republican Kelly Hancock when he was appointed comptroller by Abbott. Now, Leigh Wambsganss stands as the fitting next chapter after decades of Republican service in a district Trump just won by 17 points.
There is considerable nervousness in Tarrant Republican circles about the county’s journey toward purple on a possible path to blue, in the mold of Dallas, Bexar, Harris, Travis and El Paso, all tilted by the big-city political tastes within their borders. Beto won Tarrant narrowly in 2018, Joe Biden edged Trump similarly in 2020, and Allred notched a razor-thin win over Cruz two years ago, even as Trump won the county.
But SD 9 went for Trump by 17 points two years ago, and there is no reason for the district to continue its quirky flirtation with a Democrat incumbent—unless Democrats in the district, emboldened by a rare actual victory, show up in greater proportions than the GOP voters who have prevailed since the Reagan era.
Nationally, the midterm expectations have congealed around Republicans keeping the Senate while Democrats take over the House. The Senate should stay Republican because of wins by Ken Paxton in Texas and Susan Collins in Maine, likely bolstered by Roger Marshall in Kansas and probably Jon Husted in Ohio. If a sufficient number of those states tilt Democrat, I hate to think of the majority flipping because Mary Peltola won in Alaska by successfully stealing votes from incumbent Dan Sullivan with a sinister plot to find someone with an identical name to confuse voters.
I think we will be spared that spectacle, and I’d like to think we will be spared the flipping of the House as well. A majority in the House is 218, which is precisely the Republican count right now, with 214 Democrats, one independent and two vacancies. The vast majority of seats are solid Republican or solid Democrat; only about 30 are considered competitive, and only about half of those are genuine toss-ups.
None of these are in San Francisco or Manhattan. So with full knowledge of the history that usually plays out, where parties rebound after being snubbed in a presidential year, I am tempted to ask: Why does it have to be this way now?
I’m not talking about Republicans sweeping all of the roughly 17 toss-up districts; taking 10 of them would keep the majority even if an odd upset arises elsewhere.
And what should fuel that exception to the usual trend? How about the most radicalized and incoherent Democrat party of my lifetime? The rush toward gender insanity, antisemitism and crackpot socialist fantasies does not infect all of its candidates, or even a majority. But it’s not an irrelevant passing fad either.
But since winning requires more than criticizing the opposition, I’d like to think voters might be able to harvest some appreciation for a vastly improved landscape on two of the most vexing problems of our time: borders and crime. Waves of illegal entry have been stopped. Virtually all of our worst crime categories are improving, now that more criminals are being arrested and prosecuted, all while deportations are clearing the decks of further potential offenses.
I can’t invent an electorate that widely shares my appreciation for the neutering of Iran’s nuclear threat, even at a cost of some expensive gas. But on the supposedly damaging broad issue of affordability, I would have every Republican express proper empathy and then ask a question that might provide valuable focus: Which states are more affordable, red or blue? There’s a reason. Democrat policies lead to most things becoming substantially more expensive.
A final bumper sticker for the home stretch: Let’s run America like a red state.
About the Author:
Mark Davis is a talk show host for Salem Media: 660amtheanswer.com. X: @markdavis
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Dallas Express.
