Red Flag Over Texas: Charting A Path Forward For Left-Wing Politics in Texas
By Jake J.
This is the fourteenth installment of Austin DSA’s “Class Enemy of the Week” series. You can find the thirteenth, on Dan Patrick’s assault on trans rights, here.
At the conclusion of Texas’ 87th Legislative Session on Monday, Governor Greg Abbott bragged that it would go down in history as “one of the most conservative legislative sessions our state has ever seen.” State Republicans ran roughshod over the mostly ineffectual opposition of the Democrats, successfully passing culture war fueled legislation pertaining to defunding the police, legal abortion, gun rights, critical race theory, and more. The failure of two major GOP priorities — a bill restricting voting rights and an omnibus preemption bill that would prevent Texas cities from passing everything from paid sick leave ordinances to mandatory water breaks for construction workers — means that a special legislative session could be looming too.
How did we get to this point? After all, just a year ago Texas Democrats had their sights set on flipping the State House, thus bringing an end to 19 years of Republican trifecta control of the state government. Those Democratic hopes of slowing down the Republican advance in Texas crumbled on election night 2020, when the Democrats failed to flip even a single State House seat. The average observer would suppose that such a crushing defeat would give the Democrats cause for alarm and perhaps force them to reevaluate their strategy — they’d be wrong. For years, mainstream Democrats running on wholly uninspiring messages have lost out in electoral contests with rabidly conservative Republicans in the hopes that one day, demographic change in the state will magically whisk them into power. The last two Democrats to run for governor, Wendy Davis and Lupe Valdez, both lost by double digits; MJ Hegar, running for Senate against John Cornyn last year, vastly underperformed Biden; Democratic organization in the Rio Grande Valley, long a Democratic stronghold, collapsed as Trump surged on a wave of support from Latino voters — the list goes on. The only partial exception to this list is Beto O’Rourke, who was able to come close to beating Ted Cruz in 2018 by staking out some progressive positions and running an impressively organized statewide campaign. Even paying lip service to popular working-class demands like universal healthcare meant that O’Rourke was able to garner much more considerable support than conservative Texas Democrats.
Considering the Democratic record of repeated electoral and legislative defeat, it’s worth asking the question “why?” Is the Texas State Democratic Party really so stupid as to believe repeating the same failed strategy will eventually bear fruit? Or maybe they are fine with Republican control of the state as long as it doesn’t disrupt the profits of their donors? I would conjecture it’s some combination of the two. Regardless of why we’re stuck with an increasingly bold right-wing party in power and a not-so-oppositional liberal party in opposition, that’s the way things are — for now.
Some people are under the impression that Texas is hopelessly right wing, that liberals can’t win here as is, and that socialists will never be able to. To be sure, there are barriers to left-wing victories in the state. Business interests, high-powered politicians, and a large portion of people who vote regularly are arrayed against us. Missing from this equation, at least in the calculus of Texas Democrats, are non-voters: the millions of working-class people disaffected with both parties, many of whom are open to an alternative that puts the interests of working people up front. In a state with a supposedly unassailable conservative majority, we have already seen major breakthroughs for the left in just the past few years. In the 2020 Democratic primary Bernie Sanders won more than 600,000 votes, racking up huge margins in the same border counties where Democratic support cratered in the general. The predominantly working-class Latinos who went to the polls for Bernie simply stayed home in an election where neither party spoke to their interests and struggles. Biden’s explicit rejection of Medicare for All, his refusal to end deportations, and his unwavering support for disastrous trade deals like NAFTA significantly depressed Democratic support in the border region. In the wake of Bernie’s two primary runs, Texas socialists have made significant gains organizing around the very policies that Biden rejected in his presidential campaign. Texas now boasts 13 DSA chapters or organizing committees and many more YDSA chapters at colleges, universities, and high schools, everywhere from El Paso to Lubbock to Fort Worth and Corpus Christi. Even with the nascent level of left-wing organization, DSA members have already won various elected offices in Texas including Franklin Bynum to Harris County Criminal Court at Law 8, José Garza to Travis County District Attorney, Greg Casar to Austin City Council, and, as of last night, Jalen Mckee-Rodriguez and Teri Castillo to San Antonio City Council.
These, albeit small, breakthroughs for left-wing politics in Texas show that a better future is possible. When we organize around a positive vision of change, we can win elections and build working-class power independent of the old two parties. There is no easy path to a better future in Texas, it will only come when workers all across the state — teachers, nurses, mechanics, truck drivers, delivery workers, restaurant workers, construction workers, tradespeople, and all the rest — band together in a single, united fighting force. Our class enemies represented by both the Republicans and Democrats will fiercely resist any attempt to assail the unmitigated power of the boss, the police officer, and the landlord, but we can overcome them by doing the difficult and slow work of organizing in our workplaces and communities. We know a better Texas is possible, now we have to fight for it.
