The Real Reason Texas Isn’t Turning Blue
Mother Jones’s Serena Lin had asked the Allred campaign in October why they’d avoided larger rallies, but was directed to Julianna, who claimed it was “a more strategic, targeted way of reaching people.” Allred was focusing more on “identity-focused coalition groups,” wrote Lin, including “Republicans for Allred,” chaired by former Representative Adam Kinzinger, a prominent anti-Trump Republican who also endorsed Harris. The more likely reason Allred wasn’t more regularly found out on the hustings was because he was a snooze on the podium. The Texas Observer pointed out that his stage presence was “underwhelming,” that he lacked even “basic charisma.”
Meanwhile, Allred’s outreach to farmers, who make up 14 percent of the state’s workforce—and more than 12 percent of the U.S. total, by far the most of any state—was sporadic at best. Clayton Tucker, a rancher and chair of the Lampasas Democratic Party (based in a 712-square-mile county with a population of fewer than 24,000), said between the crowded Democratic primary and Election Day, there was “quite a dry spell” in communication. Tucker lobbied hard for Allred to appear before farmers and lay out his vision. Finally, in October, weeks away from the election, Allred joined Tucker in Lubbock, a college town just below the Panhandle, for a small roundtable to address their concerns. “That’s important work,” Tucker ceded, “but it needed to be more at scale.”
For years, Texas was seen as nothing more than “the ATM” for Democrats’ national aspirations. Candidates would fly through Houston, Dallas, and Austin for a couple swanky donor parties and leave soon thereafter, knowing full well the state wasn’t in play. But as other states such as Florida and West Virginia became less competitive, and campaigns like O’Rourke’s showed outsiders that Texas could, perhaps, swing blue, donors’ attention shifted. This has been a blessing and a curse. On one hand, candidates can potentially tap into a wider “market,” so to speak, to fund their campaign; on the other, it disconnects candidates from the prerequisite for local support.
