Texas turns the blue tide ahead of midterm poll
The Democrats face a tough battle in the Lone Star state and nationwide.
As a son of Mexican immigrants in Texas, Cruz Compean is crucial to Donald Trump’s hopes of defying history in the US midterm elections.
“I guess I am supposed to vote Democrat because we are considered middle class or lower class,” says Compton as he works in the rain on a farm southeast of Houston. “But if anything, I like what Donald Trump is doing, even though I didn’t vote for him.
“I don’t agree with everything but you can’t win them all. I think I will vote Republican this time.”
Compean, who supervises a team working on mobile phone towers, says he cares only about looking after his family and feels he has more job options if the President’s Republican Party controls the Senate and the House of Representatives after the November congressional elections.
“Unemployment is way down, jobs are up, the economy is good and everybody badmouths him — but you know, I think he is doing pretty good. He is a businessman who knows how to do business,” says Compean.
His vote for the Republicans is unusual because Hispanics are overwhelmingly Democrat voters, especially with Trump’s tough border policies, and because he is shifting his vote to the ruling party.
History shows the national trend is almost always the other way. Presidents, regardless of party, are punished in the mid-terms two years into their White House stint. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s Democrats each lost more than 50 seats and control of the house in their first midterms, in 1994 and 2010.
It was widely assumed that Trump, whose popularly has lingered lower than Clinton and Obama in his first two years, would trigger a Democratic “blue wave” across the country, giving the Democrats the 23 seats needed to retake the house and possibly even the two seats needed to retake the Senate.
But in places like Texas, this calculation is being revisited as tightening polls across the country — and a rise in Trump’s popularity at the right time — fuel speculation Republicans will not only keep the Senate but may have a chance of retaining the house.
Trump’s presidency hangs on the outcome. If the Democrats take control of the house, they will block the President’s agenda for the next two years and initiate numerous investigations into him, including possible impeachment.
In Houston this week, Trump held a rally in front of 16,000 raucous supporters, declaring Democrats were “not talking so much” any more about the blue wave that would swamp even the reliably Republican Texas.
GRAPHIC: US mid-term elections
The fact that Trump even held a rally in Texas shows how unnerved Republicans were by the early Democrat strength in the state, much of it revolving around popular Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, 45.
For months, O’Rourke seemed to epitomise the anti-Trump wave as he stormed across Texas with a liberal platform designed to knock off Republican Ted Cruz and become the first Democratic senator from the state in a quarter of a century. O’Rourke’s platform is remarkably liberal for a conservative state. Cruz describes it as “un-Texan”. The Democrat believes in new gun laws, universal healthcare and loosening laws on marijuana. He has become the most watched Democrat candidate in the country — literally — by live-streaming much of his campaign. A total of 161,000 people watched him skateboard through a carpark.
But after closing the gap with Cruz to only four points a month ago, O’Rourke trails by nine and the Senate seat appears to be out of reach for Democrats once again.
Judging by The Australian’s travels through southeast Texas this week, Trump remains the biggest motivator for voters.
Trump supporters cite the economy, jobs, border security and the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court controversy as the key issues ahead of the midterms. Democrat supporters say Trump’s abrasive style, his hardline immigration policies and his attempts to dismantle healthcare reforms are the reasons they will vote to send a progressive to the Senate.
The heated divisions across the country were highlighted yesterday after pipe bombs were sent to Trump foes Obama, Hillary Clinton, billionaire George Soros, former US attorney-general Eric Holder, California legislator Maxine Waters and CNN.
Critics accused Trump of encouraging right-wing extremists. While he denounced the bomb plot, he added: “The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and stop the endless hostility and constant negative, and often times false attacks and stories.”
But Bill Goyen, 53, unpacks his ute in Alvin, southeast of Houston, and says he will vote Republican because the economy under Trump has been good for business. “I farm trees here and we sell them to new home builders,” he says. “So the better the economy the more homes that are built and the better for my business. So it’s been going well with Trump as President. He talks too much sometimes but he is more of a people person than a politician and he believes in everything I believe in.”
In nearby Santa Fe, nursery farmer Jimmy Woolsey also credits Trump for the stronger economy and better profits.
“When Trump got elected, he did things to make sure that working people were not afraid to spend their money. My business has got much better because of it and I give him credit for that,’’ he says.
“I honestly think Trump is more for the working people, just like the Democrats used to be,’’ says Woolsey.
