Are Democrats About to Shoot Themselves in the Foot in Texas?

MJ Hegar (D-TX)

Politics is always unpredictable, but it's also a business routine enough that you can tell when something is out-of-the-ordinary, and over the past couple of weeks it's become clear that there's something happening in Texas.  Starting out the cycle, it appeared pretty obvious that MJ Hegar, a former Air For pilot who ran an impressive (if eventually unsuccessful) campaign for the House in 2018 was the choice of the establishment Democrats, and earned the endorsement of the DSCC in December.  However, despite being the obvious fundraising champion (she has out-performed her Democratic primary opponent 3x over so far this race), there has been a clear momentum to her opponent, State Sen. Royce West, over the past few days.  Just weeks after Charles Booker came close but ultimately lost to Amy McGrath in Kentucky, it appears that there is a concerted movement from high-ranking African-American leaders to have West win; in none of the states that Joe Biden looks competitive in for November is there an African-American candidate for the Senate (save for incumbent Cory Booker in New Jersey).  West would change that, and has earned the endorsement of high-ranking members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Al Green, Maxine Waters, Eddie Bernice Johnson, and (most recently) Jim Clyburn, a major party power-broker who was seen as crucial to Joe Biden's strong win in South Carolina.  Conversely, Hegar has been getting high profile endorsements & advertising investments from women's groups (including NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and Emily's List) and high-ranking figures in the Democratic Party such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, potentially seeing a possibility for Hegar to add to the number of women in the US Senate in a state that is looking plausible for Joe Biden and thus for coattails.

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)

Republicans in the past decade have been far, far more likely to fall for these tricks than Democrats.  Republicans ended up backing conservative challengers in 2010 (Delaware, Colorado) and 2012 (Missouri, Indiana) that ultimately cost them the seat, and earlier this year they made House seats in Virginia & Colorado vulnerable by throwing out safe incumbents.  Democrats have avoided this despite a number of potential situations (Oregon 2008, West Virginia 2018) where they could have shot themselves in the foot by nominating a riskier candidate.  So far, tactics like Cornyn's haven't worked...but I am a little worried that they will this cycle based on the recent results in Kentucky.

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.