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      Para los demócratas, estos son los votantes clave en Texas

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      Una nueva y ambiciosa campaña pretende atraer a los jóvenes texanos que no están registrados para votar o no acuden a las urnas sistemáticamente.HOUSTON — Cristina Tzintzún-Ramirez está convencida de saber cuál es el secreto para que Texas se convierta en un estado demócrata.La juventud.Cuando se postuló para dirigir NextGen America, un grupo liberal respaldado por el multimillonario y excandidato a la presidencia Tom Steyer, ella dejó en claro dos cosas: que no iba a salir de Austin y que la organización tendría que invertir tiempo y dinero en Texas.Además, se enfocó en un número mágico: 631.000 votos, que fue el margen de triunfo con el que los republicanos ganaron el estado en 2020.Ahora, NextGen tiene como meta dos millones de votantes en Texas: 1,1 millón de electores de entre 18 y 30 años de edad que están registrados para votar pero que no acudido a las urnas de manera sistemática en las últimas elecciones; otros 277.000 electores jóvenes que no votaron en 2020; y 565.000 personas que han identificado como “progresistas jóvenes” que no están registrados. Si solo una tercera parte del total saliera a votar —aproximadamente 633.000 personas—, sería suficiente para que los demócratas superaran el margen de los republicanos.“Hay una enorme cantidad de jóvenes que aún no se registran para votar, así que tenemos que lograr que crean en su propio poder”, señaló Tzintzún-Ramirez, quien es la presidenta actual de NextGen y ha trabajado en la política de Texas durante más de 15 años. “La gente pensaba que la demografía bastaba, pero en realidad tenemos que salir y convencer a esa población de que vote”.Esta organización está pensando gastar casi 16 millones de dólares en Texas durante los próximos dos años para registrar a nuevos electores y llevarlos a las casillas en las elecciones intermedias de 2022. El proyecto representa una parte del gasto más importante de los demócratas en Texas y tiene como objetivo captar a los jóvenes, un grupo que el partido espera que sirva para poner fin al control republicano en ese estado.No obstante, los demócratas tienen que subir una cuesta muy escarpada. La meta de ganar Texas, el estado del país más grande controlado por los republicanos, se les ha escapado desde hace mucho tiempo: su partido ha gastado muy poco o nada, la manipulación partidista les dificulta ganar las elecciones y la cámara estatal lidera con eficacia el flanco derecho de los republicanos.Además, con singular entusiasmo, los republicanos siguen haciendo circular el dinero en ese estado: el gobernador Greg Abbott recaudó casi 19 millones de dólares solo en los últimos diez días de junio, mucho más dinero del que NextGen piensa gastar en el estado durante los próximos dos años. Varios de los cheques para el gobernador fueron por un millón de dólares, algo que ocurre de manera habitual en el caso de los republicanos de Texas, donde no existen límites de donación en las contiendas estatales.“El dinero no lo es todo, pero es mucho mejor que nada”, comentó Julián Castro, exalcalde de San Antonio y excandidato a la presidencia. “Es primordial aumentar las cifras, cuando hay tantos votantes poco asiduos; registrar votantes cuesta dinero”.Cristina Tzintzún-Ramirez cree que a los jóvenes los motivan más los temas que los candidatos en sí.Annie Mulligan para The New York TimesTzintzún-Ramirez piensa que a los jóvenes los motivan más los temas que los candidatos en sí y que el trabajo del grupo complementará cualquier gasto en las campañas. La mayor parte de estas, señaló, se enfocan en los electores con los que ya cuentan o en los indecisos, y “movilizar a los jóvenes no es parte de la ecuación y no es rentable para la mayoría de las campañas”.Según el Centro para la Información y la Investigación sobre Educación Cívica de la Universidad Tufts, el año pasado, aproximadamente el 50 por ciento de las personas menores de 30 años votaron en las elecciones presidenciales, un aumento del 11 por ciento en comparación con 2016. La información del censo muestra que Texas es el segundo estado más grande del país y que su población también es una de las más jóvenes y diversas. En la última década, la gente de color representó el 95 por ciento del crecimiento estatal y, ahora, los texanos blancos conforman menos del 40 por ciento de la población del estado.Tal vez no sea suficiente inundar de dinero el estado en un momento en que el Partido Demócrata de Texas enfrenta obstáculos importantes: una disminución del entusiasmo entre los electores, actitudes políticas cambiantes, restricciones de votación más estrictas y una reestructuración de los distritos que favorece a los republicanos. Además, aunque desde hace mucho tiempo la demografía se ha considerado una ventaja para los demócratas conforme el estado se vuelve más diverso, en las últimas elecciones, una cantidad considerable de electores latinos de la zona fronteriza decidieron votar por el Partido Republicano.Para los republicanos, quienes creen que el discurso de darle la vuelta a las votaciones en el estado no es más que propaganda demócrata, esas donaciones de siete cifras para su propio partido reflejan un entusiasmo hacia el Partido Republicano.