Democrats switch sides along Texas border as GOP gains ground  

Abbott has falsely claimed that people on the border are “being threatened on a daily basis with guns.” When he declared an emergency on the border this year, some officials along the border refused to sign on. Still, his hardline strategy seems to have worked. While the border wasn’t a big issue for voters in general this year, polling shows it was in Texas.

More migrants are crossing the Texas-Mexico border, and it does cause fear and headaches for some border residents. While migrants rarely commit violent crimes on their journey north, they do commit nuisance crimes like cutting water lines and killing livestock to survive.

Abbott’s rhetoric appealed in some far-flung border communities that feel neglected by Austin and Washington. Those communities also get money from it: By declaring there's a border disaster, local governments can unlock new sources of state funding.

Hinojosa, the Democratic chair, admits Democrats haven’t come up with a good counterstrategy on the border.

“Republicans have put together a brilliant narrative on this issue, and they’re shameless about using it,” he said. “It’s hard for us to get out there and say, ‘Don’t worry about immigration because there really isn’t much cross-border crime.’”

In Hidalgo County on the border, Richard Cortez, the Democratic top executive, was one of the local border officials who refused to go along with Abbott’s emergency declaration. After Abbott held a border-security briefing in the county in June, Cortez told Courthouse News there was “no evidence” that migrants were leading to increases in violent crime.

“South Texas continues to be blue,” Cortez, who was reelected by a wide margin this month, said in another interview after his victory. It’s a microcosm of what happened all across Texas, where Democratic officials held onto posts in blue parts of the state but didn’t gather enough support to win big in statewide races.

Cortez has seen a rise in partisanship and extremism in Hidalgo. During the pandemic, he received messages from constituents calling Covid-19 a “hoax.” At the polls this year, someone told Cortez’s daughter that he was a “corrupt Democrat.”

He said Hidalgo has seen "difficult times" lately, including from the coronavirus pandemic and the 2021 winter storm, and thinks bipartisanship could be a solution. While Hidalgo County didn’t vote for Republican Congresswoman Monica de la Cruz, he said he wants to work across the aisle to address the needs of constituents.

One big concern these days is inflation. “Inflation hurts people in poverty more,” Cortez said, noting that some low-income residents were facing questions like, “Do I buy gasoline for work for food for my family?” When it comes to inflation, he added, polls show people “basically blame the Biden administration.”

In nearby Zapata County, which went for Trump in 2020 and Abbott this year after years of Democratic wins, economic concerns are also top of mind for many voters.

“We’ve been a natural gas-producing county for many, many years,” said Joe Rathmell, the Democratic top executive. While local reserves have started to deplete, “many of our folks still work in the oil industry.” On the top of the Texas ballot, he thinks candidates like O’Rourke were “just too left-leaning for residents” when it came to issues like energy policy.

Down ballot, the story was different. “The majority of our voters here are with the Democratic Party,” Rathmell said. Everyone who won locally was a Democrat. “There’s really no Republican Party presence in our county.”

That might be changing. Republicans could continue seeing gains among Texas Latinos with a pitch of “defending gun rights, promoting the oil and gas industry, restricting abortion, and supporting law enforcement,” Texas Monthly argued last year. In Zapata County, “we’re a border county, and we’ve got border issues,” Rathmell said. While he agrees with other officials that the Texas borderlands is largely “very safe,” he said residents have been rattled by recent developments, including the discoveries of cartel stash houses in Zapata.

All along the Texas border, residents have complex and conflicting feelings on migration. Many say their communities need more workers, especially as rural towns hollow out. Still, they’ve come to believe that migrants crossing the Rio Grande today are somehow fundamentally different from decades ago.

“It wasn’t like this when I was growing up,” said Thompson, the Terrell County clerk. Migrants used to cross the border to “become citizens and get their families over.” Now, she says, migrants are “coming over with backpacks, cellphones and brand new shoes.”

“It’s all organized,” she said. “There’s different morals.”

Some residents stress how nuisance crimes like cut fences have impacted their friends and family. Others know people in Border Patrol — a major economic driver in Texas border communities — and feel defensive about what they say is vilification of border agents in national politics and the media.

Kelli Ellis, a justice of the peace in Terrell County and a longtime Republican, brought up a controversial and viral news story from earlier this year. Pundits said Border Patrol agents were whipping migrants. That wasn’t true, she said.

"They sacrifice so much," Ellis said of border agents. "We don't even watch the news because it's so, so shaded." Besides, she argued, migrants were no angels. Coyotes abandoned stragglers in the desert, and local officials like Ellis were left to clean up the bodies. She predicted Terrell County would continue to trend Republican.

Surely, it was cartel coyotes and human traffickers — not desperate migrants — who deserve the blame. Was there room in Terrell County for people who came to America in search of a better life?

Ellis hesitated. "That's a whole can of worms," she said. While she sympathized with the young migrants she met through her work, she said many "already have a drug and alcohol problem."

"We could use a workforce here in Terrell County," she said — but she didn't think migrants would want to stay. "They’re headed to bigger and better places."

Maybe some Texas Democrats, including politicians, were never really Democrats at all. While some people think of Texas as solidly Republican, local officials for decades ran as Democrats regardless of their personal beliefs. The tradition persists in some parts of the state, including West and South Texas.

When Thompson debated switching parties, "I really had a hard time," she said. "I thought that if the locals vote for Democrats, I needed to be on the Democratic ticket." In the end, though, many other locals were feeling the disillusionment.

In South Texas, Guillen, the state representative, was one of the most conservative Democratic lawmakers in Texas even before he switched parties, according to an analysis by Rice University. Almost immediately after switching parties, Guillen touted an endorsement from Trump.

In a statement, which Guillen shared on Twitter, Trump said Guillen had switched parties “because of the Radical Left’s ongoing destruction of our Country.”

“President Trump, I am honored to receive your endorsement,” Guillen responded. “A big THANK YOU from me and my friends and neighbors.”

It isn’t clear that everyday Texas Democrats even want someone like Guillen in the party. Asked about this, Hinojosa, the state party chair, stressed the Democratic Party has a big tent.

“My mother was very pro-life,” Hinojosa said. “She never voted for a Republican.”

“We have space for these people in our party," but issues like abortion "just can’t be the controlling issue for them,” he added. Besides, he argued the Democratic Party is more pro-life when it comes to issues like health care and education.

In some cases, the divide may just be too great. Many border Democrats said border security was a top concern for them. Press them a bit harder, though, and another priority often comes up.

“I don’t know what your belief is, but we need God in this country,” Thompson said. “We were built up with God. We need to get back to those values.”

Maybe some Democrats on the Texas border have fundamentally different values from the modern Democratic Party. Put another way: maybe they’re Republicans.

Follow @stephentpaulsen

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