Trump makes Democrats feel less lonely in the lone star state

Ben Rose is fired up about Donald Trump’s race for the White House, but not for reasons the Republican presidential candidate would relish.

Taking a break from intercepting voters driving into a Houston parking lot, the Democratic candidate for the Texas state legislature makes clear he is counting on Mr Trump’s divisiveness to galvanise voters in his swing district.

“Donald Trump is the single biggest asset in my campaign,” says Mr Rose, an energetic 31-year-old newcomer, speaking on the second day of early voting in the state. It would be “political malpractice” not to take advantage, he explains.

The upbeat mood among Texas Democrats like Mr Rose is striking given they are competing in the country’s biggest and most formidable Republican fortress. Mr Rose faces a tough race against Sarah Davis, the seat’s moderate Republican incumbent, but is just one of many local Democrats expecting 2016 to be an exceptional year for his party.

The lone star state last went to a Democratic presidential challenger in 1976, when Jimmy Carter won the state. Mitt Romney won Texas by 16 points in 2012, even as Barack Obama clinched a second term in the White House.

This time, GOP officials are nervous. Mr Trump is leading Hillary Clinton in Texas by less than 5 points with less than two weeks to go in the election, according to the average of recent polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.

Few local observers predict an outright Clinton victory in the state on November 8. But a strong showing would help swing contests over local and state posts — including in Harris County, which encompasses Houston — and potentially pave the way for the state to become more of a battleground in future elections.

“The principal focal point will be on the prospect of significant down-ballot collateral damage as a consequence of the Trump candidacy,” says Mark Jones, a fellow in political science at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

Lane Lewis, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Harris County, facetiously describes Mr Trump as “the best Democratic organiser in the state of Texas”. He thinks his party is in a favourable position to retain incumbent judges who are up for election, as well as competing for the local post of district attorney and the critical role of tax assessor and voter registrar.

Democratic officials claim early voting, which started this week, augurs well for the party. In a state that does not have registered voters, their internal estimates suggest 55 per cent of those who cast their ballots on the initial days were likely Democrats.

America’s third-largest county, Harris is a diverse area with significant Hispanic, African American and Asian populations that has swung back and forth between the parties. Barack Obama won the county of more than 4m people by fewer than 600 votes in 2012, even as he decisively lost the state.

Mrs Clinton would have to win by a radically bigger margin to clinch a victory statewide. Her campaign has taken the unusual step of paying for advertising in the state, but GOP operatives see that as a stunt rather than evidence of a serious push for victory.

For all Democrats’ enthusiasm, the party faces formidable barriers not only in November but also in capitalising on the Trump effect in their longer-term push to turn Texas into a swing state. In 2014 Democrats threw tens of millions of dollars into the campaign of gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, only for her to be blown out of the water by Greg Abbott, the hardline Republican governor.

Mr Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has alienated large sections of Texas’s Hispanic population, which already leans towards the Democrats and is on course to outnumber the state’s white population in the 2020s. But turnout in the Latino community has been far lower than in other voter groups, and it remains to be seen whether Mr Trump’s policies lead to an upsurge of voter participation.

What’s more, the favourable way the GOP-dominated legislature has drawn district boundaries creates a “strong firewall that safeguards them in situations like this where they have a disaster at the top of the ticket”, says Mr Jones.

David Dewhurst, the Republican former lieutenant-governor of Texas who heads energy company Falcon Seaboard, insists the notion that Texas has become a toss-up state is wishful thinking among Democrats and he expects it to remain a “very red state”.

“I don’t think even Trump’s outlandish statements are doing permanent damage to the Republican party, although I myself gulp hard on hearing them and am upset by some of the things he has said and done,” he says in an interview.

Mr Dewhurst adds, however, that his party needs to do a better job of broadening its reach to “freedom-wanting people” who want change in Washington, amid demographic trends that are helpful for Democrats. “Politics at the end of the day is a process of addition not subtraction, something I am not sure our nominee for president understands,” he says.

Mr Abbott, the Texas governor, is leaving nothing to chance. On Tuesday he was rallying the troops in a small GOP office in west Houston, describing Texas as “the last defence of liberty”. After the event Austin Fitzpatrick, a real estate agent, sounded despondent about the impact of Mr Trump’s campaign. His grandmother, who has voted Republican her whole life, has been so disgusted by the GOP’s candidate that she is planning to vote Democrat, he said.

While Mr Fitzpatrick does not expect a victory in Texas for Mrs Clinton, he is struck by the number of stickers and yard signs he has seen supporting her. “I think it’s over, man,” he said of Mr Trump’s candidacy. “This will be the best the Democrats do in Texas for a long time.”

Texas Republicans fear for their demographic destiny

Orlando Sanchez does nothing to disguise his dismay about the potential impact of Donald Trump on his party’s prospects among Texas’s growing Latino population.

The first Latino immigrant to be elected to a citywide position in Houston, the Harris County treasurer compares the Republican Party in the state to a “pick-up truck” that is heading towards El Paso with a quarter-tank of petrol and no filling station down the road.

“The demographics are against us. This is the population that is growing, not the white guys,” he said, sitting in the vibrantly coloured dining room of Doña Maria, a Houston taqueria. “When we should have been doubling down and working to expand our party we did nothing. Now comes Trump.”

The Hispanic population in Texas is the second-largest in the country, it is growing fast and it leans towards the Democrats. The GOP’s failure to do more to woo the population worries party members in Texas, who argue many Hispanics are natural conservatives who could be lured over by policies emphasising limited government, entrepreneurship and family values.

They point to the success of George W Bush among Latinos as an example of what could be achieved. Paul Simpson, the chair of Harris County’s Republican Party, acknowledges the GOP needs to do more to reach out to Latinos, and also younger voters, but insists the party is taking action.

“The Democrats figure demographics is their destiny,” he says. “We have a lot more work to do here. But we have been very actively engaging in multiple communities across the county.”