“Desde luego que el dinero influye, pero los demócratas han afirmado una y otra vez que Texas estaba a punto de volverse demócrata y vieron truncadas sus esperanzas”, comentó el senador Ted Cruz, quien criticó a Beto O’Rourke en su contienda por el Senado en 2018 por atraer tantas donaciones de los liberales de otras partes del país.La dificultad para los demócratas se puso de manifiesto durante un mitin que dio inicio a los esfuerzos de registro de votantes de NextGen en la Universidad de Houston. En el evento subieron al escenario varios líderes demócratas, uno tras otro, en un intento de convencer a la pequeña multitud del poder que tienen los jóvenes votantes.Pero al final, cuando Sheila Jackson Lee y Al Green, dos congresistas negros, subieron al escenario, quedaron claros los límites de ese poder.Los republicanos que elaboraron el borrador de un nuevo mapa del Congreso fusionaron sus dos distritos en uno solo, lo que plantea la posibilidad de que dos de los integrantes más veteranos de la delegación demócrata del Congreso del estado se vean obligados a competir entre sí. Jackson Lee y Green se han opuesto al nuevo mapa, al decir que parece ser discriminatorio.“Vamos a tener que pelear”, dijo Green en una entrevista. “Habrá que protestar. Eso requerirá energía. Se necesitarán recursos. Y los conseguiremos”.El multimillonario y excandidato presidencial Tom Steyer fundó NextGen en 2013.Annie Mulligan para The New York TimesDesde hace mucho tiempo, Texas —donde hay más de 650.000 millonarios, más que en cualquier otro estado, a excepción de California— ha sido una especie de cajero automático para los candidatos de ambos partidos en otras partes del país, casi siempre en detrimento de los candidatos locales.Apenas hace ocho años, cuando Paul Sadler contendió por un escaño en el Senado contra Cruz, que en ese entonces apenas empezaba, los demócratas del país casi no hicieron nada para apoyar su campaña, afirmó. Cruz recaudó más de 14 millones de dólares. Sadler no llegó ni siquiera a un millón de dólares.“No tuvieron ninguna participación”, comentó el exlegislador estatal Sadler acerca de los grupos demócratas a nivel nacional. “Tomaron el mapa y eliminaron a Texas por completo. Me decepcioné muchísimo. Ni siquiera lo intentaban”.Más bien, los dirigentes demócratas de todo el país trataron a Texas como si fuera una alcancía y recaudaron dinero de donantes que vivían ahí para las campañas de otros estados. “Nadie creía que Texas podría ganarse, pero ahora es un lugar diferente”, señaló.De hecho, en las elecciones presidenciales de la última década, se han reducido o se han mantenido igual los márgenes del Partido Republicanos en Texas. En 2012, Mitt Romney ganó Texas con 57 por ciento de los votos. Donald Trump recibió 52 por ciento de los votos en 2016 y una vez más en 2020.El gasto demócrata ha crecido al mismo tiempo en los últimos ciclos: mientras que unos 75 millones de dólares se destinaron a los candidatos demócratas en el estado en 2016, aproximadamente 213 millones de dólares se destinaron a los candidatos demócratas en 2020. Esa cifra de 2020 seguía siendo empequeñecida por los 388 millones de dólares gastados en candidatos republicanos, según Open Secrets, que rastrea el gasto político en todo el país.Debido al tamaño de Texas, tanto demócratas como republicanos gastan más dinero allí que en casi cualquier otro estado del país. Pero el porcentaje gastado en candidatos demócratas es uno de los más bajos del país. Aproximadamente el 35 por ciento de todo el gasto político en Texas se destina a los demócratas, según Open Secrets. En Wisconsin, un estado clave en las elecciones, el 49 por ciento se destina a los demócratas.Ya ha habido algunos intentos de inversión de alto nivel en el estado: la campaña de Michael Bloomberg gastó varios millones de dólares a favor de Joe Biden durante las primarias presidenciales de 2020. En 2014, Battleground Texas, un esfuerzo liderado por exasesores de Barack Obama, gastó millones solo para que todos los demócratas perdieran en las elecciones estatales.Rafael Anchia, un legislador demócrata estatal de Dallas, quien preside el Comité Legislativo Mexicoestadounidense, señaló que la campaña de O’Rourke fue el único esfuerzo reciente de los demócratas a nivel estatal con un presupuesto lo suficientemente alto como para cubrir todo el estado. Anchia afirmó que, al igual que otros demócratas de Texas, ha defendido ante los donantes del país que ese estado podría ser competitivo.“Texas ya no se considera una quimera”, comentó. “Tiene una población parecida a la de California, pero ha sido un estado de baja participación y de bajas votaciones”.Claudia Yoli Ferla, directora ejecutiva de MOVE Texas, anima a los asistentes en un evento de NextGen en Houston.Annie Mulligan para The New York TimesQuizás uno de los obstáculos más difíciles que hay que superar sea la apatía. En una reunión de planificación de NextGen en McAllen, en la frontera con México, varios estudiantes dijeron que su mayor reto sería convencer a sus compañeros para que votaran.“Para la gente, la política es un tema incómodo o algo que en realidad no le afecta en absoluto”, comentó Rebecca Rivera, una estudiante de 21 años de la Universidad de Texas en el Valle del Río Grande. “Han perdido la confianza en el gobierno o, para empezar, nunca la tuvieron en realidad”.Jennifer Medina es reportera de política estadounidense que cubrió la campaña presidencial de Estados Unidos de 2020. Originaria del sur de California, anteriormente pasó varios años reportando sobre la región para la sección National. @jennymedina More

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      Why Democrats Say Young Voters Are Crucial to Flipping Texas

