Polls are now open in Texas. Here are the key races to watch
Democrats in Texas are confronting 2 key challenges the party will face across the country this year
From CNN’s Eric Bradner
When Texas kicks off the 2022 election calendar with its primaries on today, the state will offer the first glimpse at how Democrats are confronting two challenges the party will face across the country this year: a still-raging pandemic forcing tactical changes for the second straight campaign cycle and new laws enacted by Republicans that critics say make it harder for many people to vote.
The Texas primaries include several marquee matchups: Gov. Greg Abbott and state Attorney General Ken Paxton face GOP challengers, while in Laredo, longtime Rep. Henry Cuellar, the most conservative Democrat in the US House, faces a primary rematch with progressive Jessica Cisneros.
But the election today will also serve as a test run for the battles for the governor’s office and several key congressional districts that will play out in the fall. Democratic campaigns and party officials say they are watching closely to see how the restrictive new voting law passed by the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature and signed by Abbott, who is seeking a third term, shapes primary turnout, and how the party can best reach those most directly affected by the law.
“We’re not going to be cowering. We’re not hiding from it. We’re not going to try to design crazy strategies,” said Nick Rathod, the campaign manager for Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is challenging Abbott. “We’re going to try to meet it head-on with the army that we’ve been building.”
Democrats already entered 2022 facing voter anxieties over inflation and the continuing pandemic, and battling the historical trend of first-term presidents seeing their parties battered at the ballot box in midterm elections.
In Texas, though, they face additional challenges: Democratic candidates — who have been more cautious about campaigning during the pandemic than Republicans — were forced into a slow start ahead of the March 1 primary as the Omicron wave made a winter’s worth of campaign events all but impossible. And the new voting law, Democrats say, has made voting by mail — a procedure widely embraced by the party in 2020 — much harder this year.
“There’s already a lack of voter enthusiasm because this year was supposed to feel so much better, and it hasn’t felt better,” said former Austin City Council Member Greg Casar, the progressive front-runner in the Democratic primary for the 35th Congressional District, an open seat that stretches from Austin to San Antonio.
“We are hearing from voters just a lot more unease about what the voting hours are, what the voting location is, what do they need to do to vote. We’re getting a lot more questions,” he said.
Read the full story here.
CNN’s Fredreka Schouten contributed reporting to this post.
Texas incumbent attorney general faces heated race and Republicans could be headed for a runoff
From CNN’s Gregory Krieg
The most hotly contested statewide primary in Texas on Tuesday centers on the future of state Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican who spearheaded a notorious failed legal challenge to the 2020 election results and, with a slew of corruption allegations hanging over his campaign, is now facing the prospect of being pushed into a runoff for the GOP nomination.
Recent polling of the race has cast doubt over whether Paxton can win the contest outright, and a chance at a third term in November, in the first primary round. Though he leads the pack, with 47% according to a February survey from the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Politics Project, Paxton needs a majority on Election Day to avoid being drawn into a one-on-one contest with the runner-up in a heavyweight field of potential runners-up that includes state Land Commissioner George P. Bush, former state Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman and US Rep. Louie Gohmert.
The campaign has mostly evolved along two tracks: Bush, Guzman and the late-entering Gohmert have sought to chip away at Paxton over his ethics scandals, which include a remarkable episode in 2020 when top lieutenants in his own office leveled allegations of bribery, abuse of office and “other potential criminal offenses” to law enforcement.
Paxton has not been charged and has sought to cast the accusations as sour grapes. But his critics and opponents have warned that a potential indictment in the coming months, along with other lingering legal issues, could endanger Republican hopes of another statewide election sweep. Still, as election day nears, and early voting continues, the challengers have ratcheted up attacks on one another, as they jockey for second place.
Read more about the race here.
Trump made inroads with Latino voters in South Texas. Now Democrats are looking to win them back.
From CNN’s Maeve Reston and Nicole Chavez
As shoppers browsed the market stalls at the Pulga Los Portales in the Rio Grande Valley, Armando Acosta and Albino Zuniga caught up over breakfast before opening their lotería stand, where customers often stop to play the traditional Mexican bingo-style game.
