There is perhaps no better example of the changed political landscape in Texas than the 10th Congressional District, stretching from West Austin to the Houston suburbs, where Democrats are already lining up to challenge incumbent Michael McCaul, the Austin Republican once considered invincible.

Mike Siegel, who ran an underfunded campaign in 2018 and lost to McCaul by just 4.3 points, will face political newcomer Pritesh Gandhi, an Austin primary care physician for the underserved, in the 2020 Democratic primary, possibly among others considering candidacies.

Gandhi, 36, a former Fulbright scholar and Schweitzer fellow, has the poise and bearing of someone who has been preparing all his life for this opportunity, and thinks he’s got what it takes to do what Siegel, 41, was unable to.

“What a lot of folks are asking, 'Mike did a great job last year, why are you running?'” said Gandhi, who was born and raised in the Houston area and is the associate chief medical officer for People's Community Clinic in Austin. “It is important for the party to have an open and honest discussion around what the issues are and the kind of candidate we can nominate that can beat McCaul.”

Siegel, meanwhile, left his job as a former assistant city attorney in Austin to run full-time. He has hired a campaign manager and is spending 20 to 30 hours a week calling potential contributors.

Democrats flipped two Texas congressional seats in 2018, in the Dallas and Houston areas. In January, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the arm of the party dedicated to electing Democrats to the U.S. House, announced plans to protect those two pickups and expand the battleground map in Texas, targeting six GOP-controlled congressional districts where Democrats lost by fewer than 5 points in 2018. Those include three in Central Texas — the 10th; the 21st, represented by freshman U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin; and the 31st, represented by U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock.

In March, committee officials said they were deploying four field organizers to the suburbs of Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas, and this month, announced plans to open an Austin office in May that will be staffed by eight senior staffers.

Until last year, McCaul, first elected in 2004, had never had anything resembling a close call.

But with the Austin and Houston metro areas two of the fastest growing in the nation, the demographics of the 10th are swiftly changing.

President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 10th District by 9 points, the same as his statewide victory margin. Two years later, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke won the 10th by two-tenths of a point. A poll in April by the DCCC found Trump with a 44 percent approval rating in the district.

According to a DCCC analysis, between 2010 and 2016, the black citizen voting age population in the 10th increased by nearly 30 percent, and the Hispanic and Asian American citizen voting age population grew by more than 50 percent.

“In the 10th District, like many districts around the state, there are more Democrats registering to vote, there are more Democrats moving into the district. It went for Beto in the last election and Trump’s numbers are not great, so it does give all of us concern,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican consultant in Austin who has worked as a strategist for McCaul in his last two campaigns and managed U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s 2014 reelection campaign.

McCaul, the top-ranked Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee with a net worth of $113 million, has said he will run for a ninth term. Last week, McCaul's campaign reported raising $450,000 in the first three months of the year, more than double its previous best quarter ever.

“I am grateful to all the Texans standing with our campaign and helping us build the resources to share our record of fighting for common sense policies that help real people and make life better for the residents of our district,” McCaul said in a statement Monday, the filing deadline. “National liberals are going to spend millions in 2020 trying to deceive Texans and elect a lockstep liberal who will support the Green New Deal, a government takeover of healthcare and higher taxes. We are taking nothing for granted as we prepare to win a tough fight to keep our community one of the best places to live in America.”

In the last election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, McCaul raised and spent about $1.7 million, and Siegel about $480,000.

So far this cycle, Siegel has raised about $150,000, including a $25,000 personal loan, while Gandhi raised $162,000 in his first 27 days as a candidate, relying especially on a network of Indian American donors.

The DCCC investment in an on-the-ground presence in Texas is akin to what it did in California in 2018, flipping seven districts, mostly in Orange County, the onetime seedbed of California conservatism.

The Austin team will include a political director, press secretary and directors focused on research, data analytics and targeting, candidate finance, digital, and field work.

For their part, Republicans are playing defense. The National Republican Congressional Committee on Friday named four of the Texans on the DCCC hit list — U.S. Reps. Will Hurd of Helotes, Pete Olson of Sugar Land, McCaul and Carter — among the first 10 members of its 2020 Patriot Program, to help vulnerable incumbents.

Recruiting candidates



One of the ambitions of the high-profile commitment to Texas is to "pull really strong recruits off the sidelines," said DCCC spokesman Cole Letier.

“I’m leaning very strongly toward running in Congressional District 21 and obviously, a part of my thinking has been supported by what I see the DCCC doing here — the investment of human resources, capital and attention to what we who have been on the ground in Texas for a while have believed about our opportunities," former Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis told the American-Statesman. Davis, who lives in Clarksville, one of the Austin neighborhoods located in the 21st District, moved from Fort Worth after losing by 20.4 points to Gov. Greg Abbott in 2014.

"It's very gratifying to see the DCCC seeing through the same prism we've seen through for some time," Davis said.

