Examining the set of quotes in this Tuesday night Politico article headlined “Republicans are freaking out about Hispanic voters after a Texas upset” first requires one crucial but not especially difficult assumption: That they really are freaking out after that 15 point state Senate special beatdown on Saturday and rather than just performatively dialing up the panic meter to keep their base engaged.
If it was limited to just the actual politicians then maybe it’s mostly fear porn. But that Texas GOP consultant Brendan Steinhauser says that the “imagery coming out of Minnesota in the last few days has had a huge impact on not only Hispanic voters, but swing voters, independents in Texas and around the country. What’s transpired there has definitely led to a bit of a political backlash,” and Latino Never Trumper GOP strategist Mike Madrid said younger Latino men are activated against MAGA because all this ICE shit has “angered and upset them” then, well, maybe it really is as bad as Politico and Ted Cruz and fucking asshole Lt Gov Dannie Goeb aka Dan Patrick make it sound.
The problem for the rest of us is there’s zero quantification of how bad it’s supposed to be because the actual turnout numbers are completely useless. On Saturday Dem Taylor Rehmet won by 15 in a district Trump carried by 17 percent in 2024, which sounds impressive when you don’t actually present any of the raw counts whatsoever, which Politico didn’t. Rehmet took 54,267 votes to Republican Leigh Wambsganns’ 40,598 for a total turnout of 94,865 in this runoff. Both of them also lost a few thousand raw votes from their first round on November 4th in which some other GOP d-bag and Wambsganns combined for 52.4 percent. So that was stupid and hopefully the Texas GOP fired whoever was supposed to bribe third place loser John Huffman to drop out back in September.