Over the past two years, these two friends have bonded through the twists and turns of the Covid-19 pandemic. But they diverge sharply over politics in this heavily Latino region of Texas, which had been viewed as a Democratic stronghold — until 2020.
Former President Donald Trump dramatically improved his performance in many of the counties bordering Mexico compared to four years earlier — gains that led the GOP this year to redouble efforts to recruit and invest in South Texas candidates, including many of Hispanic descent, up and down the ballot. The question now is whether the inroads the GOP made in 2020 will hold as Democrats try to cling to their House majority in November.
Tuesday’s primaries in the Lone Star State — the first congressional primaries of 2022 — are an early test for the two parties as they try to turn out voters like Acosta, 40, and Zuniga, 56, with control of Congress eventually hinging on narrowly divided districts like this one.
CNN spoke to several dozen Latino voters across the region, including here in the newly redrawn 15th District, an open seat that runs from the populous border areas near McAllen north to towns east of San Antonio. They raised an array of reasons why Trump resonated here more in 2020 than in 2016 — namely his relentless focus on getting the economy reopened after Covid shutdowns — as well as factors Democrats may need to address to win some of them back in 2022.
Though many of his family members are Democrats, Zuniga backed Trump in the last presidential election, saying the then-President’s message on immigration resonated for him as a legal immigrant from Mexico and the father of a Border Patrol agent. Trump’s message about getting people back to work mid-pandemic also connected with the ethos of hard work and self-reliance Zuniga says is inherent in Hispanic culture along the border.
He was repelled, Zuniga said, by what he sees as the liberal drift of the Democratic Party. Those feelings only deepened as he watched President Joe Biden and the Democrat-controlled Congress hand out more Covid-related benefits to certain individuals that he believes have been too generous.
Though earlier Covid relief packages were passed under Trump with Republican support, that was a frequent criticism of Biden that CNN heard here from both Democratic and GOP voters voicing concerns about the economy and inflation.
But Acosta hopes Latino voters will reward Democrats in November for economic relief passed by Congress under Biden, arguing that Republicans often look after the wealthy instead of those in need. He is supporting the congressional candidacy of progressive Democrat Michelle Vallejo, who co-owns Pulga Los Portales with her family and has championed a $15 minimum wage and Medicare for All.
“The Rio Grande Valley is divided because there’s a need for so many things like better salaries and infrastructure,” Acosta said. “Democrats are mostly focused on helping the people and if they help people, we should support them.”
Read the full story here.
Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar faces a difficult primary race against progressive challenger
From CNN’s Eric Bradner and Rachel Janfaza
Rep. Henry Cuellar already faced a difficult rematch in the March 1 Democratic primary against the progressive challenger who nearly defeated him two years ago.
Then the FBI showed up in January to search his home here in Laredo and the building that houses his campaign office.
Though the details of the investigation remain murky as Texas prepares to kick off the 2022 midterm primary calendar with the year’s first contests, Cuellar’s challenger, 28-year-old immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros, has seized on the FBI probe in television advertisements and on the campaign trail.
And progressives, sensing an opening to oust one of the House’s most conservative Democrats in a left-leaning district that the party would be favored to hold in the November general election, have rallied to her side, with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsing Cisneros and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigning for her in Texas in recent days.
Cisneros is facing a South Texas political institution in Cuellar, who served first in the state House starting in 1987, then, briefly, as Texas secretary of state in 2001 — appointed by Republican Gov. Rick Perry. He won his seat in Congress in 2004 by narrowly defeating a sitting Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, in the primary.
But his relationships with Republicans, coziness with corporations and conservative-for-a-Democrat voting record have also angered powerful Democratic groups that have now aligned against him. EMILY’s List, Planned Parenthood, labor unions like the Texas AFL-CIO and others have backed Cisneros. The Latino Victory Fund endorsed Cisneros earlier this month.
Cisneros’ campaign began a new 30-second television ad this month with 20 seconds of compiled news clips about the FBI investigation. Her allies are similarly pouncing: Justice Democrats, a progressive group that backs her candidacy, launched its own spot highlighting the probe. “After 36 years in politics, Cuellar has changed,” the narrator says.
