Election 2022: Texas primary tests GOP’s rightward shift

AUSTIN, Texas — Voters in Texas will usher in the midterm campaign season with primaries that will test just how far to the right the Republican Party will shift in a state where many in the GOP have already tightened their embrace of former President Donald Trump.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott appears well positioned to secure his party’s nomination for another term after Tuesday’s voting. Starting the campaign with more than $50 million, he has built hard-line positions on guns, immigration and abortion.

The GOP primary for attorney general may be more competitive as incumbent Ken Paxton seeks a third term. He’s facing several challengers, including Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, who are vowing to restore order to the office. Paxton led a failed lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election and has for years faced securities fraud charges and an FBI investigation into corruption allegations. He has broadly denied wrongdoing.

Democrats face challenges of their own after nearly three decades of statewide losses. Former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke has little competition for the party’s nomination for governor, but he faces uphill odds going into the fall. Nine-term U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, meanwhile, is hoping to avoid becoming the first Democratic member of Congress to lose a primary this year. He’s being challenged by progressive rival Jessica Cisneros and contending with the fallout of a recent FBI raid on his home. Cuellar has denied any wrongdoing.

Still, in America’s largest Republican state, much of the focus will be on the GOP’s rightward lurch. The evolution is especially pronounced in Texas, where rapid growth — driven by more than 4 million new residents — has shifted once solidly red suburbs away from Republicans. But the GOP has countered that with redrawn maps that left fewer competitive congressional districts along with dramatic new voting restrictions.

Already, thousands of mail-in ballot applications — and actual ballots — have been rejected under the state’s new requirements. Most of those were due to voters not including newly mandated identification, worrying local elections officials that many won’t correct problems to have their vote count.

“Just common sense will tell you there is going to be a number of people who don’t cure that ballot,” said Bruce Sherbert, the nonpartisan election administrator in Collin County, in Dallas’ northern suburbs.

This year’s primary season is beginning at a pivotal moment in American life.

The U.S. is steadily moving out of the deepest lows of a pandemic that has raged for nearly two years. But that’s tempered by inflation reaching a decades-high level and a burgeoning war in Europe. And there are persistent questions about the country’s commitment to basic democratic principles after many GOP leaders have tied themselves to Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

“There really isn’t a candidate on the Republican side who is someone who is standing up for the rule of law and supporting the fact that the 2020 election was free and fair and accurate,” said Christine Todd Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey who is critical of Trump and is the co-chair of States United Democracy Center, a nonprofit that works to safeguard elections.

Tuesday’s results could have lasting implications. After Texas, primaries in other states won’t resume until May. That means results here could be viewed for months as a measure of the nation’s political mood.

At the polls on Tuesday, Monica Carter, 66, a retired beer distributor, voted in the Republican primary in River Oaks, one of Houston’s wealthiest neighborhoods. She said rising crime is the biggest issue facing the country right now, followed by the economy and inflation.

“I think crime is out of hand. The police force needs to be reinforced,” said Carter, who moved to Texas in December and voted to reelect Abbott.

“I want to get back to border control, too, and that is something he is very much focused on,” she said.

Republicans are betting that Tuesday will be the first step toward them retaking Congress in November, pointing to President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, spiking inflation and anger about the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

History is also on the GOP’s side. The party controlling the White House has lost congressional seats in the first midterm race every election cycle this century except in 2002, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the fight over the party’s future is much fiercer than it was 20 years ago.

U.S. Rep. Van Taylor of North Texas, for instance, has become a target for some on the right after he voted to certify Biden’s electoral victory and to create an independent commission to investigate the Capitol insurrection. The Republican now faces four primary challengers who have largely refused to accept Biden’s victory and have tried to minimize the insurrection.

Businesswoman Suzanne Harp, one of the Republicans aiming to unseat Taylor, says the left “is using the divisive language of ‘domestic terrorism’ to subvert attention away from the fraudulent election” and ultimately trying to ensure “President Trump can never run for political office again.”

One of the most storied dynasties in Republican politics could also reach its end Tuesday. George P. Bush, whose father was Florida governor and whose uncle and grandfather were president, is the last of his family in office but may not be able to garner enough support to force a runoff against Paxton, who has been endorsed by Trump.

National Democrats say Trump’s outsize GOP influence and an economy roaring back from the pandemic may help them counter political precedent. Still, disagreements between the party’s progressive and more moderate congressional wings helped doom Build Back Better, a sweeping, Biden-backed spending and social programs package.

Cisneros is one of three Texas progressives who could secure Democratic nominations in House districts blue enough to all but guarantee they’ll be headed to Congress.

A 28-year-old immigration attorney who supports Medicare for All, Cisneros nearly toppled Cuellar during Texas’ 2020 primary. She still has to overcome Cuellar’s strong name recognition, though.

Cisneros has been endorsed by progressive stalwarts Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who campaigned with her and with Greg Casar, an Austin City Councilmember who championed a $15 citywide minimum wage and is favored to win the Democratic nomination for an open House seat representing Texas’ capital.

Corey Devine, 41, a lawyer who cast his ballot in the Democratic primary in River Oaks, said he is happy with the direction of the party, even if he thinks it has wrongly focused on some issues.

“I think it’s a really tough time to be an elected official. Things are very tense around some issues, issues about the politicization of COVID, these issues about critical race theory, which I think is frankly sort of a made-up issue that people are using to sort of drive people to the polls,” Devine said.

As for Biden?

“There were a lot of unpopular things that had to be done in response to COVID, and I think that makes it difficult for him going into the midterms,” he said. “I don’t think the administration got everything right on COVID. But I think frankly they were doing the best they could in a really difficult situation.”