Updated Friday at 4:30 p.m. with Democrats selling "pot smoking lesbian coalition" souvenirs.

In this year's midterm elections, Texas Democrats have chosen as their marquee players a Hispanic lesbian and a pot-legalization advocate.

Is the Lone Star State ready to lurch left?

Though it's not easy to discern Lupe Valdez's path for becoming governor, and Beto O'Rourke is no sure thing for U.S. Senate, the two Democrats' mere presence atop their party's Texas roster of candidates signifies the prospect of a significant cultural shift at the highest levels of state politics.

It's been 28 years since Texas elected as governor Ann Richards, who was deemed liberal though she disappointed education constituencies. It's been more than 80 years since Texas elected a very liberal governor and more than a half-century since liberal lion Ralph Yarborough won a second race for U.S. Senate.

Whether having unabashed progressives as their top nominees will drive state Democrats further into the political wilderness this year, or closer to a long-awaited comeback, divides historians, political scientists, party leaders and campaign pros.

State Democratic chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said Republicans such as Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz are radical right-types who make victories by Valdez and O'Rourke possible.

"Instead of worrying about classrooms, they're worrying about bathrooms," he said, referring to an unsuccessful push last year to restrict transgender Texans' use of restrooms in schools and public buildings.

Former state Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower said that for too long, Texas Democrats offered no bold strokes that might ease the burdens of struggling families.

But now a number of progressive candidates are supporting a $15-an-hour minimum wage, Medicare for all and free college tuition -- policies that will drive up turnout, said Hightower, a national board member of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' Our Revolution.

"For too long we just sat back on our haunches and sort of whimpered, 'Isn't it awful,' ... instead of organizing and giving people something to vote for," he said.

Such optimism, though, defies recent history. There are few signs that Texas, where a Democrat hasn't won a statewide election since 1994, is on the verge of such a tectonic shift, historians said.

Gubernatorial candidate and former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez makes her way to a podium after her runoff win at a Democratic Party celebration at Ellen's in Dallas on May 22, 2018. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)

Dave Carney, a GOP consultant in Texas since 1993 and Gov. Greg Abbott's top strategist, chortled about "the pot smoking lesbian coalition," as he called this year's Democratic slate.

(On Friday, after this story was published online, Texas Democrats began selling "pot smoking lesbian coalition" T-shirts and other wares, mocking the Abbott camp's concern about their "amazing Democratic slate and big tent party.")

Average Texans are not interested in expanding the welfare state, Carney said. More than 90 percent of Democrats who participated in 12 nonbinding propositions on the primary-election ballot in March said they support free housing, college and health care, he noted.

Turnout in this week's Democratic gubernatorial runoff, though, was dismal, Carney said. "Percentage-wise, it's the smallest ever," he said.

"The noise created by the progressive left is dominating the news coverage, and it's given energy to these candidates. But when you come right down to it, there's not many [supportive voters] at the ballot box. What they're trying to do is an illusion."

Wages are rising; the job market is hot. Ordinary Texans who vote only in November — not the primaries — are remarkably content, he said.

Tea party activist JoAnn Fleming of Tyler said Valdez and O'Rourke are unelectable.

It's not Valdez's "lifestyle" or O'Rourke's stance on marijuana that will cost Democrats the election, she said, it's the threat they pose on immigration and gun rights.

"Ms. Valdez is too liberal for Texas, and I think Beto is too," Fleming said. "And I know he's got all this charm going on, but the things he talks about. ... I don't believe people in Texas are ready to throw in with Democrats who say there's no such thing as a sanctuary city, and painting every person who raises issues of border security and immigration enforcement as racist."

Beto O'Rourke, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senator, listens during the Jolt Texas Town Hall at AFC Cinema on Sunday April 29, 2018. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman)

If elected, Valdez would represent the first full-throated liberal in the governor's office since Democratic Gov. James Allred won a second term in 1936, at the height of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Voters sent Yarborough, the last liberal Texas senator, to the Senate in the late 1950s to join Lyndon Johnson. He won reelection in 1964 on the coattails of LBJ, by then the president.

"Neither of these shifts was a sudden change," and neither resulted in a lasting political realignment, said Walter Buenger, chief historian for the Texas State Historical Association and a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Wins by this year's Democratic ticket would likewise not represent a sudden shift, he said, noting the party's huge strides in Dallas and other urban areas in the past decade. Rather, he said, wins by Valdez and O'Rourke would mean "that shift will have made it to the suburbs and slightly smaller cities such as Fort Worth."

