TEXAS DEMOCRATIC PARTY

The Grand Prairie lawmaker has led the minority party’s House caucus since 2017.

The Democratic National Committee has decided to allow new states to bid for the coveted status, which has long belonged to places like Iowa and New Hampshire, in an effort to kick off the nominating process in states that better reflect the diversity of the broader electorate.

Witnesses say Kim Olson pushed the party’s top staffer during a bus tour in 2018. Olson denies the allegation.

Gov. Greg Abbott and most other statewide elected officials won their primaries Tuesday night. But Attorney General Ken Paxton was forced into a runoff, and progressive Democrats fell short of their congressional goals.

Mike Collier, Carla Brailey and Michelle Beckley are facing off for the Democratic nomination in the lieutenant governor race. Financially, the three candidates are outmatched by Dan Patrick’s $25 million war chest.

In 2020, Democrats took their campaign efforts virtual. But they later admitted that the lack of in-person campaigning hurt them at the polls.

The Republican Party of Texas announced Monday it had launched a new Local Government Committee to work with county parties on backing candidates for nonpartisan local offices.

Current state party leader Gilberto Hinojosa has indicated he isn’t going anywhere. But that hasn’t stopped open discussion about leadership of the party with several months until convention delegates vote on the position.

The lawmaker has represented parts of central and southeast Houston in state House District 147 since 1991.

The GOP slate for statewide office includes two high-profile Latinos and two Black candidates who have previously held state or federal office. Republicans are making a play to be more competitive with voters of color as the state’s electorate grows more diverse.

Abbott has promised to call a second special session to pass the GOP’s priority voting bill, but the exact timing is uncertain. And House Democrats have not yet revealed what they have planned after the session ends this week.

Three Texas House Democrats testified before a congressional committee on their efforts to thwart voting restrictions — and were met with heat from their Republican counterparts.

Turner has represented House District 114 since 2019 after he flipped the previously GOP-held seat during the 2018 elections.

The governor had vowed to veto the Legislature’s funding in the final hours of the regular legislative session in May after House Democrats broke quorum and left the chamber to prevent passage of a controversial elections bill.

Texas Democrats failed to meet their expectations for the 2020 election. While Democrats had outpaced Republicans in registering voters, their willingness to campaign in person netted a late surge in new Republican voters. In addition, Texas Democrats contend that data suggesting a massive shift toward Republicans among Latino voters is more accurately explained by increased turnout among Republican Latinos. Despite an underwhelming performance in 2020, Texas Democrats continued to paint an ambitious picture of a “sustainably blue” state over the next 10 years. “The Texas GOP will continue to out-hustle the Texas Democrats in every election, it doesn't matter how much money from Hollywood and Manhattan they ship in."

The Texas Democratic Party is looking into why it underperformed expectations in the November election. Credit: Alyssa Banata for The Texas TribuneSign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. The head of the Texas Democratic Party has appointed a committee to take a "deep dive" on what went wrong in the November election after a group of executive committee members wrote to him demanding answers, reforms and a shakeup in senior staff. Texas Democrats severely underperformed expectations in the November election after looking to it as their best shot in decades at making inroads. As for the party's headquarters, Hinojosa wrote in his letter that he "strongly believes" the party should maintain a "storefront" office as it has in Austin.

It was one of many bright spots Tuesday for Republicans in Texas — and an example of relatively reliable polling to boot. After Texas Republicans were caught sleeping two years ago, they say it was Democrats who walked into a buzzsaw this time — a more battle-ready, unified GOP. And Democrats’ hopes of flipping the Texas House collapsed, with the balance of power largely unchanged heading into January. That vigilance reassured Texas Republicans throughout the cycle, even as they wearily watched poll after poll come out showing Trump struggling in Texas. Like the DCCC, the Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee was left Thursday touting its defense victories — the reelection of 11 out of 12 freshmen — and emphasizing the expensive battle they forced Republicans to fight.

