Nowhere in the United States have historically Democratic counties shifted so far and so fast in the direction of former President Donald J. Trump as they have in the Texas communities along the Rio Grande, where Hispanic residents make up an overwhelming majority.
In recent elections, the region’s mix of sprawling urban centers and rural ranch lands that had been reliable Democratic strongholds for generations were beginning to turn red.
Then on Tuesday, Mr. Trump brought South Texas and the border region firmly into his column, taking 12 of the 14 counties along the border with Mexico, and making significant inroads even in El Paso, the border’s biggest city. In 2016, Mr. Trump carried only five of the counties.
The support for Mr. Trump along the Texas border provided the starkest example of what has been a broad national embrace of the Republican candidate among Hispanic and working-class voters. That shift has taken place in rural communities as well as in large cities, like Miami, and in parts of New York and New Jersey.
But Texas stood out. Eight of the top 10 Democratic counties that most swung toward Mr. Trump on Tuesday were on the Texas border or within a short drive.
One of the biggest swings came in Starr County, a rural area of 65,000 people dotted with small towns where sections of border wall have been rising, incomes are low and many travel long distances to jobs in the West Texas oil fields. The county flipped Republican on Tuesday, backing Mr. Trump by about 16 percentage points. He lost the county to Hillary Clinton by 60 points in 2016.
Concerns about inflation and the large number of unauthorized border crossings in recent years dominated the campaign in the county. On a sweltering Thursday in the border city of Roma, voters who supported Trump said they had done so mostly for practical reasons, and out of a concern over uncontrolled immigration.
Fabiola Rodriguez, 28, a single mother of two children, said just going to the grocery store had become a painful experience. When Mr. Trump was president, she said, she was able to fill her shopping cart for about $250. Now, she spends $300 for a cart that is less than half full.
“I don’t take my children to the grocery store because I know I won’t be able to afford what they want,” she said.
She also feared that Vice President Kamala Harris would be unfriendly to the oil and gas industry, which draws many workers from places like Roma. She blamed the Biden administration’s policies in support of renewable energy for cuts to her father’s and her brother’s working hours in the oil fields.
The county’s top official, Eloy Vera, a Democrat, said there was a broad sense among residents that Democrats did not support the oil and gas industry.
“Our young people thought, hell, they’re going to do away with our jobs,” Mr. Vera said.
At the same time, Mr. Vera was quick to point out, Democrats still have sway in the county: Local Democratic officials like the sheriff won handily on Tuesday. That pattern held in other border communities, where voters split their tickets, choosing Mr. Trump while still in many cases favoring local Democratic candidates.
Rodrigo Burberg, a 32-year-old software engineer from Brownsville, backed Democrats in local contests but remained undecided about the presidential race as recently as a few weeks ago. He ended up voting for Mr. Trump, and also for Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican who was facing a tough re-election fight.
“Honestly, I never heard Kamala say any definitive response to anything,” Mr. Burberg said. “Democrats are saying the economy is really strong. But really, the metrics are not there to reflect what people are feeling. Who cares about G.D.P. if everything is spent on Ukraine?”
Mr. Trump flipped seven counties south of San Antonio.
He won by 19 points in Maverick County, where the city of Eagle Pass had become a flashpoint for unauthorized border crossings during the Biden administration, after losing the county by 56 points in 2016 and by about nine points in 2020. He won in urban areas like Cameron County, home to Brownsville, and Webb County, home to Laredo.
“I’m in awe,” said Adrienne Peña-Garza, a former Democrat turned Republican activist in the border city of McAllen. “A lot of those people who used to attack us now say, ‘Y’all were right.’ The price of eggs, border security,” she said. “Hispanics, they’re at their heart conservative.”
The strong rightward turn among Hispanic voters had surprised many Democrats four years ago, when Mr. Trump began attracting major support in South Texas.
Democrats, who did not campaign hard in the region in 2020, vowed not to let the region slip away. This election cycle, there were on-the-ground efforts to rally Democratic voters and increase turnout. Party activists and paid canvassers fanned out across the region, particularly in the cities of the Rio Grande Valley.
