AUSTIN ― Texas Democrats are out to prove that they can win ― even without Beto O’Rourke at the top of the ticket. There’s no doubt that when the former Texas congressman ran for U.S. Senate last year, he energized progressives and helped fuel a surge in voter turnout. It wasn’t quite enough to win him the Senate race ― or flip close U.S. House districts like the 24th. But for 2020, Democrats believe with early investment and the state’s changing electorate on their side, they’re in a strong position to make further gains.

Democrats flipped two U.S. House seats in Texas in 2018. This time around, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which announced this month it’s opening an office in Austin, is gunning for six House Republicans they see as beatable. Texas Democrats also hope to unseat Republican Senator John Cornyn — M.J. Hegar, a military veteran, announced her campaign against him Tuesday — and take the majority in the Texas statehouse before a crucial redistricting year.

Texas’s 24th congressional district, which stretches north between Fort Worth and Dallas, is a test for whether Democrats can build upon 2018 in a way that will eventually usher in a blue wave that crests over Texas. The district went for O’Rourke in the Senate race last year; Trump won by about 6 points in 2016.

The district overlaps with a number of statehouse seats Democrats flipped the last cycle. Democrats are hoping to hold those and pick up several more Republican-held seats that overlap or are near the 24th. They only need to gain nine seats to take control of the Texas House in 2020, which would give them a seat at the table for redrawing political maps in 2021 following the U.S. Census, which only takes place every ten years.

U.S. Rep. Kenny Marchant held onto his seat in the 24th district last year by about three points — a slim margin for the 68-year-old Texas Republican, who in prior elections, has breezed to victory: In 2016, for example, he won reelection against his Democratic opponent, Jan McDowell by almost 17 points.

Right now, Republicans view the shrinking margin more as a blip that may have been part of the wider O’Rourke-induced voter turnout, not a sign the 24th is eager to elect a Democrat. Marchant is not on an initial list of Republican members the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has identified as vulnerable — though four other Texas Republicans are.

Marchant has $1.7 million in the bank for 2020, according to the Dallas Morning News. He “looks forward to running against whichever candidate makes it out of the Democratic Primary,” his campaign spokesman Keats Norfleet told HuffPost.

Democrats are focused on this district, in part, because it has a growing and changing electorate like other parts of Texas: In recent years, the number of African American, Hispanic and Asian citizens of voting age has increased significantly, Democrats have noted.

The three-point spread in 2018 is “closer to a low water-mark than a high-water mark for Democratic performance,” said Clifton Walker, deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. In 2018, “there hadn’t been significant investment in this district yet, and this was still a midterm election, which compared to a presidential, is historically less favorable for us,” he said.