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      Young people who are unregistered or do not vote consistently are the focus of an ambitious new push to turn Texas blue, a long-elusive goal for Democrats.HOUSTON — Cristina Tzintzún-Ramirez is convinced she knows the secret to turning Texas blue.Young people.When she applied to lead NextGen America, a liberal group backed by the billionaire and former presidential candidate Tom Steyer, she made two things clear. She was not leaving Austin, and the organization would have to spend time and money in Texas.And she was focused on a magic number: 631,000 votes. That was the margin of victory for Republicans in the state in 2020.Now, NextGen is targeting nearly 2 million voters in Texas: 1.1 million voters between the ages of 18 and 30 who are registered to vote but have not cast ballots consistently in recent elections; another 277,000 young voters who did not vote in 2020; and 565,000 people they have identified as “young progressives” who are unregistered. If just a third of the total turns out to vote — roughly 633,000 people — it would be enough for Democrats to overcome the Republican margin.“We have a huge number of young people who are not yet registered to vote, so we need to make them believe in their own power,” said Ms. Tzintzún-Ramirez, who is now the president of NextGen and who has worked in Texas politics for more than 15 years. “People believed demography is destiny, but we actually have to go out and convince those people to vote.”The organization is planning to spend nearly $16 million in Texas over the next two years to register new voters and get them to the polls in the 2022 midterm elections. The project marks some of the most significant Democratic spending in Texas that targets the young people the party hopes will help it break the Republican grip on the state.But Democrats have a steep hill to climb. The goal of flipping Texas, the country’s largest Republican-controlled state, has long eluded Democrats, after years of their party spending little to nothing, partisan gerrymandering making it more difficult for them to win elections and a statehouse that is effectively leading the Republican right flank.And Republicans enthusiastically keep the money flowing freely in the state: Gov. Greg Abbott raised nearly $19 million during the last 10 days of June alone, more money than NextGen plans to spend in the state in the next two years. Several of those checks to the governor were for $1 million, a regular occurrence for Republicans in Texas, where there are no donation limits in statewide races.“Money is not everything, but it’s a lot better than nothing,” said Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio and a former presidential candidate. “It’s crucial to getting the numbers up, when you have so many people who are infrequent voters — voter registration drives cost money.”Cristina Tzintzún-Ramirez believes that young people are more motivated by issues than by individual candidates.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesMs. Tzintzún-Ramirez believes that young people are more motivated by issues than by individual candidates, and that the work of the group will supplement any campaign spending. Most campaigns, Ms. Tzintzún-Ramirez said, focus on reliable voters or swing voters, and “mobilizing young people doesn’t fit into that equation and simply isn’t cost effective for most campaigns.”Last year, roughly 50 percent of people under the age of 30 voted in the presidential election, an 11-point increase from 2016, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. Texas is the second-largest state in the country, and its population is also one of the youngest and most diverse, census data shows. People of color accounted for 95 percent of the state’s growth in the last decade, and white Texans now make up less than 40 percent of the state’s population.Flooding the state with money may not be enough at a time when the Democratic Party in Texas faces significant hurdles — flagging voter enthusiasm, shifting political attitudes, tighter voting restrictions and redistricting that favors Republicans. And while demographics have long been seen as a boon to Democrats as the state grows more diverse, a significant number of Hispanic voters near the border swung toward Republicans in the last election.For Republicans who believe the talk of flipping the state is nothing but Democratic hype, those seven-figure donations to their own party reflect the enthusiasm for the G.O.P.“Money certainly makes a difference, but Democrats have over and over again claimed that Texas was on the verge of turning blue only to have their hopes dashed,” said Senator Ted Cruz, who criticized Beto O’Rourke in their 2018 Senate race for attracting so many donations from liberals in other parts of the country.The difficulty for Democrats was on full display during a rally kicking off NextGen’s voter registration efforts at the University of Houston, where one Democratic leader after another took the stage to convince the small crowd of young voters’ power.But by the end, when Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green, two Black members of Congress, took the stage, the limits of that power became clear.The Republicans who drew the draft of a new congressional map merged their two districts into one — raising the possibility that two of the longest-serving members of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation may be forced to run against each other. Ms. Jackson Lee and Mr. Green have objected to the redrawn map, saying it appears to be discriminatory.“We are going to have to fight,” Mr. Green said in an interview. “That will take protest. That will take energy. That will take resources. And we will get them.” Tom Steyer, the billionaire and former presidential candidate, founded NextGen in 2013. Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesTexas — with more than 650,000 millionaires, more than any other state except California — has long been a kind of A.T.M. for candidates from both parties in other parts of the country, often to the detriment of local candidates.Just eight years ago, when Paul Sadler ran for the Senate seat against Mr. Cruz, then a newcomer, national Democrats did next to nothing to support his campaign, he said. Mr. Cruz raised more than $14 million. Mr. Sadler never even reached $1 million.“They played absolutely no role,” Mr. Sadler, a former state legislator, said of national Democratic groups. “They took the map and wrote off Texas completely. I was extraordinarily disappointed. They wouldn’t even try.”Instead, he said, national Democratic leaders treated Texas like a piggy bank, raising money from donors who lived there for campaigns in other states. “Nobody believed Texas could be won, but it is a different place today,” he said.Indeed, the margins for Republicans have shrunk or stayed the same in presidential elections in Texas over the last decade. In 2012, Republican Senator Mitt Romney won Texas with 57 percent of the vote. In 2016, Donald J. Trump earned 52 percent. Last year, Mr. Trump again won 52 percent.Democratic spending has at the same time grown over the last several cycles: While about $75 million went to Democratic candidates in the state in 2016, roughly $213 million went to Democratic candidates in 2020. That 2020 number was still dwarfed by the $388 million spent on Republican candidates, according to Open Secrets, which tracks political spending across the country.Because of Texas’ size, both Democrats and Republicans spend more money there than in nearly any other state in the country. But the percentage spent on Democratic candidates is one of the lowest in the country. Roughly 35 percent of all political spending in Texas goes toward Democrats, according to Open Secrets. In Wisconsin, a key swing state in every election, 49 percent goes toward Democrats.There have been some high-profile attempts at investing in the state before: Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign spent several million dollars for Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential primary. In 2014, Battleground Texas, an effort led by former Obama aides, spent millions — only to have every Democrat lose in statewide elections.Rafael Anchia, a Democratic state lawmaker from Dallas who is the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign was the only statewide Democratic effort in recent memory with a large enough budget to reach across the state. Mr. Anchia said that like other Texas Democrats, he has made the case to national funders that the state could be competitive.“No longer is Texas considered this fool’s gold,” he said. “It has demographics similar to California’s but has been a low-turnout, low-voting state.”Claudia Yoli Ferla, executive director of MOVE Texas, rallies the crowd at a NextGen event in Houston.  Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesOne of the most difficult hurdles to overcome may be apathy. At a NextGen organizing meeting in McAllen, along the Mexican border, several students said their biggest challenge would be convincing their peers to vote at all.“People see politics as this uncomfortable conversation, or something that really doesn’t impact them at all,” said Rebecca Rivera, 21, a student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “They have lost their faith in government, or didn’t ever really have it to begin with.” More

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      Beto O’Rourke Draws Closer to Entering Texas Governor’s Race

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      Mr. O’Rourke has been calling Democratic leaders in Texas to tell them he is seriously considering challenging Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022. HOUSTON — Beto O’Rourke, the former El Paso congressman who became a darling of Democrats after nearly defeating Senator Ted Cruz in 2018, is inching closer to announcing a run for governor of Texas, according to three people who have spoken with him.In recent weeks, Mr. O’Rourke has been making calls to Democratic leaders across Texas to inform them that he is seriously considering taking on Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who is up for re-election next year. And he has begun talking to supporters about having them join his campaign staff. A decision could be made in the coming weeks, the three people said, possibly as soon as October. Democrats in Texas have been urging Mr. O’Rourke to get into the race for governor almost from the moment he dropped out of the 2020 race for president, a quixotic effort that stumbled early and failed to gain traction amid a crowded primary field. But despite his troubles on the national stage, Mr. O’Rourke has maintained a deep wellspring of support in Texas, where many Democrats still display the black-and-white Beto signs from the 2018 campaign on their lawns and on their cars. Mr. O’Rourke did not respond to calls or text messages seeking comment. David Wysong, a longtime adviser to Mr. O’Rourke, cautioned that “no decision has been made” on a run for governor. The three people who discussed their conversations with Mr. O’Rourke are Democratic officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about conversations that were meant to be private.No Democrat has been elected governor of Texas since Ann Richards in 1990. And no prominent Democrat has emerged to take on Mr. Abbott next year. The governor, who has built up a war chest