Chen works on Asian American and Pacific Islander voter turnout every year, but this year she feels even more motivated. In Texas, there are sizable Asian American communities in districts that hold outsize importance this year. Asian Americans make up about 5% of the population and most statewide polls don’t contact enough Asian voters to provide a reliable sample. And it’s not just an existential type of attack, but the Asian American community, especially the Chinese American community, feels their lives are being threatened because they’re being singled out. “Most Asian American voters are naturalized citizens.

(Bob Daemmrich/Nexstar/KXAN via AP, Pool)WASHINGTON – Buoyed by massive fundraising success, Democratic Senate candidates are mounting a push in Republican states that few would have thought possible just a few months ago, placing continued GOP control of the chamber at risk. MJ Hegar in Texas reported raising over $13 million during the same period for her race against Republican Sen. John Cornyn. In deep-red Kentucky, Amy McGrath has posted strong fundraising numbers against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In Mississippi, Mike Espy reported raising $4 million in his rematch against Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. O'Rourke was criticized for being too stingy with his cash, only reluctantly aiding other Democrats, though he eventually donated large amounts to the Texas Democratic Party.

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden spoke during a campaign stop in Dallas in March. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign is set to spend millions of dollars on TV ads in Texas as polls continue to show a close race in the state. That shows you just how important Texas is to them and it shows that Texas is in play,” said Abhi Rahman, a spokesperson for the Texas Democratic Party. Though Biden and Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris have yet to visit Texas in the run-up to Election Day, Democrats have called for the duo to invest heavily in Texas. As speculation has swirled about the extent of Biden’s investment in the state, the Texas Democratic Party has been ramping up its advertising.

Super Tuesday voting lines at the Metropolitan Multi Service Center near downtown Houston on Tuesday, March 3, 2020. Michael Stravato for The Texas TribuneA federal judge on Wednesday threw out Democrats effort to reinstate the straight-ticket voting option in Texas. Siding with the state, U.S. District Judge Marina Garcia Marmolejo found that Democrats lacked standing to challenge Texas Republicans decision to kill straight-ticket voting ahead of the November general election. The judge dismissed the federal lawsuit after ruling that Democrats' claims of the electoral fallout that could come from eliminating straight-ticket voting were too speculative. And other Texans will experience shorter lines given that voters have been encouraged to steer clear from in-person voting where possible.

Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas TribuneAfter a series of losses in state and federal courts, Texas Democrats are looking to the U.S. Supreme Court to expand voting by mail during the coronavirus pandemic. The Texas Democratic Party on Tuesday said it asked the high court to immediately lift the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals' block on a sweeping ruling that would allow all Texas voters who are seeking to avoid becoming infecting at in-person polling places to instead vote by mail. The fight to expand who can qualify for a ballot they can fill at home and mail in has been on a trajectory toward the Supreme Court since Texas Democrats, civil rights groups and individual voters first challenged the state's rules months ago when the new coronavirus reached Texas. Under his order, voters under the age of 65 who would ordinarily not qualify for mail-in ballots would now be eligible. In their appeal, the Democrats are asking the Supreme Court to leave in place Biery's order and take up the case on the claim that the state's age restrictions for voting by mail violate the 26th Amendment's protections against voting restrictions that discriminate based on age.

HOUSTON – There's a big legal fight underway over whether voting by mail in Texas should be expanded. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says no, but the Texas Democratic Party and several voting rights groups say yes. What is the state’s legal argument against expanding vote by mail? What are the legal arguments for expanding vote by mail in texas? The Texas Democratic Party and other voting rights and civil rights groups, like the Texas Civil Rights Project, are suing the state, arguing that the current eligibility requirements for mail-in ballots should be dropped because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A federal appeals court has temporarily put on hold a lower courts sweeping ruling that would have allowed all Texas voters to qualify to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic. Bierys ruling covered Texas voters "who seek to vote by mail to avoid transmission of the virus under the age of 65 who would ordinarily not qualify for mail-in ballots. The appeals courts action reverts the state to existing qualifications that limit absentee ballots to voters who are 65 years or older. In his request to the 5th Circuit, Paxton argued the injunction threatened "irreparable injury" to the state "by injecting substantial confusion into the Texas voting process mere days before ballots are distributed and weeks before runoff elections." The appeals court ordered the Democrats to file a response to the states request to block the ruling by Thursday afternoon.