AUSTIN — Four years ago, Wendy Davis was touring Texas like a rock star as she ran for governor. Sporting the same pink Mizuno sneakers she wore for her famous filibuster against a bill to restrict abortions, she was greeted by 1,600 cheering fans here, many of them wearing “Turn Texas Blue” T-shirts.

She had more than $10 million in the bank of the $37 million she would raise in her bid to become the first Democrat elected to statewide office in Texas in 20 years.

Now, as former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez runs for the same office against Gov. Greg Abbott — who beat Davis by more than 20 percentage points — the crowds have often been scant. Valdez’s statewide name ID remains slim. Her bank account has been skinnier than a coyote in the desert.

Nevertheless, Democratic Party insiders expressed little concern as Valdez on Tuesday reported raising $742,250 in political contributions in the past seven months. As of June 30, she had $222,050 in the bank.

Instead of trying to build Valdez vs. Abbott into a marquee race, Democrats are focusing much of their attention — and campaign cash — on down-ballot and congressional races that have drawn a record number of candidates.

They’re hoping for what they call the reverse coattails effect — essentially they’re banking on well-funded Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke and the Democrats running for Congress, state and local office to help generate turnout for statewide candidates for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, instead of the other way around.

“In years past, all the money poured into the races at the top, and there was no money for the down-ballot races,” explained Mike Collier, a candidate for lieutenant governor who said he helped devise the plan after the party’s 2014 losses, including his own unsuccessful campaign for comptroller.

“We as a party decided to focus on the down-ballot races for state House, Senate and local races, and on the congressional races we thought we could win. We fielded good candidates for those races. That’s what’s happened this year.”

Democrats have looked to reverse coattails in the past, most notably in the 1956 campaign of Adlai Stevenson for president. It was part of the party’s 50-state strategy a decade ago. Last year, Democrats credited reverse coattails with raising turnout in Virginia, where state house candidates helped propel a Democrat into the governor’s office.

“Think about the impact of reverse coattails in the same way you would think about what a good field program will get you — one to three percentage points,” said Ross Morales Rocketto, a co-founder of Run for Something, a New York-based group that is recruiting progressive Democrats to run for office nationwide and is promoting the benefits of reverse coattails. “The best way to talk to voters is one on one … and the candidates in local races can do that.”

But longtime campaign consultants for both Democrats and Republicans in Texas doubt the candidates lower on the ballot will do much to help Valdez and Collier.

“It sounds like political spin, frankly — almost like they’re acknowledging that their top candidates may not win,” said Ray Sullivan, an Austin-based GOP consultant who has worked on gubernatorial and statewide campaigns since 1991. “The governor’s race frequently provides the grass-roots organization for the whole ticket, and if the Democrats are focusing on down-ballot races, that says a lot.”

Not so, counter Democratic officials including Manny Garcia, the state party’s deputy executive director, who declined to discuss details of the strategy but pointed to recent polls that show O’Rourke, an El Paso congressman, is now within single digits of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz; Valdez has cut Abbott’s lead in half; Collier is within single digits of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Austin attorney Justin Nelson has pulled within striking distance of Attorney General Ken Paxton.

“There’s a lot of money moving to candidates from local races to Beto and everything in between,” Garcia said.

Republicans say those spikes for challengers are normal in summer polls and do not represent any shift in voter sentiment.

“It seems like about every 10 years the (Democratic) party reinvents itself, and that’s when you see this reverse coattails strategy,” said University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus. “A lot of the energy in the party in Texas has wilted, because they’ve been out of statewide offices for so long, so it makes sense for them to try to let the local candidates drive some enthusiasm and turnout.”

Democrat governor candidate in 2002 spent $67M — and lost

Democratic Party officials on Monday crowed that seven congressional candidates have out-raised their Republican opponents so far, not counting O’Rourke’s $10.4 million haul in the last three months.

By contrast, Collier has raised roughly $670,000 so far, including several loans from himself, a fraction of the $8.2 million that state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte raised in her unsuccessful race against Patrick four years ago.

The money is still out there for Democrats, party officials say. “It’s just going to different places than it was four years ago, more to local races — legislative and congressional — and more to build infrastructure in progressive institutions and organizations,” Collier said.

Over the past two decades, Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to win statewide office by spending big on the top races, most famously the record $67 million by Laredo banker-oilman Tony Sanchez, who ran for governor in 2002.

Even some longtime Democrats, including Austin massage therapist Charlena Sanchez-Rocha, are not so sure statewide candidates with small campaign coffers can win.

“If you don’t have money, how can you get your message out? How can people even know who you are?” she said.

Texas political scientists are asking the same questions.

“Wendy (Davis) inspired optimism and enthusiasm, and she raised enough money to mount a top-flight campaign,” said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones, who analyzed the 2014 race and has been watching Valdez’s sputtering campaign — now at its halfway point approaching the November general election.

“This campaign is an embarrassment to everyone involved — Lupe Valdez, the Democratic Party, even Greg Abbott. At this point, I don’t think anyone could imagine Lupe Valdez as governor. You can’t create an alternate universe where she could win.”

But Jerry Polinard, a longtime political scientist at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, said the party’s strategy could pay dividends in the future “if they’re successful in some of their down-ballot races. That could lay a groundwork for the future.”

If not, “that’ll be the party’s next big problem,” he said. “I’ve never seen a year like this in Texas at the top of the state ballot.”

‘I know all my donors by first name’

For their part, Valdez and Collier — the Democrats’ top two state-office candidates — have made no bones about their anemic campaign pocketbooks, even as Abbott has raised $50 million for his re-election, and Lt. Gov. Patrick reports $14 million in the latest reports made public.

Both Valdez and Collier have tried to use that fact to their benefit.

“Here’s the truth many people don’t want to talk about: a majority of campaigns don’t have to worry about every dollar that comes in through grass-roots fundraising,” Valdez said in a fundraising pitch earlier this week. “Every night we check to see how many everyday folks stepped up that day, how much they gave, and build our budget off these numbers.

“We are building our organizing budget for the coming months right now — and we need to decide how many voters we can reach, register and talk to this summer,” she said.

Collier said he has learned that he has to make every contact count, both for donations and for votes. Several times, he acknowledges, the “reverse coattails” strategy he once recommended has come back to bite him.

“I know all my donors by first name, and I talk to them quite a lot,” he said. “There have been times when they’d say, ‘Great. I’ll write a check — not to me, but to my congressional candidate or local House candidate.”

“As long as they’re writing a check to Democrats, that’s what counts,” Collier said. “There’s probably not enough money on Planet Earth right now for (Democrats) to raise the amounts they have in the past. It’s a different fundraising environment now, for sure.”

mike.ward@chron.com

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