The Adventures of Team Texas

By:  Russ Daggatt & Gemma Valdez Daggatt

The Common Purpose team of Seattle volunteers spent five days (January 24-28) in Texas working on the special election campaign of Dr. Eliz Markowitz. This was the race for Texas state representative in District 28 in the Southwestern Houston suburbs (primarily Fort Bend County), to fill the seat of a Republican incumbent who resigned in September.

Why bother with a special election for state representative in Texas (besides the fact that the weather is a lot better there than Seattle in January)?

No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since 1994, but Beto O’Rourke came within 2.6% of beating Ted Cruz in 2018. In the process, he garnered 200,000 more votes than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. Also in 2018, two long-time Republican Congressmen lost and Democrats picked up 12 seats in the 150 member State House of Representatives. The writing is on the wall - Texas is turning purple!

The stakes are high for 2020. The census and subsequent redistricting will reshape state governments and Congressional districts across the country for the next decade. In Texas, an estimated 200,000 Latinx voters will become registered every year over the next decade. Texas is already a majority minority and Latinx voters could overtake non-Hispanic whites as soon as next year. Democrats currently have 66 seats in the State House and need to flip nine to take control. (That, in turn, would help ensure a (more) fair redistricting, and more electoral gains in the future.)

Dr. Eliz (as she is known) got the most votes last November, but no candidate got a majority, requiring this runoff election. She was the sole Democrat with 39% of the vote. Her Republican opponent got 28%, and other Republicans split 30%. In other words, Republicans got roughly 60% of the vote. So we had to change the composition of the electorate to win it. This special election was the only race on the ballot, so turnout would be the key to victory. That was a big challenge – special elections have notoriously poor turnout. And this had been considered a safe Republican district. But picking it up would be seen as a harbinger for November, when the entire State House (and the state’s 38 electoral votes) will be on the ballot. 

That’s where Common Purpose’s Team Texas comes in.

We arrived on the Thursday night before the election. We awoke Friday to hear that a major, deadly chemical explosion had happened earlier that morning only a few miles away from our canvassing areas. It killed two employees, destroyed the factory and damaged dozens of surrounding homes, breaking windows and doors a half-mile away.  (This follows at least five major chemical incidents in the area in the last year. Infamous for its lack of land-use regulation, the Houston area is home to more than 2,500 chemical facilities, with a major chemical incident on average every six weeks.)

This provided a concrete example of the kinds of real world issues at stake.

We canvassed in an area called Cinco Ranch. Turns out, this was the area hardest hit during Hurricane Harvey. The hurricane dumped more than 50” of rain and was called “the most significant tropical cyclone rainfall event in United States history,” by the National Weather Service. Cinco Ranch and surrounding areas were in the Army Corps of Engineers’ “flood pool” to protect Downtown Houston and were inundated with an average of over 4’ of flood water. When the water receded, thousands of homeowners returned to ravaged houses. Only 30% of the homeowners stayed to rebuild. The rest sold their gutted homes at well below pre-storm prices. These were among the people we met canvassing.

Fort Bend County is the most diverse in the country. It comes closer than any other county to having an equal division among the nation’s four major ethnic communities — Asian, Black, Latinx and White residents. We encountered a large number of immigrants from Vietnam, India, Africa, Latin American and elsewhere around the world. (At first, it seemed that there were few native-born Whites in the area. Then we figured out that we were hitting homes that had already been screened as likely Democratic voters. It was not a random sample.)

On Friday morning, our Seattle group met up at a coffee shop with Max, our field director. Our team was given our assignments and worked to get voters out for the last day of early voting. (For some inexplicable reason, there was no early voting over the weekend – when it would be most convenient for the working people who comprised most of those we were targeting.) On Saturday and Sunday mornings, we gathered together with about 100 other volunteers at a local home to get the routes we would cover each day. There, we were greeted by our cheerleader-in-chief, Beto (at least among this group, he had attained single name status – like Prince, Sting or Madonna). He had made this race his top priority since ending his White House bid in November. He also joined the larger group for dinner at a Mexican restaurant on Saturday night.

Team Texas

With Beto

Here are a few random highlights from our experiences:

• One lady said she hadn’t had time to Early Vote since she was too busy getting ready for the Chinese/Vietnamese New Year’s celebration.  But even though she was busy, she ran back into the house to get her Voter Registration card to show us. We left her with a plan to vote on Election Day. About a half block away, we heard her calling out.  She had run back home to pack us a box of freshly-made egg rolls, offering both her vegetarian and meat options – delicious!

• A group of 5-7 year olds playing in a cul-de-sac asked us, “What’s voting?”  When told them it was how grownups decided which one of them should make the big decisions, they said, “Oh that’s what our mom does!  She’ll be happy to hear about this!”

• One middle aged African American man said, “The fact that you made the effort to come to my door to ask for my vote has persuaded me. I’ll get out and vote.” We asked, “Your wife, too?” “Absolutely,” he replied.

• Some of our group asked this gentleman for directions.  He was so excited to tell his story about meeting Beto!

• At one home, a 19-year old answered the door. He was not the person on our canvas list, but he was happy to find out there was an election, and who he should vote for, since it was his first time eligible.

• A group of teenagers resoundingly replied, “We’re IN!

• “Be Safe!” A number of our team got this advice when leaving “Likely” houses in conservative neighborhoods. After a particularly unfriendly house, one of the neighbors greeted us saying, ”Thank you, we’ve already voted. God bless you! This is a terrible neighborhood to doorbell, but you’ll be OK three doors down.”

• Even when some people had been canvassed multiple times, they told us they appreciated it, since it must be very important that we would visit them that many times!

• We canvassed the first three days in clear skies, but over Sunday night that changed to unhealthy air quality levels. (Despite progress, Houston air quality is still among the worst in the nation. Yet another reason to elect Democrats!) That took a couple members of our crew who were particularly sensitive to air quality out of commission on Monday.

On Election Day, the remaining members of the group divided up between poll greeting, flyer drops, and phone banking. One of the poll greeters had an African American woman recognize her. “You came to my door! That’s why I’m here!”

Most of the group flew back to Seattle together on Tuesday night right around the time the polls were closing. We got the results when we landed. Alas, they were not what we had hoped for. Dr. Eliz came up short, with 41% of the vote. 

Only about 20% of registered voters turned out – high for a special election, but low compared with a general election. While the outcome was disappointing, these two candidates will meet up again in November. And state Democrats note that there are another dozen seats or more in the state legislature higher on their target list for the Fall when turnout should be considerably better.  It’s all just part of a long term effort to turn Texas Blue.

And for Team Texas, it was an adventure!