MJ Hegar (D-TX) |
But it is someone who would never consider endorsing, but is obviously tipping his hand over who he wants as his primary opponent who I am most intrigued by right now. Sen. John Cornyn has made a point of highlighting West's support of gun control, tax reform, and abortion rights in radio ads. Notice that Hegar's attacks in the linked ad are pretty banal, and may even make her sound moderate-to-conservative, while West is getting a list of things that rank-and-file Democrats by-and-large agree with, and while those issues will be tough to defend in a general election in Texas, they are certainly going to help in a primary. It appears very likely that Cornyn thinks that West is easier to beat, and considering public polling that shows the senator well-below 50% in match-ups and Biden's strength in Texas so far this cycle, it's also clear that Cornyn is willing to spend precious resources to ensure he doesn't have to face Hegar...which makes it clear that she's the candidate who stands the better shot of beating him.
Cornyn isn't the first person to do this, and it's a tactic that has worked in the past, most famously in 2012. In the Missouri Senate race, Sen. Claire McCaskill was perceived as an underdog, a Democrat who could no longer win in a state that had moved too far red (it was obvious that Mitt Romney would be winning the state). But she also knew of the three Republicans against her, Rep. Todd Akin was the most conservative, and more-importantly, the most gaffe-prone of the candidates. So she ran campaign commercials proclaiming him "the most conservative congressman in Missouri," which might feel like an attack coming from McCaskill, but was a leg-up in the primary. These ads worked-Akin won the primary, and McCaskill (who had known Akin for years through Missouri politics), waited, and got her money's worth when Akin claimed that sexually assaulted women could not become pregnant if they were the victims of "legitimate rape." McCaskill ended up winning in a landslide, a victory that surely wouldn't have happened if she'd faced the other two Republican opponents.
State Sen. Royce West (D-TX) |
I have stated ultimately that the results of Kentucky didn't matter from a practical standpoint. McGrath and Booker were both going to lose to Mitch McConnell based on polling and history, and so if the Democrats screwed up by nominating the more liberal Booker, it wasn't going to change the ultimate result of the race. That's not the case with Texas. This state is a longshot for the Senate with Hegar, but it's still plausible in a wave. Hegar has the right kind of moderate crossover appeal that a Democrat would need in the state to actually win, and not just "perform respectably." She's still an underdog, but she's got a shot at a win if the stars align properly. That's not the case for West. He's made a point during this campaign of running to Hegar's left, considerably so, and Texas may be changing, but not enough to win over someone whose politics more resemble Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than Heidi Heitkamp. Cornyn's attacks hurt and are worth noting because they're also coming from a place of truth-West is too liberal to win Texas in 2020 against a longtime incumbent Republican.
This is still a competitive race with some unknowns. Hegar's competitiveness in November is up-for-debate-some put her in the same camp as McGrath in terms of "she can't win either" (I don't-I think she's an underdog but because of Biden's competitiveness against Trump in the Lone Star is not in the same situation as McGrath) but few impartial observers dispute that she'd do better than West. As such it's entirely possible that the Democratic movement that came to life with Ocasio-Cortez beating Joe Crowley in 2018 could be about to do something that has hurt Republicans immensely but the Democrats have largely avoided in the Obama-Trump era: taking a competitive seat off-the-table as a result of an uncompromising partisan base.
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