of more than $55 million, has appeared more concerned with insulating himself from challengers on his right in a Republican primary than worrying about the general election. But Democrats see a potential opening. Over the last few months, Texas has bounced from crisis to crisis — including a surge in pandemic deaths and a winter failure of the electric grid — while Republican leaders in Austin have steered the state even farther to the right on issues from guns to elections to abortion. In a survey last month, a majority of Texans told pollsters they thought the state was heading in the wrong direction.Amid the political turmoil, Mr. O’Rourke has stayed active in the state. “He’s been not just making pronouncements, he’s been out there knocking on doors, leading marches, setting up rallies all over the state,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. Mr. Hinojosa said the Supreme Court’s decision to let a strict new abortion law passed by the Texas Legislature go into effect had galvanized many Democrats in the state. The new law effectively bans the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy and is structured in such a way as to avoid an immediate court challenge.“This whole abortion legislation has changed the dynamics incredibly,” he said. In the 2018 campaign, Mr. O’Rourke showed that he was able to energize Democrats, raise significant sums of money and campaign aggressively across Texas, a large and notoriously difficult place to run a statewide campaign. Even in defeat, his margin against the incumbent Mr. Cruz — 51 to 48 percent — helped lift Democratic candidates in local races and led to gains in the State Legislature that year. The prospect of a run by Mr. O’Rourke against Mr. Abbott — reported by Axios on Sunday — would present Democrats with the biggest and most direct test yet in their attempts to loosen the Republican grip on power in Texas. During his failed presidential run, Mr. O’Rourke took positions, including a hard line on confiscating assault weapons, that could make him vulnerable in any new campaign in Texas. “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” Mr. O’Rourke said during a Democratic debate in Houston in 2019, referring to military-style rifles that have been used in mass shootings.David Carney, a campaign adviser to Mr. Abbott and a longtime Republican political consultant, said that he would not be surprised if Mr. O’Rourke jumped into the race. “O’Rourke has been planning to run since he got crushed in his presidential flop,” Mr. Carney said. “He is a target-rich environment with positions way, way out of the mainstream.” More

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      The Battle Over State Voting Rights Is About the Future of Texas

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      The current skirmish is the latest in a tug of war being waged between the state’s increasingly Democratic cities and its deeply conservative rural areas.HOUSTON — The flight of Texas Democrats to Washington, a last-ditch effort this week to stop Republicans from passing new statewide voting rules, is perhaps the most dramatic illustration of a broad national fight over access to the ballot.But it is something more than that in Texas. The battle over voting rights is also the latest in a tug of war over the future of what it means to be Texan, one being waged between the state’s rapidly diversifying and increasingly Democratic cities and its deeply conservative rural areas, which wield overwhelming power in the State Capitol.The tension grew during the coronavirus pandemic, when cities like Houston, Dallas and Austin clashed with Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, over mask mandates and business restrictions. But it had already been increasing for years, with each political session marked by Republican state officials rolling back progressive changes made in cities led by Democrats.The most direct new restrictions sought by Texas Republicans, who have maintained control of the state for nearly two decades, are a reaction to local polling innovations, notably in Houston, the state’s largest city, and surrounding Harris County.The county introduced drive-through voting for the first time in November, when people were concerned that traditional polling places would spread the coronavirus, and it proved popular, accounting for more than 130,000 votes. Access also expanded at eight polling sites that held a day of 24-hour voting.Officials believed that drive-through polling, which has been used in three subsequent municipal and state elections in Harris County, would soon expand to other areas. “In a place like Houston and Texas that loves cars so much, why shouldn’t we offer drive-through voting?” said Christopher Hollins, who served as interim election chief in the county last year and oversaw the expansion of voting options during the presidential election.Turnout increased in Harris County as it did throughout the state, and out of more than 11 million votes cast, President Biden got within about 600,000 votes of winning Texas — the closest a Democrat has come in decades.Now Texas cities are ground zero in the fight over whether to expand access to the vote, as state Democrats did during the pandemic, or curtail it, as Republicans are seeking to do with a measure that would ban 24-hour and drive-through polling.Drive-through voting was offered in Harris County, which includes Houston, last fall.Go Nakamura for The New York TimesThe conflict is a national one, heightened by former President Donald J. Trump’s false insistence that he lost in 2020 because of voter fraud. On Wednesday, Democratic members of the Texas House met with senators in Washington and urged the passage of bills aimed at expanding and safeguarding voter access.The group fled Austin on chartered planes this week, just days into a 30-day special legislative session, to delay passage of the state’s voting measure. They vowed to stay out of Texas until early August, when the session expires.But in Texas, the fight over voting is only the latest skirmish in the deepening chasm between progressive and conservative versions of the state.