TUESDAY, MARCH 1 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
Politics & the NationBY ARELIS R. HERNÁNDEZ
AND MICHAEL SCHERERrio grande city, tex. — Starr
County Judge Eloy Vera, the sen-
ior Democrat on this patch of the
U.S.-Mexican border, likes to say
he remembers when he could
count local Republicans on a
single hand. But times are chang-
ing in the shrub lands of southern
Te xas.
For the first time in local
memory, the local GOP has an
office on Main Street, with a tent
staffed outside the county court-
house to woo early voters. Eight
candidates have qualified for the
ballot in Tuesday’s county pri-
mary elections, up from one or
none in recent elections.
An alarmed Vera, who has held
office for 24 years, has been
forced to look inward. He asked
county workers in January to
advertise in the local paper about
how the two-party primary sys-
tem works, since so few had seen
one before. He has begun to
reconsider the insularity of the
Democratic Party structure.
“It’s our fault,” Vera explained
in February, as he leaned back on
his cushioned leather office chair,
which Te xas state prisoners make
for county judges. “We never gave
them an opportunity to really
participate in the party.”
Similar Republican uprisings
have been sweeping across near-
by counties in the Rio Grande
Valley, born of frustration with
one-party rule, the influence of
Republican state leaders and the
shifting brands of the national
parties. For as long as anyone
alive can remember, South Te xas
has been a conservative Demo-
cratic stronghold — pro-gun, pro-
fossil fuels, antiabortion and sus-
picious of cosmopolitan values.
But only recently has the over-
whelmingly Hispanic population,
in a place where government
meetings are still conducted in a
seamless flow between English
and Spanish, begun to look seri-
ously at the Republican Party.
A turning point came in 2020,
when President Donald Trump
won 47 percent of the Starr Coun-
ty vote, up from 19 percent in
- About 6,000 more Republi-
can voters suddenly appeared at
the ballot box, even as the Demo-
cratic numbers remained roughly
the same. In three neighboring
counties of the Rio Grande Valley,
the vote margin shifted toward
the GOP by at least 10 percentage
points.
The reverberations have been
enough to rattle the region’s en-
tire political system, which has
historically incentivized the rela-
tives of school and government
employees to support the local
Democratic Party.
“I have always measured my
words because we have to live
here,” said Derric Leo Treviño, a
13th generation Te xan running
this year as a Republican for a
Starr County justice of the peace
seat. “It’s ingrained that we keep
our politics to ourselves because
they may fire your wife or your
cousin. But Trump made it okay
to admit you’re a Republican. He
started the fire.”
A popular state House mem-
ber, Ryan Guillen, flipped parties
in November and picked up
Trump’s endorsement in his bid
for reelection. Trump has also
endorsed Monica De La Cruz,
who is running for an open con-
gressional seat previously held by
a Democrat, which stretches
north from the border to San
Antonio. Republicans are hopeful
that San Benito school board
member Janie Lopez will be able
to pick up another state House
seat farther east, after the re-
drawing of district lines.
National Republicans hope
that another strong year in South
Te xas will further undermine the
longtime Democratic belief that
demographic change in the na-
tion — specifically the shrinking
share of White voters — would
structurally shift the partisan di-
vide in their favor. Instead, recent
elections have reinforced that
Hispanic voters represent a dis-
tinct set of regional voting blocs,still favoring Democrats on the
whole but with clear openness to
Republican persuasion on eco-
nomic and cultural issues.
Democrats at the state and
national level say they are redou-
bling their efforts, largely by re-
turning to the sort of in-person
canvassing that Democrats aban-
doned in 2020 because of the
coronavirus pandemic.
“The Latino community is not
a monolith, and you have to talk
to them early like they are swing
voters,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego
(D-Ariz.), the chair of BOLD Pac, a
group that has been helping
Democrats train and field His-
panic candidates. “We need to
make sure that we educate Lati-
nos so that they know what the
Democratic Party stands for.
They know what the Republican
Party stands for.”
Nationwide, Trump’s strength
among Hispanic voters grew by 8
points between 2016 and 2020,
according to a report by the
Democratic data firm Catalist.
But the gains were not evenlyspread. In Arizona, for instance,
the Democratic vote share fell
only 5 points, allowing Biden to
win the state with a strong major-
ity of Hispanics, most of whom
trace their family roots back to
Mexico. In Florida, where more
Hispanics hail from Puerto Rico,
Cuba and Venezuela, Democratic
support fell 14 points, pushing
the state out of the party’s reach.
In Texas, Hispanic Democratic
support fell 9 points statewide,
the firm said.
“This to me now really feels
like 1980 with Reagan, where you
just suddenly saw huge areas go
in a different direction,” said
Craig Murphy, a Republican cam-
paign consultant who works in
South Te xas. “I would call this a
realignment. I would say it is
permanent.”
Republicans on the border
have benefited from external fac-
tors — an influx of new law
enforcement jobs to work on the
border, a booming oil and gas
industry, and new Republican-
drawn district lines, which pres-
sured Guillen to switch parties. In
2020, thanks to a Republican-
backed state law, voters found for
the first time that they could no
longer vote for an entire party
ticket with one hole punch, elimi-
nating a shortcut that had ben-
efited Democratic candidates.
Republicans have also invested
heavily in the Rio Grande Valley.