“It really strengthens that message that we’ve been talking about from the very beginning,” Cisneros said in a recent interview at a Laredo coffee shop. “This is what we’ve been talking about in terms of corporate PACs, or Republican corporate interests having a corrupting influence on Cuellar’s vote.”
Then there’s the reality that the district lines have slightly shifted since 2020 as a result of redistricting. “Being raided by the FBI probably isn’t a good first impression” for voters who have not lived in Cuellar’s district before, Cisneros said.
Read the full story here.
This is the first statewide election held under Texas’ new restrictive voting law. Here’s what it does.
From CNN’s Eric Bradner
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in September a bill that imposed a raft of new restrictions on voting in one of the nation’s fastest-growing and diversifying states.
Today’s primary is the first statewide election in Texas to be conducted under the state’s new restrictive election law.
The law limited early voting hours, eliminated drive-through voting and added new ID requirements for mail voting, among other changes. The changes are already having an impact on voters.
Here’s a look at some of the changes implemented by the law:
Bans 24-hour voting: In 2020, Harris County, the home of Houston, opened eight locations for around-the-clock early voting — an option that was popular with shift workers in the racially diverse county.
Counties will now be prohibited from offering 24-hour voting by a provision that limits the window in which counties can offer voting to 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The law also expands the current requirement of at least 12 hours of early voting on weekdays in the second week it’s allowed to include counties with more than 55,000 residents — up from the current 100,000 cut-off.
Bans drive-thru voting: In another provision that targets Harris County, the law prohibits drive-thru voting. In 2020, as local officials sought ways to safely conduct the election amid the coronavirus pandemic, 127,000 people in the county cast their ballots at 10 drive-thru centers — including a parking garage at the Toyota Center, the home of the NBA’s Houston Rockets.
New vote-by-mail ID mandates: Texans who are voting by mail — those who are over age 65, out of the county on Election Day or have a disability or illness that prevents them from voting in person are eligible — will now need to provide either their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number twice: once on their absentee ballot application forms and once on the envelope in which they return their ballots.
Those numbers will then be matched against voters’ records to confirm they are who they say they are — a change from the current signature matching process. Those whose votes are at risk of being rejected because of technical errors can make corrections online under the new law. If time is short, counties can notify voters by phone or email that they can cancel their mail-in ballots and vote in person.
Bans officials from mailing unsolicited mail-in ballot applications: The bill would make it a felony for a public official to send someone a mail-in ballot application the person did not request, or to pre-fill any part of any mail-in ballot application they are sending to someone.
It also prohibits public officials from being able to “facilitate” the unsolicited distribution of absentee ballots by third parties — which means local elections officials cannot provide absentee ballot request forms to get-out-the-vote groups. Political parties can still send unsolicited absentee ballot applications, but will have to pay for them, according to the law.
Harris County tried in 2020 to send an application to each of its registered voters, but the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the state election code did not allow the mailing of unsolicited applications. And some other counties sent an application to all registered voters who were 65 and older by Election Day, the only age group that is automatically eligible to vote by mail in Texas.
Read more about the Texas voting law here and read about voters’ thoughts on the changes here.
CNN’s Ethan Cohen and Melissa DePalo contributed reporting to this post.
Voter voices: GOP convert on why he believes more Latinos are favoring the Republican Party in Texas
From CNN’s Maeve Reston
Republicans are hoping to build on the surprising gains that President Trump and the GOP made in 2020 in the predominantly Hispanic counties along the Texas border, a region that had long been viewed as a Democratic stronghold.
In interviews, former Democratic voters who have turned to the GOP offered differing reasons for the shift – from their greater faith in Trump’s economic message in the midst of pandemic upheaval to the view that Democrats have underplayed what they view as a crisis at the border.
Eddie Gonzales, who is 42 and works in retail, is a new GOP convert who is now involved in the race for the 34th congressional district, anchored by his home in Brownsville, Texas. He said he was drawn to Trump because he was “real” and “direct and blunt,” particularly when he argued that there was a real problem on the border.
Gonzales supported former President Barack Obama, but he said that while working with migrant children along the border through a service that connected them with education services and other care, he said he began to feel like there was a disconnect between what Democratic administration officials “were saying to the American people was and what was actually happening.” He also realized that Democrats’ position on abortion did not align with his Catholic values.
