Texas Gubernatorial Race
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) had to be on high alert in his first re-election campaign. Following the 2016 presidential election, where Republicans carried the state by the closest margin since 1996, some Democrat political groups hoped Texas could gradually become competitive in the 2018 governor’s race. Like other states, Texas Democrats saw surging enthusiasm they hoped would make up for being outnumbered by Republicans in the state. The perceived enthusiasm translated to numbers in the state’s March primary, where twice as many Democrats cast early voting ballots compared to the last midterm, and overall Democrat primary turnout was up by 84 percent compared to 2014.
Knowing this election could be more challenging, Abbott assembled a massive war chest throughout his first term, critical in a state with expensive media markets. His strong fundraising operation—along with a legislative agenda that prioritized broadly popular issue areas such as education, economic opportunity and public safety—left many top Democrat recruits to take a pass on the race. Ultimately, former Dallas Country Sheriff Lupe Valdez won the primary runoff with 53 percent of the vote to earn the Democrat Party nomination.
While Valdez has an intriguing personal story to share, her campaign has failed to gain much traction, in part because of factors outside of the candidate’s control. Democrats haven’t won a statewide race since 1994, and Abbott’s convincing 19-point win in 2014 as the non-incumbent left most experts predicting this race as a long shot. Additionally, almost all the national attention, and the fundraising boost that accompanies it, has been focused on the competitive U.S. Senate race between Sen. Ted Cruz (R) and Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D). Still, Valdez has run a largely uninspiring campaign with multiple missteps along the way, providing a stark contrast against the polished incumbent Abbott.
Put simply, this race hasn’t materialized into a competitive race for Democrats the way other gubernatorial contests around the country have. In fact, by most accounts, Abbott has strengthened his position at the top of the ticket. While some early summer polling showed Abbott leading in the low double digits, five polls released during the last two months have the incumbent leading by either 19 or 20 points. That kind of polling consistency won’t help Valdez convince donors and activists that the race is winnable, adding to the uphill challenge the campaign already faces.
Unlike other traditionally red states trending the Democrats’ direction, such as Georgia and Kansas, the same cannot be said for Texas. Still, an October surprise could always shake up the race, and it’s possible that Valdez will benefit more on Election Day from O’Rourke’s strong challenge to Cruz than the polls are currently indicating.
Bottom line: Abbott is positioned well for re-election by remaining popular, securing his base and setting record-breaking fundraising numbers. These dynamics make him a strong favorite to extend the GOP’s 24-year grip on Texas’ governor’s mansion.
Texas U.S. Senate Race
With his “Tough as Texas” slogan, and nationwide following stemming from a 2016 presidential run, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz looked to be on track to be re-elected in November. Although Texas has voted for Republicans in every statewide campaign since 1994—the longest active streak in the country, if one believes the pundits—the seat’s forecast ranges from toss-up to likely Republican. Despite ratings and the incumbent advantage, the GOP senator would be wise to keep his foot on the gas because his Democrat challenger, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, is no joke.
Here are three reasons why.
- Money: Through the third quarter fundraising period, O’Rourke posted the highest fundraising totals of any Democratic Senate candidate in history with $38.1 million, a whopping $26 million more than the GOP incumbent. Combined with Cruz’s funds alone, the campaign is the most expensive U.S. Senate race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. These fundraising numbers make O’Rourke a force. In fact, he raised $9.1 million in online contributions in August alone, while Cruz raised $12 million in the entire third quarter. O’Rourke’s Kennedy-esque appeal, companied by the notable coverage of the energetic congressman, could spell danger for Cruz.
- Changing Demographics: Texas has the fastest growing population in America. Unlike other red states—particularly in the upper Midwest and in mountain states where minorities can represent between 5 percent and 10 percent of the total population—more than half of the statewide population now identify as either Hispanic/Latino (39.4 percent) or Black/African American (12.7 percent). Leading the trend is a mass migration from rural to urban areas. Currently, five of the 15 fastest growing cities in the United States are in Texas. Texas has grown 2.84 percent since 2016 and approximately 6.21 percent since Ted Cruz was elected six years ago. While these larger trends do not necessarily correlate to U.S. Senate midterm voters, Oct. 11 polling from Quinnipiac suggests that O’Rourke leads 84 – 10 percent among black voters and 61 – 37 percent among Hispanic voters.
