After 2020 face-plant, Texas Democrats shift their policy and tone on oil, border, police reform

After a disastrous 2020 election, when they lost all 10 of their targeted congressional races and failed to net any seats in the state House, a number of Texas Democrats are retooling their message this cycle, distancing themselves from issues such as police reform and aggressive climate action that they trumpeted under more favorable political conditions. Gone are the days when, after the death of George Floyd, Democratic candidates up and down the ballot in Texas called for removing officers’ qualified immunity protections and other reforms to crack down on police brutality. Now, even the most progressive Democrats make little mention of these issues on the stump or on their campaign websites.

Meanwhile, a number of Texas Democrats are placing newfound emphasis on their support for oil and gas — a key issue in statewide races, where about 1 in 7 votes will likely come from industry-heavy Harris County, and in the battleground regions of majority-Hispanic South Texas, an area rich in oil jobs that votes reliably blue but swung to the right in 2020. The shift comes just two years after a handful of Democrats in the 2020 U.S. Senate primary — including the party’s eventual nominee, MJ Hegar — swore off taking money from oil and gas executives in a clear signal of their attitude toward the industry. This year, with much of the country on edge over the prospect of a recession, statewide polls have found that Texans care most about kitchen table issues such as inflation, crime, taxes and health care. Democratic candidates running for county, state and federal office have responded, for the most part, by scaling back calls for transformational policies that gained momentum in 2018 and 2020, when Democrats across the country lurched to the left under a wave of progressive energy.