During the three-decade tenure of U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, the 21st — which in its current incarnation, stretches from Central and South Austin to San Antonio, taking in a wide swath of the Hill Country along the way — had come to be seen as impregnable Republican territory. But in the wake of Smith's retirement, Republican Chip Roy defeated Democrat Joseph Kopser, an Austin tech entrepreneur, by fewer than 3 points, and O'Rourke fought U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz to a virtual tie in a district that Trump had carried by 10 points.

Roy, a movement conservative and former top aide to Cruz and former Gov. Rick Perry, said that while Davis, if elected, would arrive in Washington with "a kind of celebrity leftist status," he does not believe her politics will find any purchase in the 21st District.

Of the DCCC setting up shop in Austin, Roy said: “We’re clearly aware of what they are doing, and just like in 2018, I can tell you my campaign will take nothing for granted.”

“So if Democrats want to take a big pile of money and light it on fire, good for them, because that’s exactly what they’ll be doing,” Roy said.

Roy is 46 and in his first term in Congress. Will Hurd, at 41, has been elected three times by slender margins in the vast 23rd Congressional District that extends from San Antonio along the border, to the edge of El Paso. It is a majority Hispanic district that should favor a Democrat and Hurd seems destined for rematch in 2020 with Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, who he defeated in 2018 by less than 1,000 votes.

But for some of the targeted Texas Republicans, the new DCCC announcement — with its promise of opposition research, campaign trackers and relentless negative messaging — is a kind of psychological warfare, a gut check for politicians in the late stages of their careers. After years in what amounted to safe seats, how hard do they want to work, how much money do they want to spend, how willing are they to risk capping their careers with a loss, especially in a year when they will find their fate tied to the mercurial Trump, and all for the prospect of returning to a House in which they may well still be in the minority.

In the 24th District, Kenny Marchant, 68, is a former mayor of Carrollton, whose son was also mayor. He served in the Texas House for nine terms and, like McCaul, has served in Congress since 2005. But in 2018, he eked out a 3.1-point victory over Democrat Jan McDowell. Marchant beat McDowell by 16.9 points two years earlier. Marchant, who now lives in Coppell, lost on his home turf in the Denton and Dallas county portions of the district and survived thanks to voters in Tarrant County. Trump carried the 24th by 6 points; O'Rourke won it by 3.5 points.

McDowell is seeking a rematch, but she will face opposition from a number of candidates, including Kim Olson, who was the Democratic nominee for agriculture commissioner in 2018, and Candace Valenzuela, a 34-year-old Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board member.

In the 31st District, Carter, 77, who was first elected to Congress in 2002, saw his margin of victory plummet from 21.9 points in 2016 to 2.9 points in 2018, running against MJ Hegar, a decorated Air Force helicopter pilot. He lost Williamson County.

Hegar could probably clear the field if she chose to challenge Carter again, but she is deciding whether to challenge Cornyn's Senate reelection instead.

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said in Austin on Wednesday that he will decide soon whether to join the Senate race, and that, as the state becomes more competitive, "probably the era of uncontested primaries in both parties in Texas is over."

But Davis, while not endorsing a candidate in the Senate race, said she decided against running for Senate because she thinks Castro is a candidate who has "the strongest opportunity to take this across the finish line."

"I've long believed that with a strong Latino at the top of our ticket, we were poised to do what has been a great challenge for us and that is to excite a voter who hasn't been turning out in our statewide races," Davis said.

Primary battle

Siegel said if he had lost by 10 points, he would not be making another go at McCaul.

But he recalled, on "election night, we were on the CNN board until late at night when the rural county Republican surge came in."

"The fact that we came so close without money really made me wonder, if I did everything the DCCC tells me to," Seigel said. "I had a grassroots, progressive coalition helping me, which is key. That’s a huge advantage in this primary for 2020. That is a big part of the foundation I’m building on, so what I’m hoping to add to that is the full-fledged D.C.-approved campaign structure."

Gandhi said he and his wife on Nov. 6 were watching the election.

"We saw the outcome, and right then and there we knew that this was going to be in the cards," he said.

"It's really not about Mike McCaul," Gandhi said. "It's about the Mike McCauls of the world and it's about holding the Mike McCauls of the world accountable for the votes they take in office and for the party they support and for the president they support," Gandhi said. "So I had to run. It was no choice for me."

On Tuesday, a week after his third daughter was born, Gandhi was at the monthly meeting of the Austin Tejano Democrats at Casa Maria restaurant on South First Street in South Austin, introducing himself.

"I've spent my career fighting for people in this region, fighting for paid sick leave. I was on the border last year in Tornillo fighting for families and I do that every day in my job and so I'm happy to be here," Gandhi said. "I'm sure in the next year I will get to know a whole bunch of you."

"I think Mike (Siegel) is a great guy, a great dad. He's a good lawyer. I have absolutely nothing negative to say about him," Gandhi said after the meeting. "But I wouldn't be running if I didn't think the campaign we are building is the one that’s going to beat Mike McCaul, and I think part of the story here is that I have been fighting for these issues my whole life, all day and all night and every weekend long before I thought about politics."