There is big money, new signs of shifting voters and bold predictions of an upset that will turn heads across the U.S. just weeks before Election Day in Texas.
It is coming from Republicans.
The governor of Texas kicked off a rally in the Texas border city of Harlingen.
Republicans are making a play for the mostly Hispanic southern border in November after years of being written off by Democrats.
It is an uphill climb for the task to be accomplished. It's another way Republicans are putting a lot at stake on the Texas border, given that they are already focusing on portraying the 1,200-mile boundary as rife with escalating danger and disorder as record numbers of migrants enter from Mexico.
Dramatic moves to bus and fly migrants across the country will backfire with voters, but also acknowledge they can't coast into office.
Two years after Donald Trump's significant gains with Hispanic voters during the 2020 election caused both parties to scramble in unexpected ways, the rare sight of contests on the Texas border has widened cracks in an important Democratic stronghold.
"This is the first time we've ever had this many competitive races where the Democrats are like, 'What are we going to do?'" said Republican Carlos Cascos, who served as Abbott's first secretary of state.
He doesn't think Republicans will sweep the races in the Rio Grande Valley. He thinks that the area has been taken for granted. You're a Catholic and a Democrat in the Valley. Things are going in a different direction.
Democrats hold advantages in South Texas because of decades of incumbency, a culture of residents voting Democratic, and more moderate candidates who are less vulnerable to GOP attacks on the left and more critical of President Joe Biden.
Maya Flores became the first Texas Latina in the US House when she won a special election this year. Vicente Gonzalez, a South Texas Democrat, is trying to oust her from her seat in the fall.
Democrats don't like the idea of sending migrants to places like Washington and New York. Republicans say that more liberal voters in big cities are ignoring problems that are hitting mostly working class South Texans.
Republican Monica de la Cruz is running for Texas' most competitive House seat, which spans from east of San Antonio to border communities, and she blames an elite class that doesn't get it because illegal immigration has little impact on their lives.
De la Cruz said that Wall Street bankers don't have to worry about poor Central American migrants.
Haley is going to campaign with Flores and de la Cruz on the border, which is unusual for South Texas.
The Republican Party's efforts to control the political narrative coincides with the opening of 38 minority outreach community centers across the country.
tutoring for U.S. citizens and tax advice are offered by some. Movie nights, pot-luck dinners and business roundtables are just some of the events they have hosted. Some have been open for a long time.
The GOP says it has spent millions on Hispanic outreach nationwide. There are a record 32 Hispanic Republican nominees in the US House of Representatives.
The Democrats opened a national field office in McAllen in April and have three staffers working on the congressional race in the area.
The chair of the Democratic Party in Hidalgo County said they hold weekly calls with O'Rourke's campaign to coordinate efforts to boost turnout. Gains in 2020 by Trump and the Republicans are not likely to translate to future races, according to him.
The man who ran unsuccessfully for Senate and president is now the head of a nonprofit. In an effort to boost turnout for Biden in the Senate race, he organized phone banking in the area where less than 40% of eligible voters voted.
In the 2020 election, the group was able to register thousands of voters in the county. In Webb County, Trump took nearly 26,000 votes, double his 2016 raw vote total, and captured about 38% of the vote, compared with 23% in the previous year.
People want to say that the Democrats are finished down here. That is not the case. This has woken up the Democrats down here and made them realize that they can't take this for granted.
That's right.
Weissert was reporting from Washington.
That's right.
The midterms are covered by the Associated Press at www.apnews.com and www.appolitics.
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