“Harris County is being attacked already at a base level because it is one of the most diverse counties in the country,” Mr. Hollins said. “This certainly predates the pandemic.”Elected officials in Texas cities have found themselves forced to govern with the knowledge that many of the things they do in their backyard will be undone the next time lawmakers meet in the Capitol, which they do every other year.“I see a lot of our job as to do 50 good things a year, knowing that the Legislature will only have time, while it’s in session, to undo half of it,” said Greg Casar, a progressive Democratic councilman in Austin.“Each marquee issue over the last three sessions has been the state wanting to attack local governments,” he added, listing efforts to protect immigrants, transgender Texans and workers that each faced stiff resistance at the state level.Texas House Democrats at an airport outside Washington after fleeing Texas in an effort to block a voting restrictions bill.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesThat view is something more than a hunch on the part of Democrats. Before the previous legislative session, in 2019, the speaker of the Texas House at the time shared an animus toward cities in a private conversation with a Republican lawmaker and a conservative activist.“My goal is for this to be the worst session in the history of the Legislature for cities and counties,” the speaker, Dennis Bonnen, a Republican who represented a district just south of Houston, said in a conversation that was secretly recorded.His comments about cities reflect a commonplace view among some Republicans in Texas, even if they are not always as pointedly expressed. Republican operatives and officials described the dynamic as one of concern over the progressive turn in the state’s cities, a change in culture and politics that has accelerated rapidly over the past decade.And the changes have begun spreading into the suburbs. Populous counties outside of Houston and Austin that once reliably voted Republican have swung in recent years toward the Democrats, said Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University.“With the bluing of the major urban counties and the blushing of many of the major suburbs, what has allowed the G.O.P. to continue to win statewide has been its increasing dominance in the state’s rural counties,” Dr. Jones said.Most states have similar divisions between blue cities and red rural areas. But in Texas, the divisions have taken hold only relatively recently — Houston voted for a Republican, George W. Bush, for president in 2004 — adding to the alarm among Republicans and anticipation among Democrats that the state could soon be up for grabs.In the meantime, said Richard Peña Raymond, a Democratic state representative from Laredo, cities are being punished by the Republican majority in the Capitol for daring to extend voting opportunities, particularly in places where it benefited low-income communities of color and disabled people.“They are trying to thin out the crowd,” Mr. Raymond said of the Republicans in the state. “And that’s just wrong.”Republicans have disputed such characterizations. They have said their efforts to pass the voting bill are a way to instill confidence in future elections and to make uniform the rules that govern Texas elections.“It increases transparency and ensures the voting rules are the same in every county across the state,” the lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, said in a statement after the State Senate passed its version of the voting measure on Tuesday.Signage in Austin ahead of the presidential election.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThe Senate bill, and one before the House, includes provisions to ban 24-hour voting and drive-through voting; limit third-party collection of ballots; increase criminal penalties on election workers for violating regulations; grant more freedom of movement to partisan poll watchers; and require large counties — which include the state’s largest cities — to make available a livestream video during vote counting.Democratic lawmakers have described the changes as a means of voter suppression in a state with a long history of such tactics.But without enough votes to block the bills, more than 50 Democrats, representing the state’s largest cities and suburbs, opted to leave the state in order to deny Republicans the quorum necessary for the House of Representatives to conduct its business. Mr. Abbott has threatened to arrest Democrats to bring them back to the State Capitol, though his jurisdiction to do so stops at the state line.“Everything that the Democratic cities do, particularly if it’s progressive, they attack it and they say cities can’t do that,” Eddie Rodriguez, a Democrat representing Austin, said on Wednesday as he rushed between meetings in Washington. “Which is ironic because they were the party of local control.”Like other Democrats, he vowed to remain outside Texas until Aug. 7, when the 30-day special session ends.Back in Austin, Mayes Middleton, a Republican representing Galveston, awaited the Democrats’ return and bemoaned their flight as hypocritical.“The Democrats say that the state should not dictate how counties run their election laws, but at the same time, they’re in Washington trying to have the federal government dictate how Texas should run its elections,” Mr. Middleton said. “We’ve got to let Texas run Texas.”Edgar Sandoval More

