You can learn a lot from sitting down with dozens of political candidates over the course of three weeks to ask them in-depth questions about what they stand for, what distinguishes them from their opponents, and why they deserve the vote.
You can also go crazy doing this, but let’s just focus on the first part.
This election cycle, our editorial board invited candidates in 39 local and state races to interview, and in the course of the interviews we gathered important insights about the direction of state politics that we want to share here.
Gerrymandering: The first thing to say is that extreme gerrymandering continues to have an outsized impact on our democracy. In many districts, particularly in strong Republican districts, candidates who appeared before our board in their primary races saw no reason to do so in the general election. Too many races just aren’t competitive enough to encourage candidates to sit down and answer questions from anyone who might challenge them. It may be good political strategy, but it’s lousy representation.
The GOP: The most powerful element of the state GOP, the far right, is determined to run just on capturing its base, rather than appealing more broadly. It’s one thing to decide not to come to a candidate interview, but there are many cases where GOP candidates just aren’t engaging beyond friendly audiences.
Abortion: Many Democratic candidates in more competitive districts have moderated their message on abortion and signaled that they want to return to the Roe vs. Wade standard of viability. In an earlier cycle, many Democratic candidates were more likely to say that the decision around abortion should be entirely between a woman and her doctor. But in the general election, Democratic candidates were more likely to say that the government has an interest during some stage of pregnancy in whether elective abortions should be legal.
Gambling: The power of gambling interests continues to grow in the state, and its impact isn’t limited to one political party. A quick search of campaign finance reports this year for Texas Sands PAC, the political action committee behind the powerful Sands casino group, showed more than $2.5 million in donations to politicians from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, to Austin state Rep. James Talarico, a deep-blue Democrat. There remains a group of Republicans who are adamantly opposed to gambling. These tend to be Republicans in more rural areas supported by West Texas oilman Tim Dunn. But the gambling lobby is making strong inroads in convincing suburban Republicans and urban Democrats that the state needs to get on board with online gambling and at least a few casinos in major cities like Dallas and Houston.
Border: Democrats are slowly and unsurely awakening to their weakness on the border. We have seen more Democratic candidates embrace the idea of the state having some role in border enforcement, especially when the federal government fails. But we have also seen Democrats who still have a weak grasp of border security. We heard two candidates suggest that the state can process asylum claims, something plainly in the hands of the federal government. Republicans continue to press a political advantage on this issue, especially when it comes to embracing the state taking on the work of border enforcement. The urgency of addressing border issues has subsided a little bit as crossings have declined. But we expect that is cyclical, and if a surge of migrants arises again, state-level Democrats will have to have a strategy other than calling federal Republicans obstructionists for blocking the bipartisan Lankford-Sinema bill.
Judiciary: We spent a lot of time this cycle interviewing candidates for the state’s two highest courts, the Texas Supreme Court, the final court of appeal for civil cases, and the Court of Criminal Appeals. We also interviewed candidates for the 5th Court of Appeals, the state’s largest intermediate appellate court that serves North Texas counties.
Texas has a lot of reasons to be proud of its judiciary. There is a lot of noise about our courts and how they are partisan ciphers. If you examine the law and how it is applied, and you speak to judges at every level, you will come away with deeper confidence in our judicial system. Yes, the Texas Supreme Court’s rulings are business-friendly. But that reflects the state’s business-friendly laws. At the appellate level, the majority Democratic 5th Court is not constantly overturned by the entirely Republican Texas Supreme Court. There is a great deal of respect among our judges for the work that is done. It is critical that our judiciary remain highly competent and highly professional. From where we sit, that is generally the judiciary we have at the highest levels.
Now, a word of caution. We are deeply concerned about the effort spearheaded by Attorney General Ken Paxton to inject hyperpartisan politics into the selection of the judiciary. Paxton was successful in seeing three judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals unseated in the Republican primary because they had ruled against his unconstitutional effort to expand his powers. The Supreme Court recently ruled against Paxton’s plainly unlawful effort to require the State Fair of Texas to allow patrons to bring their guns to the fair. Will those conservative justices face challenges in the next election? If partisan politics takes a deeper role than it already has in our judicial elections, the state will suffer badly.
Finally, most of us already know this, but it bears saying. Political ads are caricatures of actual political candidates. Often, they are outright fabrications. Most of them should go straight in the trash. Yes, there are extreme candidates on the ballot. But most of the candidates who were willing to sit down with us and fill out our Voter Guide are not extremists. They are people with different ideas about how we should be governed. We need to reject extremists of any stripe. But look beyond the ads, at what the candidates truly represent, at their backgrounds and at their positions. And then you will be able to vote with confidence.
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