Tuesday’s primary runoff between Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to see who will be in the November general election has had the entire United States looking at Texas. It is a state Donald Trump carried by double digits all three times he ran. A state that had its most recent Democrat governor in 1992, Ann Richards. A state that has had a Republican majority since 2002, the same year Cornyn was first elected to the U.S. Senate. With all of this evidence, it’s no wonder people think Texas has always been conservative, deep red, and Republican. Those people would be wrong.
Texas is a very weird, much misunderstood state. It is the only state, aside from Hawaii, that was its own country. Its state capital building is taller than the U.S. Capitol by fourteen feet, and one of its cities, Houston, has the largest livestock show and rodeo in the world. Texas has one of the largest and best medical centers in the world, the Texas Medical Center, located in Houston, and the first words ever spoken on the moon were “Houston, the Eagle has landed,” transmitted to the Johnson Space Center in far south Houston.
Politically speaking, it just gets stranger. The state itself is majority conservative, red, but the major cities are liberal (blue) and have been for a very long time. The current state constitution from 1876 is so long and has been amended so many times that it can’t fit in a standard textbook. Compare that to the roughly 4,400 words in the U.S. Constitution. The state legislature meets once every two years for 180 days. The idea being, how much trouble can they get into in 180 days? Plenty. The real power in the state lies with the lieutenant governor, but the governor can call as many special sessions as he wants, each lasting 30 days. This has happened recently.
To imply that Texas has never been liberal, blue, and Democrat ignores most of the history of the state. Sam Houston, governor of Texas, as the Civil War started, was removed from the office of governor because he refused to take the oath of loyalty to the Confederate States of America. He was determined to keep Texas in the Union, but he was outvoted. Texas was part of the Solid South, a Democrat voting bloc consisting of the former Confederate States. The bloc lasted from the end of the Civil War to the implementation of the Voting Rights Act of 1964. John Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson, the senior senator from Texas, because he needed the electoral votes Texas had. Bob Bullock, lieutenant governor of Texas from 1991-1999, one of the last Democrats elected statewide, near the end of his term, “unofficially” endorsed then-Gov. George W. Bush’s run for the presidency.
Texas has been Democrat for over 100 years. Its switch to conservative ideals only came in the past 35 years, and only because some of the state leadership bought a clue and realized that decreasing regulations, not having a state income tax, and creating a business-friendly environment would bring far more money and more industry to the state. This change in thinking is known as the Texas Miracle, something liberals don’t like to talk about.
Texas has been Democrat and probably will again, but for that to happen, the Texas Democratic Party has to come up with better candidates than Beto “Three Time Loser” O’Rourke or Jasmine “Jazzy from the Block” Crockett. What is the most amusing part about the current race for U.S. Senator on the Democrat side is that the Democrats bumped a black woman out of the way so that a white man could win. Some habits never change.
Paxton will, most likely, defeat the Democrat. On the off chance that the Democrat wins, Sen. Ted Cruz will become the senior senator from Texas, an idea that probably scares the Democrats like nothing else. So, for everyone out there wringing their hands that Texas will turn blue this fall, take a breath, go outside, and be in nature for a while. Texas was blue, turned red because of forward-thinking people, and, most likely, will not be turning blue again for a long, long time.
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