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      Texas Republicans Targeting Voting Access Find Their Bull’s-Eye: Cities

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      In Houston, election officials found creative ways to help a struggling and diverse work force vote in a pandemic. Record turnout resulted. Now the G.O.P. is targeting those very measures.HOUSTON — Voting in the 2020 election presented Zoe Douglas with a difficult choice: As a therapist meeting with patients over Zoom late into the evening, she just wasn’t able to wrap up before polls closed during early voting.Then Harris County introduced 24-hour voting for a single day. At 11 p.m. on the Thursday before the election, Ms. Douglas joined fast-food workers, nurses, construction workers, night owls and other late-shift workers at NRG Arena, one of eight 24-hour voting sites in the county, where more than 10,000 people cast their ballots in a single night.“I can distinctly remember people still in their uniforms — you could tell they just got off of work, or maybe they’re going to work; a very diverse mix,” said Ms. Douglas, 27, a Houston native.Twenty-four-hour voting was one of a host of options Harris County introduced to help residents cast ballots, along with drive-through voting and proactively mailing out ballot applications. The new alternatives, tailored to a diverse work force struggling amid a pandemic in Texas’ largest county, helped increase turnout by nearly 10 percent compared with 2016; nearly 70 percent of registered voters cast ballots, and a task force found that there was no evidence of any fraud.A voter in a car used a drive-through voting station at NRG Arena in Houston to cast a ballot in the presidential election.Go Nakamura for The New York TimesYet Republicans are pushing measures through the State Legislature that would take aim at the very process that produced such a large turnout. Two omnibus bills, including one that the House is likely to take up in the coming week, are seeking to roll back virtually every expansion the county put in place for 2020.The bills would make Texas one of the hardest states in the country to cast a ballot in. And they are a prime example of a Republican-led effort to roll back voting access in Democrat-rich cities and populous regions like Atlanta and Arizona’s Maricopa County, while having far less of an impact on voting in rural areas that tend to lean Republican.Bills in several states are, in effect, creating a two-pronged approach to urban and rural areas that raises questions about the disparate treatment of cities and the large number of voters of color who live in them and is helping fuel opposition from corporations that are based in or have work forces in those places.In Texas, Republicans have taken the rare tack of outlining restrictions that would apply only to counties with population of more than one million, targeting the booming and increasingly diverse metropolitan areas of Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas. The Republican focus on diverse urban areas, voting activists say, evokes the state’s history of racially discriminatory voting laws — including poll taxes and “white primary” laws during the Jim Crow era — that essentially excluded Black voters from the electoral process.Most of Harris County’s early voters were white, according to a study by the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit group. But the majority of those who used drive-through or 24-hour voting — the early voting methods the Republican bills would prohibit — were people of color, the group found. “It’s clear they are trying to make it harder for people to vote who face everyday circumstances, especially things like poverty and other situations,” said Chris Hollins, a Democrat and the former interim clerk of Harris County, who oversaw and implemented many of the policies during the November election. “With 24-hour voting, there wasn’t even claims or a legal challenge during the election.”The effort to further restrict voting in Texas is taking place against the backdrop of an increasingly tense showdown between legislators and Texas-based corporations, with Republicans in the House proposing financial retribution for companies that have spoken out.American Airlines and Dell Technologies both voiced strong opposition to the bill, and AT&T issued a statement supporting “voting laws that make it easier for more Americans to vote,” though it did not specifically mention Texas.American Airlines also dispatched Jack McCain, the son of former Senator John McCain, to lobby Republicans in Austin to roll back some of the more stringent restrictions.Republicans in the State Legislature appear unbowed. In amendments filed to the state budget this week, House Republicans proposed that “an entity that publicly threatened any adverse reaction” related to “election integrity” would not be eligible for some state funds.While those amendments will need to be voted on, and may not even rise to the floor for a vote, placing them on the record is seen by lobbyists and operatives in Austin as a thinly veiled warning to businesses to stay quiet on the voting bills.The Perryman Group, an economic research and analysis firm based in Waco, said in a recent study that implementing