But he says Trump’s “America first” approach to foreign policy has been the highlight of his presidency. “I want to be proud of my country. I don’t want to be ashamed of my country,” he says. “Obama’s apology tour was so embarrassing for me. I mean you don’t apologise to people just because you have a strong military. I like the way Trump lets other countries know he will not put up with a lot of stuff. You need a president who will protect your country. I don’t like Trump’s personality. I would never be friends with him, but at least he is getting things done.”
Barbara Edmonds, a waitress at Mr George’s diner in Alvin, says immigration is the issue that will make her vote Republican.
“He’s secured the border, which is a good thing, and he’s toughened immigration laws,’’ says Edmonds, a widow with three children who was forced to work last year after her husband died.
Edmonds has been watching the migrant caravan of 7000 people snake its way towards the US border as Trump has declared he will not let them into the US.
“The illegal immigration here is terrible, we need the wall,” she says, referring to Trump’s yet-to-be-built border barrier. “The crime in Houston and these surrounding counties near the border is ridiculous. It is a very serious problem.”
Edmonds says healthcare is also key to her vote. Republicans want to unwind Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which Republicans see as an affront to freedom of choice. “I am still opposed to Obamacare because it’s a rip-off for the American people,” she says.
“You should not be forced to get insurance. I was being forced to pay it out of my taxes when I didn’t use it. So it went to somebody else who could get it for free, and that’s not fair.”
But down the road, another recent widow, and mother of five, Susan Click, says Obamacare is one of the reasons she will vote Democrat. “I really liked Obama because he did Obamacare, which really helped me, but Trump is trying to change it,’’ says Click, who has retired after a career training office managers. “I am a widow and there is not a lot out there to help me. I don’t think that Donald Trump is for the people. I think he is for himself and his millionaire buddies. I am a normal person on a fixed income and he thinks nothing about us.
“I’m really hoping come the election that people wake up and say we need a big change here.”
But the need for change is why Gordon Selfridge says he voted for Trump in 2016 and why he will vote Republican again.
“I voted for Trump because we had eight years of hope and change and it damn near destroyed the country,’’ the retired Marine corporal says of the Obama years. “Trump has got unemployment at a virtual all-time low and he’s got the economy booming. I mean, there are more people employed right now in this country than in its entire history.”
“We didn’t want any more career politicians in the job because they think only about their own arse and the polls. Donald Trump don’t give a shit about the polls — doesn’t need a poll to tell him what his opinion should be.
“He’s honest because he says it how he thinks it. He is like a little kid — if it comes across his mind, it is coming out of his mouth. There is no deceit, no dishonesty.”
Alisha, 19 — who asked that her last name not be used — walks out of a Dollar General store in Santa Fe and says she will vote Democrat because Trump is taking away people’s rights.
“I am young and I have more sympathy for the Democrats,” she says. “To me Trump and the Republicans are trying to take away rights, like anti-discrimination rights, and I don’t like that. Plus I like Beto O’Rourke, because he is open about not being perfect.”
Steel pipeline worker Tommy Luxton, 47, stands on the back of his ute in Santa Fe and says Trump has stood up for workers.
“He bought the steel companies back. I am working with pipelines. Now you are seeing us working with US steel products. So it’s helping my industry.
“I also like that Trump is not shy. He is not scared to do what he promised he would do, and I like the way he is going about it.
“He is forcing other countries to pay their own way. We need to keep everything in America, we need to keep the jobs here. Everything was going over to China but now he is keeping the jobs here.”
The recent shift in momentum towards the Republicans, in Texas and nationally, has been attributed in part to a more energised Republican base after the Kavanaugh row and the approaching caravan of migrants.
Coupled with this is a rise in Trump’s approval rating from the low-40s to the mid-40s, the highest of his presidency.
None of this means the Democrats won’t still retake the house, as most polls continue to indicate. The Democrat base has also been fired up by Kavanaugh’s appointment to the US Supreme Court and Trump’s attacks on migrants.
Historically, even with Trump’s improved approval rating, the Democrats should be able to win the 23 seats needed to take the house. But the Senate looks much tougher: the Democrats need to defend seats in 10 states that Trump won in 2016, as well as win two seats held by Republicans.
Yet with a strong economy and a more popular president than expected, the Democrat “blue wave” is looking a little flatter.
Washington correspondent Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.