The GOP has historically taken Texas for granted in presidential elections, but top Republicans in the traditionally red state are warning President Donald Trump and the national party leadership that he could lose Texas in 2020 unless he devotes much greater resources there, the Washington Examiner reported on Tuesday.
Texas GOP Chairman James Dickey and Sen. John Cornyn, who is up for re-election next year, have both sounded the alarm about the real possibility that Democrats could win the state and its 28 Electoral College votes for the first time in a presidential race since 1976.
Dickey and Cornyn are urging that more money and grassroots support is needed in order to hold back a feared Democratic surge statewide in 2020.
“The challenges we face in Texas are very real,” Dickey told the Examiner while at the Republican National Committee’s annual winter business meeting in New Mexico, adding that state Republicans are talking to everyone to warn about the threat.
The signs were already apparent in the midterms when Texas nearly elected Democrat Beto O’Rourke to the Senate and two traditionally GOP Texas seats in the House of Representatives were won by Democrats.
Chris Homan, a veteran GOP operative in Texas, explained that “in 2018, we simply did not have the kind of people and activists at the scale the Democrats enjoyed. This is a significant advantage the Democrats have going into this cycle.”
Some Republicans particularly worry that if either O’Rourke or fellow Texan Democrat Julian Castro, who recently announced his bid for the presidency, were on the ticket, even as the running mate, Texas would automatically be in play.
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