As the 2020 election neared, he said “we could feel” inroads that Trump was making, because “in actuality – Latinos, Hispanics in their values and their way of thinking, they are conservative,” he said. They don’t “want to be told how to spend their money, (don’t) want to be told how to live their life. They want to be left alone and allowed to make choices for themselves.”
Determined to get involved this cycle, he stopped by a meet-and-greet that Mayra Flores, a Republican candidate for Texas’ 34th congressional district, was holding at a church on his drive from work in Harlingen. Flores sat down in front of him and engaged him a long conversation on immigration “about things that were bothering me,” he said, and asked what he thought she could do in Congress to address those concerns. He now volunteers for her campaign knocking on doors and contacting voters.
He says there’s still “a stigma” in South Texas that has made people hesitant about openly declaring themselves as Republicans, because the area has been so Democratic for generations. “People are afraid that you’re going to be labeled something – a racist or a hater,” and that makes them reluctant to put signs in front of their houses, he said, even if they tell him at the door that they plan to vote for the GOP.
He is still working on his own mother, who he says is a staunch Democrat but plans to vote for Flores in the general election if she makes it through the GOP primary. “I say, ‘Ok mom, let me put a sign in front of your house. I have one in front of mine. And she looked at me and said ‘No, son, no,’” he recalled with a laugh.
He said he tries to greet that hesitation with empathy, whether it’s his mother or other voters he talks to: “I will say, ‘Just go out and vote. Let your voice be heard…. You can be a silent Republican if you want to. Your choices are yours.’”
Down ballot races in the Texas 2022 primary election
From CNN’s Shania Shelton
Texas kicks off the first round of primaries for the 2022 midterm season today. Down the ballot beyond governor, candidates are running for a host of other statewide positions with a wide variety of duties — and one position for which the title has nothing to do with the actual job.
Early voting in the state began on Feb. 14, and voters experienced problems due to a new voting law that’s being put to the test this election. The law has already led to the rejection of hundreds of mail-in voting applications and the submission of such applications to the wrong office.
Similar to the governorship, in which incumbent Greg Abbott is running for a third term, Texas Republicans currently hold all of these other statewide positions and some of the incumbents are facing primary challenges Tuesday.
Here’s some background and key things to know about these races:
Lieutenant Governor:
- In Texas, the lieutenant governor wields considerable power as president of the state Senate.
- Texas is one of 17 states in the US where the lieutenant governor is elected separately from the governor in the general election.
- Republican Dan Patrick, who is seeking a third term, is a former talk radio host with a history of making controversial statements and has former President Donald Trump’s endorsement.
- Three candidates are running in the Democratic primary. Bob Bullock, who left office in 1999, is the last Democrat to hold the office.
Attorney General:
- Attorneys general act as the top legal officers of their states or territories, with responsibilities ranging from enforcing laws to providing legal advice to state officials.
- Republican incumbent Ken Paxton, who has been vocal about criticizing President Joe Biden on Covid-19 mandates and Texas’ abortion ban, secured an endorsement from Trump.
- Paxton has faced legal and ethical issues, including a 2015 indictment on securities fraud charges and a current professional misconduct investigation for his lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results.
- Paxton faces a primary challenge from Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman and US Rep. Louie Gohmert in his bid for a third term as attorney general.
- Dan Morales is the last Democrat to hold the office, serving from 1991 to 1999. In the current election, five Democrats are running for the party’s nomination.
Comptroller:
- The Office of the Comptroller serves as “Texas’ chief tax collector, accountant, revenue estimator, treasurer and purchasing manager,” according to its website.
- Republican incumbent Glenn Hegar was sworn into this position in 2015.
- John Sharp is the last Democratic comptroller in Texas, holding the job from 1991 to 1999. In the Democratic primary, three candidates are running for the nomination this year.
Land Commissioner:
- The land commissioner runs the Texas General Land Office (GLO), including overseeing investments for public education and managing state lands to produce oil and gas.
- The oldest state agency in Texas, it was originally formed in 1836 to “determine who owned what and where after the Texians and Tejanos won independence,” according to the agency’s website.
