By his count, Jonathan Gracia has knocked on more than 5,000 doors during this election cycle in and around the border cities of Harlingen and Brownsville, Texas.
Mr. Gracia, a criminal defense lawyer and a candidate for the Texas House, has been talking to independent voters and those “on the edge” as he tries to flip a seat for Democrats in the Rio Grande Valley, where Republicans have been gaining ground.
He can afford to focus on those in the middle because canvassers elsewhere in the county have been targeting the huge number of Texas Democrats who do not reliably vote.
Those complementary efforts in the Rio Grande Valley are part of a network of overlapping Democratic political operations taking place across the nation’s most populous Republican-controlled state, backed in part by $10 million from the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros.
Earlier this year, organizers and strategists were not hopeful that the perennial Democratic dream of flipping Texas blue — as it was in the 1990s, before Republicans began dominating in rural areas and small towns — could come true this year. Many of those working behind the scenes were playing a longer game. Much of the organizing going on now, particularly in the Soros-backed groups, had been aimed at building databases and voter outreach networks to win soon, if not necessarily this year.
“Sometime in the next four to eight years,” said Katherine Fischer, who has been leading a new political action committee, Texas Majority PAC, that is the main vehicle for the Soros contributions.
But in recent weeks, a tightening in the polls for the U.S. Senate race, with Senator Ted Cruz leading by only a few points over the Democrat, Representative Colin Allred, has rekindled the old hopes.
Now some Democrats have let themselves believe that 2024 could be the turning point they’ve been waiting for. This week, they received another boost after Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she would hold a rally in Houston on Friday, the first time in decades that a Democratic presidential candidate has held a major event in Texas in the closing days of an election.
Democrats had long believed that they would be restored to power by the steady demographic changes in Texas, where Latinos now outnumber white people and left-leaning urban centers have been rapidly growing and diversifying.
But party officials have more recently acknowledged that demographics alone may not lead them to victory in a state where no Democrat has won statewide office since 1994. Some trends, in fact, are heading in the opposite direction. Republicans are making inroads with conservative Hispanic residents along the border. Voters in solidly Democratic places like Houston and Dallas continue to stay home in large numbers on Election Day.
And in some recent state elections, conservatives appeared to regain ground in some contested areas, like Tarrant County, around Fort Worth, that previously had been trending blue.
Republican leaders, like Gov. Greg Abbott and Mr. Cruz, have used the Democrats’ escalating ambitions to raise campaign cash for battle.
“Our small-dollar donations have gone through the roof,” said Bo French, the chair of the Republican Party in Tarrant County.
In recent weeks, Democrats, hopeful for a surprise win but mainly planning for the future, have been fanning out across the state, armed with smartphone data and focused on getting voters to make a concrete plan for going to the polls.
In Harris County, which includes Houston, the local party has knocked on more than 300,000 doors. Those supported by Texas Majority PAC alone knocked on more than 1.2 million doors so far in other urban areas.
“We have to prove to donors and the rest of the country that Texas is worth investing in,” said Ms. Fischer, a veteran of Beto O’Rourke’s Democratic campaigns. She added that support from a major donor like Mr. Soros meant that “we can be honest about what we’re doing,” which is playing the long game and not promising an immediate win.
“I hope to God that Texas flips this year, but that’s not the goal of T.M.P.,” she said.
The committee, which can raise large amounts from single donors under Texas campaign finance rules, has benefited from a ruling by the Federal Election Commission this year that allowed it to coordinate with federal candidates on door-to-door messaging efforts. “It’s created a model that we can use indefinitely, as long as this precedent stands,” Ms. Fischer said.
The state party has also been coordinating its efforts with the Allred campaign to avoid duplicating its canvassing work, which has been a problem in previous elections, and talk to more people.
To win in Texas, Democrats need to get more people to the polls, especially in cities. Around 500,000 likely Democrats in Harris County did not vote in 2020, according to the county party.
“If we can get about a third of them out, that’s where we start moving into the range where the state flips,” said Evan Choate, who is managing the county party’s campaign efforts this year.
As part of the Democrats’ strategy, paid canvassers have been joined by down-ballot candidates in low-turnout but reliably Democratic areas, hoping that seeing an actual candidate will help motivate potential voters.
In one of the first such outings, Christian Menefee, the county attorney, greeted voters at their doorsteps in Houston’s Fifth Ward, a historically Black neighborhood. Most were happy to talk, and to learn that he went to a local high school.
“That’s wonderful,” said Melvin Coffee, 60, a landscaper. He said that it was the first time a candidate had come to his door and that he “most definitely” would be supporting the Democrats. “I think they’re more for the people,” Mr. Coffee said.
The Republican Party has also recognized the importance of Harris County, spending heavily to keep recent county elections close. “They don’t want us to get the margin up too high in Harris,” Mr. Menefee said.
The dynamic is largely the same in other Texas cities, where both canvassers and Democratic voters described being energized by the replacement of President Biden with Ms. Harris at the top of the ticket.
“There are a lot more voters to turn out than there are to persuade,” said Randall Bryant of the Dallas County Democrats, which has received funding from the Texas Majority PAC. “When Texas flips, it will be dependent on county approaches such as these.”
But some of the Democratic voters whom the canvassers encountered were not enthusiastic supporters.
“I fall squarely between,” said Rob Daffin, 59, a software designer who used to support Democrats but had planned to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before he dropped out of the race.
Canvassers in Cameron County in the Rio Grande Valley have faced a similar problem: Some Hispanic voters who voted Democratic in local elections in the past seemed to have grown skeptical of the direction of the national party.
“Everyone is very conservative here — even if you’re a Democrat, you’re conservative,” Mr. Gracia, the Democratic candidate for the Texas House, said as he drove with a campaign aide on a recent afternoon. He pointed out golf courses and new homes at reasonable prices that have attracted Republican transplants from as far as Virginia and California.
The county, at the southern tip of Texas, is a mix of rural towns, retirement communities and urban centers in Harlingen and Brownsville, wedged between the Rio Grande and the Gulf of Mexico. It is home to SpaceX and an industrial port, where construction cranes tower over the future site of a giant natural gas export terminal.
Ms. Fischer, of Texas Majority PAC, said training leaders and organizing volunteers in the Rio Grande Valley was a necessary investment if Democrats were ever going to take the state. And it could help in down-ballot contests this election. Her committee has spent more than $600,000 in Cameron County and another $700,000 in neighboring Hidalgo County.
Recently, canvassers, some in matching shirts, have been fanning out across Brownsville, in Cameron County, knocking on doors and collecting data about voters, far more so than in years past.
They were targeting voters who had previously supported Democrats (there is no party registration in Texas) but who probably had a “low propensity” to vote at all this year.
Many people have been wary of both parties in this election.
Abraham Barberi, 56, a pastor who works with a migrant shelter in Matamoros, Mexico, said he was still considering his vote.
While Republicans are “too extreme for me” in their treatment of migrants, he said, he has a problem with Ms. Harris and inflation. “The debate is, who is going to help us with that?” he said.
On some streets, party preferences changed from house to house.
“I never want to see Trump again,” said Antonio Orta, 72, a retired teacher. “It’s time to vote Democrat.”
“My values align more with the Republican Party,” said his neighbor, Jorge Mendoza, 31, holding a terrier named Toby who barked at a pair of stray Chihuahua mutts trotting by.
Still, he thanked the Democratic volunteers for working to increase participation in the election.
One of the volunteers, Faiz Rahman, a professor of environmental science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, said he felt the work they were doing was vital. “I’m worried that Trump is gaining here,” he said.
Then he went out to knock on a few more doors.
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