GEORGETOWN, Texas — For a short time on election night last Tuesday evening, Texas was blue on the major networks’ colored maps. Though the moment was brief, Texans felt the same rush that people in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other battleground states have enjoyed for years. The blue wave crashed and receded shortly after that glimpse of national election-night relevance.
All over the state in national, statewide, and local races, incumbents mostly held their ground. Republicans cleaned up, as Texas’ electoral votes went to Donald Trump, John Cornyn won convincingly, and the state’s two chambers stayed firmly in the grip of the GOP.
Democrats throughout the state found some solace in two suburbs and a major city where Biden narrowly won the vote. Tarrant County turned blue for the first time in 36 years, buoyed by a huge turnout in its county seat, Fort Worth, while the ’burbs mostly stayed Republican.
While the 13th largest city in the country turning blue is a major morale boost for the Dems, wins in reliably Republican Hays and Williamson County could be a better barometer of how sprawl, changing demographics, and fielding better candidates (or any at all) could be the formula for future success.
In Williamson County, about 49.52% of ballots cast for president went to Democratic candidate Joe Biden versus 48.19% for incumbent Donald Trump. Biden took Hays by a margin of 54% to 44%. As of Monday in Tarrant, the two candidates were in a statistical tie, with Biden leading by fewer than 1,000 votes and only Democrat-leaning mail-in ballots left to count.
In Williamson County, Republicans mostly hung on to their seats at various levels, though their margins of victory were lower than in past years. The two Democratic state reps held serve, and that party picked up a constable seat. The county’s Democratic candidate also beat out controversial sheriff and reality TV star, Robert Chody, who was just indicted on an evidence tampering charge.
Jim Henson, a government professor at The University of Texas and director of the Texas Politics Project, said Williamson County’s demographics have changed. This is due in large part to people leaving Austin as well as others from around the country moving to the city for work.
“You get more people attracted to and working in Austin, and a lot of those people are younger,” he said. “Austin is getting more expensive, so you're getting young, white-collar people who may come to Austin and rent in the central city, but when it's time to buy, they buy in the more outer-lying areas.”
Speaking just about Wilco, Henson pointed out that the county has been trending toward Democratic presidential nominees for several election cycles. The county went 59% to Mitt Romney in 2012 and 51% to Trump in 2016.
“I would not assume that it's on its way to ‘turning blue,’ but nor would I expect that it ever goes back to the days of when it was almost a symbol of Republicanism in the region.”
Kim Gilby, chair of the Williamson County Democratic Party, said the results in Wilco are the consequence of a process that started in 2016, as the rest of the party nationwide was upset over the loss of Hillary Clinton.
“This just didn't happen overnight,” she said. “Even though 2016 was a really rough night to be a Democrat, we elected the first Democratic County Commissioner in Williamson County in two decades.”
When Gilby first moved to Williamson County in 2011, she said there weren’t many Democrats even on the ballot. This year, she said, they ran almost a full slate — only three races were left uncontested by Democrats.
Though she acknowledged the county’s shifting demography was key, she believes that the local Democratic Party also activated longtime voters who might not have turned out in previous elections.
“There are people moving into Williamson County, but a lot of our voters are longtime native Texans,” she said. “There are Democrats who've been here for generation after generation and they too live in Williamson County. So, folks who like to say, ‘Only the people who moved here from blue states are making the difference.’ That's not exactly the whole truth.”
The 2018 cycle was a tipping point for Hays, Tarrant, and Williamson Counties. All three went to Beto in his failed bid to unseat Ted Cruz — the first time in many years a Democratic statewide candidate captured each of the counties. State Dems capitalized on the growing dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump, the then-nascent #metoo movement, and fed off the energy of Beto O’Rourke’s campaign.
Williamson is on the same trajectory as its southern neighbor, Hays, which felt the impact of Austin ex-pats sooner than Williamson. In each case, the last two election cycles saw Democrats turning out the vote in record numbers.
“We've registered a lot of people to vote,” said Donna Haschke, the Hays County Democratic Party Chair. “We had probably 30,000 more people registered to vote since the last [election]. In fact, we had 10,000 more between the primary this past spring and the general. We were able to maintain our blue status. We didn't win all of our elections, but we got more votes than the Republicans, so we're gonna still consider ourselves a blue county.”
Races all over the state reflected the rancor and vitriol at the top of the ticket. Williamson and Tarrant were no exceptions. In Tarrant, Democratic challenger Elizabeth Beck accused Republican incumbent Craig Goldman’s campaign of doctoring video footage — a charge the campaign strongly denied.
In Williamson, where Republicans hoped to reclaim two house seats, the county GOP ran what Democrats are calling a smear campaign against the two Democratic incumbents, John Bucy III and James Talarico.
Those tactics might have backfired, said Bucy, who belied civility was on the ballot last week.
“I think Michelle Obama says it best: 'They went low, we stayed high’ in our campaign rhetoric,” he said. “We didn't respond to the attacks. We talked about our visions for how we would serve if elected. I think that's why we were rewarded. That's why we were rewarded in the sheriff's race where the incumbent went nasty. The challengers went really nasty in my race and in James [Talarico’s] race, and you see what the voters did. I think we've got very very astute voters, and they want to see a vision for a better future, not attacks to slander and bring people down at the last minute to try to sneak out a win that way.”
Though Bucy didn’t say that an anti-Trump sentiment drove voters to the poll, he did say the Trump-like campaign tactics and rhetoric will help Williamson County remain blue.
“This is a change for the long-haul,” he said. “Williamson County will be blue as long as the Republican party is based on Trump values. I don't think this goes backwards. This continues to move forward for a vision of a better Williamson County.”
Haschke said she has yet to look at the data to determine whether the turnout in her county was driven by an anti-Trump sentiment or an actual party conversion.
“We've got a whole lot of pockets of very red areas like in Dripping Springs and Wimberley,” she said. “So I don't know how many might have turned over to be Democrats. We've not been able to really study all the data yet, of course. But we're certainly hoping that some of them that have.”
Henson believes that Williamson and Hays are now toss-up counties — he stopped short of anointing it a permanent Democratic stronghold based on the scattershot nature of the results there.
“I think it's likely this phenomenon will continue,” he said. “As we look at these results, 2020 was not the year of Democratic triumph that they had hoped for. On the other hand, I think their expectations may have been unreasonable and are still coloring the discussion in interesting ways. I mean, 2018 was a wildly unexpectedly successful year for Democrats in a lot of ways.”
“Basically what you saw was a stabilization of probably a new normal that was established in 2018, where the Democrats are more competitive in the urban areas,” he continued. “They have a basis for expansion in the suburbs, but by no stretch of the imagination have the suburbs turned blue. They're not as red as they used to be. So in a place like Williamson County, the shifting of the political winds is going to happen unevenly. And I think that's what we're seeing.”