Hightower, a liberal-populist radio commentator and op-ed columnist, insisted there were other progressive breakthroughs, such as in 1982. That year, he noted, four progressives won state constitutional offices — Ann Richards, treasurer; Jim Mattox, attorney general; Garry Mauro, land commissioner and Hightower at the Agriculture Department's helm.

But the ticket's top figures were moderate-conservative Democrats, including Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, gubernatorial candidate Mark White and Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby.

In 1990, Richards defeated Clayton Williams to become the last Democratic governor. She appointed record numbers of minorities but also presided over the building of many new prisons. In 1994, five Democrats, including Mauro, got re-elected in other statewide offices. Since then, liberal, moderate or conservative, the Democratic candidates have lost.

For most of the 20th century and into the current century, "moves to the left are very strange in Texas politics," said Gilbert Cuthbertson, a Rice historian who has written extensively on Texas political history.

University of Texas historian H.W. Brands said demographic change one day may tip elections toward Democrats, but "it's not here yet."

U.S. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, who is not up for re-election until 2020, sees little chance a brave new Democratic world has arrived.

"While I like Beto O'Rourke, he is an unabashed liberal on policy after policy and out of step with the mainstream Texas voter. Sheriff Valdez is likewise," Cornyn said.

In this July 28, 2016, file photo, then-Dallas Sheriff Lupe Valdez spoke during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Advertising executive and former GOP media consultant Lionel Sosa of San Antonio, though, said O'Rourke "is in a different category" from Valdez — and actually has a shot.

"Just the fact that he looks just like Robert Kennedy, that's worth 10 points right there," said Sosa, a self-described "moderate Republican." In the early 1990s, he advised former President George W. Bush on how to appeal to Hispanics during Bush's rise to the governor's office.

"There's something about imagery that's important," Sosa said. "Does this fellow look like a U.S. senator? Absolutely. Does he act like one? Well, he acts like one who can bring major change in attitude that is not so far off to the left that he's going to turn off" voters. Sosa dismissed suggestions that O'Rourke's support for marijuana legalization is a deal-breaker.

"The whole country is going to legalize marijuana," he said. "I don't know that people are going to say, 'OK, I can't vote for him because of that' — when all their kids are smoking pot anyway."

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones, though, poured cold water on the notion either O'Rourke or Valdez could pull off a stunning upset this fall.

While Jones said President Donald Trump is a drag on all Republicans seeking office in Texas this year, O'Rourke and Valdez are trying to mobilize traditional party loyalists, rather than woo others. That will hobble them, he said.

"Neither has a great deal of crossover appeal," Jones said. "You're really asking voters who've traditionally voted Republican and conservative to dramatically change course."

O'Rourke is smart and articulate, with a firm command of policy, but the Cruz campaign and its allies have already begun to "educate" voters about his views. And he's vulnerable to being defined, because he remains such a relative unknown.

As for Valdez, said Jones, some voters will be attracted by the firsts she represents. Republicans must be careful in speaking about her ethnicity and orientation, lest they generate outrage on the other side, he said. But if Democrats aren't careful, those personal attributes could become a liability.

"Identity politics can be a two-edged sword," Jones said. "The more Democrats play up the candidate's ethnicity and sexual orientation, the more they potentially alienate other voters."

But Hinojosa, the Democratic chairman, said voters would welcome a shift to good government under a Gov. Valdez.

Abbott didn't do well in responding to Hurricane Harvey, his budgets have hurt public schools and his rejection of Obamacare money for Medicaid expansion has hurt working Texans who lack health insurance, he said.

O'Rourke said he could only speak for himself, not Valdez, but that in visiting all 254 counties, voters are receptive to his message.

"The things that people are talking about with me are the need to make sure we can find a job that pays a living wage, or be able to see a doctor or afford medication, or count on great public schools or be able to afford higher education after that, or lead the country on immigration, including protecting Dreamers from deportation and getting them citizenship as fast as possible," he said.

"Those things transcend and cut across any small divisions of party or geography or anything else [and constitute] the really big important, ambitious work of this nation. That's what I'm hearing."

Robert T. Garrett reported from Austin; Todd J. Gillman, from Washington. Also in Washington, staff writer Tom Benning contributed to this story.