Political group wants to turn the state blue

WASHINGTON — Rick Perry won't even entertain the notion that Texas will ever again elect a Democrat in a statewide political contest.

“The biggest pipe dream I have ever heard,” he told the Wall Street Journal over the weekend.

Well, Democrats beg to differ. And they're launching a new group today determined to make Perry's “pipe dream” into every Republican's worst political nightmare.

The new Democratic organization, called Battleground Texas, is designed to make Texas a politically competitive state by reaching out to Texas women and mobilizing Latino, African American and other minority voters who make up a majority of the state's population but not its registered voters.

Battleground Texas is modeled on “voter engagement” projects that helped President Barack Obama carry swing states including Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada and Colorado.

No Democratic presidential candidate has carried Texas since Jimmy Carter won a narrow victory in 1976. Republicans haven't lost a race for statewide office since 1994, and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney took Texas by a comfortable margin of 16 percentage points last year.

Despite that track record, Democrats are convinced that demographic changes and hard-right positions taken by prominent Texas Republicans can lead to a politically competitive state within six years. But their challenge is considerable: Among the 10 states with the largest percentage of Latino voters, only Texas and Arizona voted Republican in 2012.

“With its size and diversity, Texas ought to be a place where local races are hotly contested and anyone who wants to be president has to compete,” said Jeremy Bird, founding partner of 270 Strategies, a Democratic consulting firm based in Washington and Chicago. “We know part of the problem is too few Texans are participating in the democratic process.”

As senior adviser to the new organization, Bird said his goal is “bringing some of the best talent and strategies in politics to the Lone Star State to help expand the electorate by registering more voters and by mobilizing Texans who are already registered but haven't made their voices heard.”

Electoral participation by Latino voters in Texas has historically lagged the national average for Hispanic participation and runs far behind turnout for Anglo and African American voters.

The group also is hoping to implement the successful strategy of freshman Texas Democrat Pete Gallego of Alpine, who unseated Republican Rep. Francisco “Quico” Canseco of San Antonio by identifying voters considered less likely to vote and mobilizing them to turn out on Election Day.

Gallego's strategy resulted in major Democratic gains in rural areas with a growing Latino population and helped him overcome Canseco's edge in heavily Republican San Antonio precincts.

Battleground Texas plans to build the Democratic Party from the bottom up, registering voters even in heavily Republican areas and encouraging Democrats to field candidates across the state.

Top Republicans — other than Perry — have expressed concern that Democrats could make inroads in Texas. State GOP Chairman Steve Munisteri said recently that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could transform Texas into a “lean Republican” state rather than a solid GOP bastion if she chooses to seek the presidency in 2016.

“In not too many years, Texas could switch from being all Republican to all Democrat,” freshman Republican Sen. Ted Cruz warned recently.

“If Texas turns bright blue,” Cruz said, “the Electoral College math is simple ... The Republican Party would cease to exist.”

That's why Battleground Texas — website: BattlegroundTexas.com — is using Cruz's quotation as its unofficial battle cry.

But Perry isn't buying the talk of a competitive Texas anytime in his life.

“The University of Texas will change its colors to maroon and white before Texas goes purple, much less blue,” Perry recently told the Journal.