The Republican National Com-
mittee now operates three “His-
panic Community Centers” in
South Te xas, including hubs in
Laredo and McAllen, where the
party hosts movie nights, toy
drives and political meetings.
“We never packed up at t he end
of the cycle,” said RNC communi-
cations director Danielle Alvarez.
“We tried to stay in those commu-
nities for the long term, and that’s
where these great candidates are
coming from.”
Democratic strategists havebeen impressed by the effort.
“What Republicans have done
is they are being smart about
recruiting,” said Mike Carrera,
another local campaign consul-
tant, originally from Starr Coun-
ty, who works mainly with Demo-
crats. “A t the end of the day, I just
think that people have choices
now. I think Republicans are
going to just keep pressing.”
Before the 2018 election, a
Republican outfit, Project Red
Te xas, run by Gov. Greg Abbott’s
former campaign manager
Wayne Hamilton, recruited 54
GOP candidates at the county
level or lower along the border.
This year, in a smaller county
footprint, the group helped train
or fund the filing fees for 135
candidates, about half of whom
are Hispanic, he said.
Hamilton credits the chaotic
border, the South Te xas oil and
gas industry, and the cultural
alienation from national Demo-
crats as the reason for Republi-
can growth. But there are also
local frustrations over the gener-
ational Democratic political ma-
chine.
“There is no question that
people are tired of the patronage
and tired of the idea that this is
royal government and we kind of
hand off our position when we
are done to our kid or our grand-
kids,” Hamilton said.
Outside the county courthouse
in Rio Grande City, it was clear
those tensions had galvanized the
new Republican opposition,
which set up a table under a
camping canopy across from the
much more elaborate setup of
their Democratic opponents,
with smoked meat and free chick-
en plates to greet arrivals as they
approached to vote.
“This is a historic moment for
Starr County because we are of-
fering people a choice,” said Da-
vid Porras, a GOP candidate for
county commissioner, who was
elected to county office as a
Democrat years ago.
During the 2018 Republican
primary, only 15 voters in Starr
County chose Republican ballots,
according to state records. After
the first eight days of early voting
this month, 779 had pulled Re-
publican ballots, according to the
county elections department,
making a public affirmation that
some said they have previously
feared would ostracize them in
the community. Democrats had
received 3,817 ballots.
The decision about which side
to support has been agonizing for
many county residents for whom
personal relationships are more
important than partisan politics.
Their ballot choice becomes a
public record, and they can vote
only for candidates from that
party in the primaries. Several
local candidates said they had
heard from voters who are choos-
ing to skip the primary altogether
and wait for the general election
to avoid having to disclose their
affiliation and preferences.
Teachers and county workers
were among those staying away,
those candidates said.“Most of these folks on the
Democratic side have been my
friends for years, we grew up
together and so, it’s a challenge,”
said Guillen, the recent Republi-
can convert and Trump endorsee,
as he campaigned near the coun-
ty courthouse. “They’ll call me
and say ‘Hey, we’re going to stick
with you, but we’re worried be-
cause we won’t be able to vote for
this person.’ ”
Fred Lopez, a Democrat and
family friend of Guillen’s, said he
is not yet sure how he will vote,
even though the sticker on the
rear window of his truck says,
“Con Guillen, Estamos Bien,”
which translates roughly to “We
are doing great with Guillen.”
“The red tide is trying to push
Starr County to go red, which is
going to be impossible,” he said.
“The right wing and left wing are
pushing to the extremes and not
coming together. It’s dividing us.
But a friendship is stronger than
a political foe.”
As the Republican candidates
looked for converts, Jaime Alvar-
ez pulled up in his giant black
pickup, left it to idle in the street
and walked over to greet Porras,
the Republican county commis-
sioner candidate. The two are
longtime friends, and it was Alva-
rez’s brother, a Democrat, who
allowed the Republicans to set up
on the corner of his law office
building for the election.
“I always thought we would
become a two-party system, but
like in 2030. It came earlier,” said
Alvarez, a former Democrat
county commissioner and pre-
cinct chair, chuckling. “Having
two parties keeps you honest. It’s
healthy. I am probably more con-
servative than these guys.”
Vera, who is running again for
the highest office in the county, is
facing a challenge from Republi-
can Maria Yvette Hernandez, a
business owner who is trying to
shake up the local power struc-
ture. His daughter is running to
chair the local Democratic Party.
“This county won’t f lip red yet,”
he says. “A t least not in my
lifetime.”
Republican candidate Treviño
pointed over to the Democratic
tent across the parking lot. That’s
where his father’s first cousin,
Democrat Dickie Gonzalez, was
sharing a tent with Cecilia Her-
nandez, who was greeting voters
in her quest to take Treviño on in
the general election.
A first-time candidate, Her-
nandez is eager to breathe new
life into the local party even if she
was mortified by the public dis-
play when she first saw her photo
on a campaign sign in town.
There’s a feeling, she said, that
voters in Starr County and else-
where in the Rio Grande Valley
are yearning for something dif-
ferent in local governance and
don’t m uch care which letter, D or
R, follows the candidate’s name.
“We haven’t had change in a
long time,” Hernandez said. “It’s
okay to have different people
with different ideas.”
The slogan on her campaign
sign: “Change is good.”In deep-blue South Texas, Republicans make gains
PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER LEE FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTHorse riders participate in a parade in Rio Grande City, Tex.,
where the Republican primary for county races is having a
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