If Texas is to turn blue any time before, say, 2030, it is not going to be through a traditional political model. The legislative gerrymandering and the Republican Party’s firm grip on power here are the stuff of which political legends are made.

Which is why Texas Republicans, with their party’s presidential nomination still up in the air, have little be concerned about in this year’s general election – as of now. They may have favored their home senator, Ted Cruz, in the March 1 primary, but even Donald Trump as the GOP nominee doesn’t necessarily mean droves of disaffected Texas Republicans will stay home on Election Day, while mobilized and energized Democrats will head to the polls in record numbers.

That’s the case state Republicans made to Express-News columnist Gilbert Garcia when he questioned whether Texas could be a battleground state this year – under the condition that Trump is the GOP nominee and Hillary Clinton chooses former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro as her vice presidential running mate.

“It is beyond absurd to say that a Clinton-Castro ticket would hold any merit whatsoever in turning Texas blue in 2016,” Republican Party of Texas Chairman Tom Mechler told Garcia in a statement. “…we continue to take the fight directly to the Democrats and trounce them across the state of Texas.”

That’s curious. Mechler’s immediate predecessor, Steve Munisteri, struck a different tone a few years earlier. Maybe Munisteri simply was trying to rally the troops after their 2012 loss and before the midterms, but here is what he said in 2013 to Real Clear Politics: “If (Clinton’s) the nominee, I would say that this is a ‘lean Republican’ state but not a ‘solid Republican’ state. I don’t know anyone nationally who’s scoffing at this. The national party leadership is aware and tells me they’re taking it seriously.”

That apparently was the case in way back in 2013, long before anyone saw Trump coming. But let’s assume that the Texas GOP spectrum now stretches from Munisteri 2013 on one end to Mechler 2016 on the other end. Somewhere in between is the truth, and Texas Democrats are hoping to find out who’s right very soon.

For Democrats, the first goal here – and much of this would be due to Trump’s own unforced errors than anything else – is to keep the New York mogul below 50 percent support in polls. That is, to say the least, uncharted territory for a Republican here, where the current slate of state leaders likes to brag that they each won around 60 percent of the vote in their respective races against Democrats.

Robbing Trump of a majority here, though, is only part of the challenge. All things being equal, they’d need to match the turnout the party saw in 2008, when Barack Obama won 3.5 million votes to John McCain’s 4.4 million in an election that excited Texas Democrats like no other in recent memory. That was a high watermark for Democrats, and they’ll have to recapture that in addition to keeping Trump below 50 percent.

This is where Castro comes in. In his column, Garcia mentioned two factors Castro has against him: He has never run statewide before nor ever been vetted by an unforgiving national press. How much does that really matter in Texas in a general election, though? Castro will be getting help from the Clinton machine, state Democrats will rally around him, and he already has had as much national press as any other other potential Clinton VP pick. This would be Castro’s biggest stage, to be sure, but barring some earth-shattering find, there is no reason to think now that he’s is anything but an asset to Team Clinton.

“In that 47-44 scenario, can Julián Castro change the vote by a handful of points in Texas?”

said Manny Garcia of the Texas Democratic Party. “We believe Julián Castro is incredibly well-prepared, wildly beloved and can be the inspirational kind of candidate necessary to get you that handful of points in specific areas of Texas.”

At this point, a handful of state Democrats have told me over the last few months that for Texas become a true toss-up in 2016, Republicans will have to nominate someone who totally changes the standard political calculus. Normally, Democrats can’t win statewide offices in Texas, so the first thing they need to do is suspend normality. Enter Trump. Who else can claim to be as disruptive to the process as Trump?