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Sharing Hope for Texas: A Senate seat and possible 2025 Remap at Stake [1]

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Date: 2025-06-13

Texas is the biggest (or most populated) state where Hope Springs from Field PAC [dated website, to be updated this Fall] volunteers knock on doors. It’s no surprise when it is the state with the highest volunteer turnout on the prior Saturday. As regular readers know, on Fridays i like to highlight the state where the most volunteers turned out. And, again, this week, the big Kahuna comes in right where you’d expect. Texas, with 573 volunteers outpaced Florida, which had 517. Quite frankly, it’s a little early to start hitting the five hundreds. Not that anyone will complain, but schools are still in session.

Texas and Florida seem to be the most controversial choices to target by those people who live outside those states. Even to those who live in deep red districts inside those states! Hope Springs volunteers have oft questioned why they can’t get more “outside-the-state” support for efforts to organize their states.

Yet both these states are on track to gain 4 seats in Congress (and the Electoral College) in the next remap, while blue California is likely to lose 4 seats. Given the fact that we have grassroots volunteers here willing to knock on doors, the question really should be, why not?

But there’s more to it.

President Trump’s political team is encouraging Republican leaders in Texas to examine how House district lines in the state could be redrawn ahead of next year’s midterm elections to try to save the party’s endangered majority, according to people in Texas and Washington who are familiar with the effort. The push from Washington has unnerved some Texas Republicans, who worry that reworking the boundaries of Texas House seats to turn Democratic districts red by adding reliably Republican voters from neighboring Republican districts could backfire in an election that is already expected to favor Democrats. Rather than flip the Democratic districts, new lines could endanger incumbent Republicans.

It’s serious: “Republicans from Texas’ congressional delegation met at the U.S. Capitol Monday night to discuss a proposal to redraw the lines of their House districts.” “It appeared to be driven in part by President Trump’s concern that the Republican Party could lose its slim majority in the House… those pushing for the plan believe that Republicans could potentially pick up as many as four or five House seats in 2026, according to two of the people with knowledge of the discussions.” But doing so would require the Texas Legislature to approve new maps and since the Legislature is not in session again until 2027, Gov. Greg Abbott would have to call a special session.

Flipping Texas is a perennial Democratic dream, but core constituencies have moved further to the right, and Democrats haven’t held a Senate seat in the state since 1993. The state’s expensive media markets require fundraising prowess. That leaves the party with a crowded field of interested candidates, but none with a proven track record of winning statewide. Plenty of Democrats are skeptical they’d even win against Paxton, whose nomination isn’t guaranteed.

And the Cornyn-Paxton is starting to look decidedly one-sided (although Cornyn will fight until his last breathe and i wouldn’t count him out yet): “Texas Republicans’ messy Senate primary is giving Democrats hope that they could finally have an opening to wedge into higher office in the red state — for real this time… Democrats acknowledge they’d stand little chance of unseating Cornyn, who’s been a fixture in Texas politics for decades.” I’d note that it is always difficult to beat an incumbent in the Senate, but it does happen.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/13/2327729/-Sharing-Hope-for-Texas?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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