BETO PALANCA IN TEXAS SWAMPED GOP ON BORDER, CITIES

By Emma Platoff,
Texas Tribune

As Harris County judge, Ed Emmett led the state’s biggest county –  4.7 million people – through its most devastating natural disaster. That work won the moderate Republican bipartisan support, even in a county that overwhelmingly went blue in 2016.

But last week, Emmett lost his re-election bid in a close race – the closest in the county. And come January, the incumbent will turn his job over to Democrat Lina Hidalgo, a 27-year-old political newcomer who had never attended a meeting of the commissioners court she will now lead (she has, she said, watched them online).

At the top of the ticket, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz lost the county by more than 200,000 votes; Emmett’s race – midway down the longest ballot in the country – was decided by a margin of about 19,000 votes.

That result, strategists say, makes Emmett the latest casualty of straight-ticket voting in Texas. In Harris County, more than half a million voters pulled one lever to support every Democrat on the ballot, and just over 400,000 Republicans did the same. Emmett – a moderate who had focused his campaign on persuading the Democrats who favor him to make their way far enough down the ballot to back him – made up much of that difference, but he couldn’t quite eke out a win.

“Keeping the straight ticket option for 1 more election cycle turned out to be a disaster for all Republicans,” Emmett tweeted the day after the election. “Making up the deficit was just not possible.”

Straight-ticket voting will end before the 2020 elections, bringing Texas into line with the vast majority of states. But the change didn’t come early enough to save Emmett – or a host of other down-ballot Republican candidates like judges, who are disproportionately affected by the practice by virtue of their low profiles and low ballot placement.

Republicans – who lost numerous down-ballot officials, a dozen state House members and scores of judges, particularly in big cities – in some ways brought those losses upon themselves: The law that ended straight-ticket voting was written and approved by GOP lawmakers. It was originally set to go into effect before this year’s elections, but was at the last minute delayed until 2020.


If the top culprit for down-ballot Republican losses last week is a certain El Paso Democrat credited with drawing flocks of new voters to the polls, the second spot might go to straight-ticket voting. Yes, the argument goes, a lot of new Democrats came to the polls to cast their ballots for U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke in his campaign for U.S. Senate. In the process, many voted for other Democrats down the ballot who they knew little or nothing about. But without the one-punch option, GOP operatives argue, many of those voters would have walked out before dooming Republicans at the bottom of the ballot.

Straight-party voting “is the story” of this year’s election, said Dallas County GOP Chair Missy Shorey, whose county saw a rout of local Republicans.

Among the casualties: 12 members of the Texas House, many of them in the Dallas area; two state senators representing North Texas districts; down-ballot county officials in a host of purpling regions; and nearly two dozen Republican judges on state appeals courts.

After the 2020 elections, when straight-ticket voting ends, candidates will still appear beside their party affiliations, but most strategists expect fewer voters will make it all the way down to the local races. It’s hard to say what the statewide impact of that will be — many Republicans straight-ticket vote, too, and voters can still choose to select all the candidates in their chosen party manually — but in the wake of a tough election for down-ballot Republicans, especially on the fringes of the state’s biggest cities, some are wishing the option had ended in 2018.
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In any other election cycle, the crossover vote – between 20 to 22 percent – would propel Carlos Cascos  to victory over any Democrat. But this was not your usual election-year cycle. This was the year of Betomania.

In a sense, the last year of palanca votes plus the Betomania enthusiasm will doom this very Cameron County-unique crossover phenomenon that has propelled Carlos to the top county seat at the Dancy Building.

 We had not seen this type of mania exhibited across South Texas since the Tony Garza days when three Democratic Party commissioners crossed party lines to defeat Ray Ramon. Before that, it was the Viva Kennedy clubs.

The Beto phenomenon is very real, especially here in South Texas. He may not win the statewide race north of Sarita, but the local races along the Rio Grande will be affected by the mid-term turnout. Like I said, before, we hope we are wrong. But the indices are all there.

In fact, Cascos supporters – also reading the writing on the wall – went as far as publicizing lawn signs for Beto and Carlos as if to show the dichotomy in Brownsville.

The massive voter registration effort by the Democrats combining with Betomania were the makings of a Perfect Storm that might just wipe out the crossover vote that has made Cascos county judge time and time again.

We know we are going out on a limb with this, Cameron County being Cameron County. Let's see what the voters finally say.

And they did.