Dallas, Texas – At a farmers market, 58-year-old Cody Johnson said he still believed in United States President Donald Trump’s ability to energise voters. That belief serves as a cornerstone of the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention, a first-of-its-kind event intended to mobilise voters ahead of the legislative elections in November, albeit in a particularly Trump-dominated fashion. Although the president, whose approval rating has dipped in recent months, will not be on the ballot, he has loomed large over the race.
He argued that the convention, hastily announced by Trump in June, could provide the bump needed to ward off a liberal surge in Texas, led by Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, and maintain the decades-long conservative hold on statewide office. Walking her dog in a park in downtown Dallas, Shania Spears, who described herself as a policy-over-party voter, took a different view. The 29-year-old marketing specialist for a tech company wondered how the convention would effectively address state voters’ growing discontent with Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s leadership and Trump’s second term.
How could the event help alleviate the array of issues Texas residents continue to grapple with, she asked, most notably the stubbornly high cost of groceries and gas? Texas has emerged as a front line in the November 3 midterm vote, with the convention only solidifying its outsized significance. The Lone Star State has long been held up as an emblem of the “red state model”, defined by a low-tax, low-regulation economic model and socially conservative policies, according to J Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in the suburbs of Dallas.
The state’s three branches of government, the Senate, House of Representatives, and Governor’s office, have been controlled by Republicans for three decades. A Democrat has not won statewide office since 1994. To be sure, he said, Trump will find a warm reception from his base in Texas, but the location also underscores the state’s increasingly precarious position for Republicans.
Polls have consistently suggested that Democrat Talarico is leading or tied in the race for the US Senate with Republican Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general. Trump’s decision to endorse the scandal-ridden Paxton in the state’s Republican primary over incumbent Senator John Cornyn has added a distinctly personal element to the race. Meanwhile, Governor Abbott, a close Trump ally, faces an upstart challenge from Democratic state Representative Gina Hinojosa, while three US House districts along the US border, including two currently held by Republicans, are considered toss-ups in November.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Griffin Blackburn, a 41-year-old bartender from Dallas and a Democratic voter, saw the decision to hold the convention in Dallas as a sign of growing concern over liberal backlash. On the policy front, Texas has adopted many of Trump’s most aggressive agenda items, in what some advocates say offers a preview of the president’s vision for the country. He pointed to the Abbott government’s pressure on local jurisdictions to deputise local police to conduct federal immigration enforcement actions, under so-called 287(g) agreements.
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