controversial voting measures could lead to conferences or events being pulled from the state, and prompt businesses or workers to shun it. The group estimated that restrictive new laws would lead to a huge decrease in business activity in the state by 2025 and cost tens of thousands of jobs. Among the restrictions in two omnibus bills in the Texas Legislature are a ban on 24-hour voting, a ban on drive-through voting and harsh criminal penalties for local election officials who provide assistance to voters. There are also new limits on voting machine distribution that could lead to a reduction in numbers of precincts and a ban on encouraging absentee voting.The bills also include a measure that would make it much more difficult to remove a poll watcher for improper conduct. Partisan poll watchers, who are trained and authorized to observe the election on behalf of a candidate or party, have occasionally crossed the line into voter intimidation or other types of misbehavior; Harris County elections officials said they had received several complaints about Republican poll watchers last year.Mr. Hollins, the former Harris County clerk, said Republicans recognized that “Black and brown and poor and young people’’ use the flexible voting options more than others. “They’re scared of that,” he said.While Republican-controlled legislatures in Georgia and Arizona are passing new voting laws after Democratic victories in November, Texas is pushing new restrictions despite having backed former President Donald J. Trump by more than 600,000 votes. The effort reflects the dual realities confronting Republicans in the State Legislature: a base eager for changes to voting following Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss and a booming population that is growing more diverse. Bryan Hughes sponsored the bill in the State Senate that seeks to add voting restrictions.Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman, via Associated PressSenator Bryan Hughes, a Republican from northeastern Texas who sponsored the State Senate bill, defended it as part of a long effort to strengthen “election security” in Texas.“I realize there’s a big national debate now, and maybe we’re getting sucked into that, but this is not something new to Texas,” Mr. Hughes said in an interview. He said that lawmakers were seeking to roll back mail voting access because that process was more prone to fraud. He offered no proof, and numerous studies have shown that voter fraud in the United States is exceptionally rare.Mr. Hughes said that the proposed ban on drive-through voting stemmed from the difficulty of getting access for partisan poll watchers at the locations and that 24-hour voting was problematic because it was difficult to find poll watchers for overnight shifts.But many voters in Harris County, whose population of 4.7 million ranks third in the country and is bigger than 25 states’, see a different motive.Kristie Osi-Shackelford, a costume designer from Houston who was working temporary jobs during the pandemic to help support her family, used 24-hour voting because it offered her the flexibility she needed as she juggled work and raising her three children. She said that it had taken her less than 10 minutes.“I’m sure there are people who may not have gotten to vote in the last couple of elections, but they had the opportunity at night, and it’s kind of sad that the powers that be feel like that has to be taken away in order to, quote unquote, protect election integrity,” Ms. Osi-Shackelford said. “And I struggled to find words, because it’s so irritating, and I’m tired. I’m tired of hearing the same stuff and seeing the same stuff so blatantly over and over again for years.”Brittany Hyman, 35, was eight months pregnant as Election Day was drawing near and was also raising a 4-year-old. Fearful of Covid-19 but also of the sheer logistics of navigating a line at the polls, Ms. Hyman voted at one of the drive-through locations.“Being able to drive-through vote was a savior for me,” Ms. Hyman said. She added that because she had been pregnant, she probably wouldn’t have risked waiting in a long line to vote.Brittany Hyman, who was pregnant as Election Day approached, used drive-through voting.Mark Felix for The New York TimesHarris County’s drive-through voting, which more than 127,000 voters took advantage of in the general election, drew immediate attention from state Republicans, who sued Mr. Hollins and the county in an attempt to ban the practice and discard any votes cast in the drive-through process. The Texas Supreme Court ruled against the Republicans in late October.Other provisions in the G.O.P. bill, while not aimed as directly at Harris County, will most likely still have the biggest impact in the state’s biggest county. One proposal, which calls for a uniform number of voting machines to be deployed in each precinct, could hamper the ability to deploy extra machines in densely populated areas.This month, in a further escalation of public pressure on legislators, Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston, a Democrat, gathered more than a dozen speakers, including business executives, civil rights activists and former athletes, for a 90-minute news conference denouncing the bill.“What is happening here in Texas is a warning shot to the rest of the country,” said Lina Hidalgo, the Harris County judge and a Democrat who has pushed for continued expansion of voting access in the county. “First Georgia, then Texas, then it’s more and more states, and soon enough we will have taken the largest step back since Jim Crow. And it’s on all of us to stop that.” More