WASHINGTON — Linsey Fagan — the Democrat challenging longtime Republican Rep. Michael Burgess of Pilot Point — isn’t afraid of the term “insurgent.”

“If being part of an insurgent movement is calling out bad behavior when we see it from either side, then I’m happy to be a part of that,” said Fagan, a single mom and tech entrepreneur.

Ever since self-proclaimed socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat longtime Rep. Joe Crowley of New York — the No. 4 House Democrat — in a primary in June, the national conversation about the future of the Democratic Party has become hard to ignore.

Few deny that revolutionaries on the left hope to see the party shift away from establishment Democrats and toward progressive, activist candidates. But is this trend taking hold in Texas? Is it even possible for candidates like Ocasio-Cortez to win there?

Fagan — who supports a $15 minimum wage and Medicare for all — is evidence that left-leaning Texans are trying. But most face long odds. President Donald Trump won Burgess' congressional district based in Denton County by nearly 27 points. The incumbent has over $1 million more in campaign funds than his challenger.

Linsey Fagan, who won the Democratic primary in the 26th Congressional District, watched the results on her computer at Local 109 in Denton on March 6, 2018. She now faces Republican Rep. Michael Burgess. (Jake King / Denton Record-Chronicle)

She is one of nine remaining congressional candidates in Texas who has been endorsed by a national insurgent organization — one that has backed progressive challengers to incumbent Democrats. That amounts to one quarter of Democratic candidates in the state.

Eight of the candidates, including Fagan, were endorsed by Justice Democrats or Indivisible — organizations that were founded on momentum generated by opposition to Trump.

All eight are running in districts that Trump carried by 9 to 47 points. Just one is running for an open seat. The others face Republican incumbents.

Veronica Escobar — a former El Paso county judge who is running to replace Rep. Beto O’Rourke — is the only insurgent-backed candidate favored to win by independent election analysts.

Escobar has the support of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, though she was hesitant to call herself an insurgent, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California — a liberal but also an emblem of the party establishment as House minority leader and former speaker — is holding a fundraiser for her in August.

Jana Lynne Sanchez in the 6th Congressional District in Tarrant, Ellis and Navarro counties and Joseph Kopser in the 21st Congressional District in the Texas Hill Country are running for open seats in Republican-held districts. Insurgent organizations haven’t backed them, but like many in the party’s restive left, they call for tossing out the party’s aging crop of entrenched House leaders like Pelosi.

Jana Lynne Sanchez, Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in District 6.

United on campaign finance

The insurgent-backed candidates are most united by their positions on campaign finance. They criticize establishment politicians as too beholden to large donors and favor “grassroots” campaigns fueled by small contributions.

The most outspoken insurgents — like Rick Treviño, a self-described socialist endorsed by Our Revolution, and Laura Moser, a writer-activist endorsed by Working Families — lost in the Democratic primary.

“I loathe the Democratic Party,” Treviño said. “I just don’t understand why Democrats are continuing to try to appease the sensibilities of conservative voters and legislators that have no intention of ever voting for them or seeing it their way.”

Moser gained national attention in February when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee published opposition research on her — a rare instance of the party establishment interfering in a contested primary.

She agreed that the party “desperately, desperately need[s] new leadership and new ideas and the willingness to embrace a bolder platform.”

That vision would be easier to turn into reality if she hadn’t lost the nomination.

Treviño lost a primary runoff to Gina Ortiz Jones and Moser lost a runoff to Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, with each garnering only about 30 percent of the vote. Jones and Fletcher are in very competitive races against Reps. Will Hurd of San Antonio and John Culberson of Houston, respectively.

“Texas is not ready,” Moser said, comparing it to the common adage that no one is ever ready to get married or have a child, but they still do.

“It’s not going to happen organically. Republicans show up and they win. Democrats have a lot of meetings and they don’t win,” she said. “We have to show up and build the infrastructure.”

November will be the first time since 1982 that a Democratic candidate is on the ballot in every congressional district in Texas — thanks to Democrats running in red districts, like most of the insurgents.

Strategist: no left turn

Even so, “I don’t think Texas is turning left,” said Matt Angle, a Democratic strategist at the Lone Star Project. “I think what’s happened is Texas is returning to a sensible place.”

For Angle, that leaves little room for socialist candidates like Treviño, who was a delegate for Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders in his Democratic presidential bid.

“There’s a reason that Bernie lost Texas, and he lost it significantly,” Angle said. Hillary Clinton bested Sanders by 25 points in the 2016 Texas primary, and won all but 14 of 254 counties.

“If you frame it as being ideological and you put a socialist label on it, then you’re going to have a lot of people walk away from you and never listen to what you say. That’s just not what Texas is,” Angle said.

Treviño disagrees. He believes Texas has “potential energy” for socialism and progressivism.

“A lot of Texas hasn't had the opportunity to hear these ideas in an authentic way,” he said. Before Bernie, “Democrats weren't given permission to talk about these ideas because we were told they were not viable.”

Most candidates cited O’Rourke — who also was endorsed by Indivisible and is challenging Republican Sen. Ted Cruz — as proof that progressive Texans can “deliver change,” as Escobar said. A Democrat hasn’t won statewide office since 1994, when Bob Bullock was re-elected lieutenant governor.

The Texas Democratic Party has welcomed the insurgents.

“We’re happy to have the support,” said political director Cliff Walker. “If that means there are folks who want to see a more progressive party, who are actively participating, then heck yeah, bring it on.”

Walker also said that he hasn’t noticed any hostility within the party.

“We’re an all-of-the-above approach,” he said. “We have record numbers of candidates running, and some may identify as leftist, or socialist, or progressive, or some flavor of Democrat, but in practice, what you see is that, generally speaking, Democrats are pretty much on the same page.”

In a follow up email, Walker clarified that he meant that “Democrats in Texas really aren't all that focused on labels."

But some are. Angle has three labels — “mainstream, problem-solving, non-ideological” — that he said are essential for Democrats if they want a chance at winning competitive races.

Fagan, the insurgent, objected to the label “mainstream.”

“Look at Ann Richards,” she said, referencing the Democratic governor who was elected almost three decades ago in 1990 and lost re-election in 1994 to George W. Bush. “Texas loves rebel candidates.”

Insurgent-backed candidates:

An organization is considered to be an “insurgent” if it has endorsed a progressive challenger to an incumbent Democrat. Here are the congressional districts where those endorsements have occurred and how Trump performed in the 2016 election.