- Twelve candidates, including four Democrats, are running to succeed Bush.
- Bush — the son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, nephew of former Texas Gov. and US President George W. Bush, and grandson of former US President George H.W. Bush — launched his run for Texas attorney general last June.
Agriculture Commissioner:
- As the head of the state’s agriculture agency, the Texas agriculture commissioner oversees duties ranging from protecting agricultural crops from pests and diseases to administering national school meal programs for Texas children.
- Republican incumbent Sid Miller was first elected in 2014, has Trump’s endorsement and will face two other Republican candidates in a bid to keep his position.
- Former US Energy Secretary and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was Texas’ agriculture commissioner from 1991 to 1999.
- Perry first won the office by unseating incumbent Jim Hightower, to date the last Democrat to hold the job. Two Democrats are running for the position.
Railroad Commissioner:
- Despite the name, the Texas Railroad Commission hasn’t held any authority over railroads since 2005, according to its website. The commission currently regulates the oil and gas industry in the state.
- Republicans Wayne Christian, Christi Craddick and Jim Wright are the three commissioners in this agency.
- Commissioners are elected to six-year staggered terms. Christian, who is the chair of the agency, is running for a second term in a multi-candidate GOP primary.
- One Democratic candidate, Luke Warford, is running for his party’s nomination this cycle.
Polls are now open in Texas. Here are the key races to watch today.
From CNN’s Rachel Janfaza, Ethan Cohen and Melissa DePalo
Polls are now open in Texas, where the first primary races of the 2022 election cycle are taking place. Polls will close in the state at 8 p.m. ET and 9 p.m. ET.
Today’s primary races will set the scene for several key races up and down the Texas ballot this year, including the Lone Star State’s gubernatorial and attorney general elections.
Tuesday’s primary is also the first election to be held under Texas’ new elections law, which made significant changes to voting procedures in the state.
Texans were able to early vote from February 14 to February 25, and some were eligible to mail in their ballots.
Here are the key races to watch:
- Governor: At the top of the ticket, seven Republican challengers are looking to oust incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott, who’s vying for a third-term as Texas’ top executive. Buoyed by name recognition and the backing of former President Trump, Abbott has spent most of his primary campaign focused on Beto O’Rourke, the former Democratic House member — and Senate and presidential candidate — who is favored to win the Democratic nomination. In the lead up to the primary, Abbott’s GOP challengers, including former Texas Republican Party chair and former Florida Rep. Allen West and former Texas state Sen. Don Huffines, have pushed the governor further to the right on hot-button Republican issues after attacking him for not being conservative enough. Abbott now boasts a record that includes signing new elections law and a ban on abortions after six weeks. He also issued an executive order forbidding all entities, including private employers, from enforcing vaccine mandates.
- Attorney general: The race for attorney general comes as incumbent Ken Paxton, who is being challenged by three other conservative candidates, faces an indictment — though it’s not the first time Paxton’s run while under investigation. In 2018, the attorney general ran while being indicted on charges of securities fraud, and that case is ongoing. Now Paxton faces more allegations of wrongdoing, after members of his staff accused him of bribery and abuse of office in 2020. Paxton, who has the backing of Trump, is up against one of the former President’s chief defenders, Rep. Louie Gohmert, as well as George P. Bush, the current Texas Land Commissioner as well as former President George W. Bush’s nephew and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s son, and Eva Guzman, the former state Supreme Court justice and only woman running on the Republican side.
- 28th congressional district: Down in South Texas, Rep. Henry Cuellar, considered a political institution in Laredo, is facing off in a rematch against 28-year-old progressive immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros. The race comes amid the backdrop of an FBI investigation into Cuellar — who survived his first matchup against Cisneros in 2020, winning by less than four percentage points. Cisneros is seizing on the FBI probe and capitalizing on progressive momentum. She has the support of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez as well as many progressive organizations who are looking to oust one of the House’s most conservative Democrats. Cuellar is one of the only House Democrats who vocally disagrees with codifying the right to abortion and expanding abortion access.
Read more about today’s primary here.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/texas-primary-election-2022/index.html