But that effort didn’t hold back the tide; the dam burst. Many Democrats were left in shock.
“Republicans built a brand around folks who work at the oil rigs, households that were struggling to pay for groceries,” said Michael Mireles of LUPE Votes, a progressive South Texas political organization that worked in Hidalgo County to elect Democrats. “It’s silly, but consistently talking about the price of eggs — it’s something that people can remember.”
A longtime Republican who lives in McAllen, Gary Groves, said he had felt the political momentum shifting his way as he started getting Trump supporters together after the 2020 election in caravans of cars and trucks festooned with flags. The gatherings, known as the Hidalgo County Trump Train, began with a few cars; this year, as Election Day approached, he said, some events had as many as 150 or 200.
“What happened was an earthquake,” Mr. Groves, 69, said of Tuesday’s election. And, he added, the party still has room to grow locally. “The majority of the Republicans down here do not have Republican” on their campaign signs, he said. “Hopefully that will change.”
He shared a video from one of his gatherings in which a woman complained that her husband, a Latino immigrant who had recently become a citizen, could no longer get a construction job because local contractors were hiring only unauthorized migrants, who generally worked at lower wages.
For years, Republicans have been working in state and federal races to convince socially and religiously conservative Hispanic voters that their values are better aligned with the Republican Party. Gov. Greg Abbott started his 2022 re-election campaign in the Rio Grande Valley and made frequent trips to the border for political events, cutting into Democratic margins significantly.
“We were talking about prosperity and hope while the Democrat Party was talking about pronouns,” said Representative Monica De La Cruz, who in 2022 became the first Republican member of Congress elected to a district that stretches from the border to the suburbs of San Antonio. She was re-elected on Tuesday. “The Republican Party has become the party of the blue-collar voter,” she said.
This year, the Cruz campaign invested heavily in courting Hispanic voters, running Spanish-language ads beginning in June on streaming services. Some of the campaign’s ads focused on Democratic support for transgender participation in youth sports and gender transition surgeries for prisoners and those in the military.
“Their party has left them on a lot of these key social issues,” said Sam Cooper, a Republican campaign consultant who worked on the Cruz campaign.
Mr. Cruz, who won by nearly nine points over his Democratic opponent, Colin Allred, spent the final days of the campaign in El Paso and then in McAllen, where, Mr. Cooper said, hundreds of people packed into an event with the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.
But while Mr. Cruz made significant gains in South Texas, he did not win the region as decisively as Mr. Trump, who drew more Democrats to his side.
“It’s Donald Trump, not the Republican Party,” said Representative Vicente Gonzalez, a conservative Democrat who held onto his South Texas seat in a close race. “Donald Trump won every county in my district.”
Mr. Gonzalez said Democrats had done a poor job reaching Hispanic workers, particularly men who work in the oil industry and have come to distrust the party. And, he added, the anti-trans messaging by Republicans appeared to resonate with many voters.
“Democrats need to get away from some of those social issues,” he said. “What works in Massachusetts certainly doesn’t work in South Texas.”
On Thursday in the historic downtown of Roma, perched above a winding portion of the Rio Grande, Josie Falcon, 50, reflected on what a second Trump presidency might bring.
Ms. Falcon described herself as “not very political” but said she had felt the need to vote for Mr. Trump over Ms. Harris for pragmatic reasons. “It’s like everyone is saying — the economy,” Ms. Falcon said. “It wasn’t because I didn’t like Kamala or because of race or gender.”
She worried about migrants arriving without authorization from Mexico, still an occasional sight despite a sharp reduction in crossings, and said she was frustrated over paying “a lot of taxes.”
“I’m not sure if Trump will be able to lower the taxes, but that’s what he said, and we have to be optimistic,” she said. “The Democrats didn’t talk about that at all.”
The post ‘An Earthquake’ Along the Border: Trump Flipped Hispanic South Texas appeared first on New York Times.
