Updated at 9:37 a.m. on July 16, 2020 with news of Valenzuela’s addition to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Red to Blue Program.
With the Democratic nomination in hand, Candace Valenzuela’s next challenge will be defeating Republican Beth Van Duyne in the November election.
But to flip Texas’ 24th Congressional District in what many consider to be a toss-up election due to the district’s changing demographics and shifting political landscape, Valenzuela will need to gain traction among the suburban area’s centrist and swing voters.
And her campaign estimates that she’s going to need millions of dollars to get the job done.
Valenzuela on Tuesday defeated Kim Olson, a retired Air Force colonel and Dallas ISD human resources director, in a runoff election. She said she believes her efforts to stand up for the working class and communities of color will resonate with district voters and that her team will work to spread that message despite the challenges of campaigning during a global pandemic.
“The path forward is going to be the same path that we’ve been taking, and that’s building on the broad coalition of our grassroots supporters and making sure that we’re speaking to the main issues of the district right now,” Valenzuela said Wednesday in a call with reporters.
Valenzuela, who grew up poor and homeless for part of her life and would be the first Afro-Latina elected to Congress, has made social justice, income inequality, improved education and other issues related to basic human needs central to her campaign.
And she’s relied on a face-to-face approach to get her message to voters living in the district that covers parts of Dallas, Tarrant and Denton Counties.
But the pandemic has changed what she could do in person, prompting her team to rely on digital communication and text messaging to get voters to the polls. She said her campaign estimates it’ll take $2 to $4 million to win the general election.
Valenzuela’s fundraising efforts got a boost on Thursday when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — the national fundraising wing for House Democrats — added her to its “Red to Blue” program. Her campaign will receive organizational and fundraising support in her race to flip the battleground district, the group announced Thursday morning.
Still, Valenzuela said she’ll miss those intimate interactions that helped her get elected to the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD board in 2017, but added that her campaign will have no choice but to reach voters digitally if they are going to win in November.
“Right now we have an unprecedented amount of folks looking at their phones, looking at the iPads, looking at their computers, looking at their TVs if they have access to all of these things in this moment,” Valenzuela said, doubling down on the need for a strong digital push.
Valenzuela will need her progressive base and the more centrist Democrats who supported Olson to turn out and vote for her. And she’ll also need to court swing voters from the area that elected retiring Republican Congressman Kenny Marchant eight times.
Her campaign is banking on the district’s Black, Latino and Asian voters, who now make up more than half of the district’s population, to make a difference in November.
Valenzuela said she spoke to Olson on Tuesday night and that she hopes her same campaign strategy will rally Olson’s supporters to her side.
In a statement issued on Facebook late Tuesday, Olson asked her supporters and the community to unite.
“True leaders know they build a foundation, not for themselves, but for the generations to come,” Olson said in the statement. “We will surmount, because together, we are TX-24.”
And then there’s Valenzuela’s direct November competition — the Donald Trump-backed Van Duyne who served two terms as mayor of Irving and served as the regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the current administration.
She also won the Republican nomination in March outright.
Van Duyne criticized Democrats in a statement issued on Facebook in reaction to Tuesday night’s runoff results.
“For the past four months, the Democrats have raced to the bottom in their primary to be the candidate most acceptable to the extremists who run their party,” Van Duyne said.
“Candace Valenzuela has actively sought and received support from many extremist elected officials and organizations who believe in dismantling American security, fundamental rights, and crushing North Texans under socialized medicine and higher taxes on middle-class families,” the statement continued.
Valenzuela said she expects attacks to come from Republicans at the national level due to major endorsements she’s received like one from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. But she added that it won’t bother her because she’s not running to serve either political party.
“I’m here for the residents of Texas’ 24th district. I’m here to fight for working families,” Valenzuela said. “I’m here to make sure that people have access to food to eat, have access to a roof over their heads, have access to clean air and clean water.”