- The Ballot: Former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez (D)—the first Latina nominee in state history—is running a low-profile, but undisputedly different, campaign against the popular and well financed incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott (R). And while very few believe that Valdez can pull off the upset, she undoubtedly will energize, mobilize and turn out women and Hispanic voters (many for the first time) across the Lone Star State. This could possibly affect the U.S. Senate race and its 36 down-ballot congressional campaigns, all of which have majority implications for the 116th Congress. Conversely, just as Valdez voters are going to support Beto, (O’Rourke leads 93-7 percent among Democrats), the same can be said for the relatively larger amount of Abbott voters who will be supporting Cruz’s re-election campaign (Republicans back Cruz 94-6 percent).
It remains to be seen if Cruz, a now former firebrand of the GOP—who two years ago was rivaling Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for president—has the ground game and access to resources that can bury the third-term congressman from El Paso. At the end of the day, this is Texas, a certified red state that sees a majority of people approve of the job the president is doing.
O’Rourke may have peaked too early, as most Texas voters say their mind is made up (only 4 percent “might change” their vote). But, with 26 days until Election Day, O’Rourke will not go quietly.
Bottom line: Barring a massive collapse, Cruz will be up for re-election again in another six years facing a drastically different state in 2024.
Nevada U.S. Senate Race
In an October JMC Analytics poll, first-term Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) trailed Las Vegas businessman Danny Tarkanian 44 percent to 38 percent. Flash forward eight months and Tarkanian, the son of legendary University of Nevada, Las Vegas basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, has dropped out of the Senate race under a direct request from the president. He has entered the Nevada 3rd congressional district race against Susie Lee (D), which clears the field of a primary challenger and eliminates a major headache for Sen. Heller—a strong and effective move by Republicans.
Democrats like their candidate in Rep. Jacky Rosen, the congresswoman who took down Tarkanian in the race to replace Rep. Joe Heck (R), whose ill-fated U.S. Senate ambitions left his Las Vegas area-based seat open. Rep. Rosen is relatively new to the political scene in Nevada, which limits the opportunity for Heller’s campaign to make policy distinctions that would seemingly favor the incumbent. Additionally, as 75 percent of the votes cast in the 2016 election came from Las Vegas’ Clark County alone, Rep. Rosen’s district’s proximity to the state’s largest (and one of the country’s fastest growing) cities mitigates Sen. Heller’s incumbent advantage.
Sen. Heller, who is now running with the full support of the White House, can focus on his general election against Rep. Rosen. Despite Rep. Rosen’s strong fundraising effort in the first quarter of 2018, Sen. Heller still holds a slight lead in the cash-on-hand department with $4.4 million to Rep. Rosen’s $3.5 million. And, despite the last-minute cancelation of Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to Nevada announced on April 10, an independent Mellman Group poll conducted April 12-19 showed Sen. Heller leading Rep. Rosen, 40 percent to 39 percent.
Ultimately, despite national and state Republicans coalescing around Sen. Heller, Democrats are confident in their chances to pick up a Senate seat in Nevada—the only U.S. Senate race in the country in which a Republican incumbent is running for reelection in a state that Hillary Clinton carried.
Bottom line: Toss-up
Ohio U.S. Senate Race
In Ohio’s United States Senate race, Democrat incumbent Sherrod Brown and GOP challenger Jim Renacci have already gone negative with TV advertising. For Brown, who has been a public official since winning his first campaign that he started while finishing college in 1974 (at the age of 22), going negative against his much lesser-known challenger is way to define his opponent early. This well-worn strategy is built on the premise that voters will use, at least in part, the information given in Brown’s negative ads in forming their opinions of Renacci. On the other hand, for Brown to go negative so early “could be construed as a sign of worry,” according to Kyle Kondick, a political analyst with the UVA Center for Politics.
On the other side, Renacci’s attacks tagging Brown as “full of bull Brown” keep the narrative focused and allow the Republican to set and keep the agenda—at least as long as he is able to run the ads. Buoyed perhaps by the fact that Renacci is the 16th wealthiest person in Congress, his team is betting large that Brown’s consistently significant lead in the polls—NBC News/Marist +13 (June 17-21); Quinnipiac +17 (June 7-12); and Suffolk + 16 (June 6-11)—will eventually evaporate. Strategically, hitting Brown hard and early when the incumbent is in such a lead might seem foolish if not for the fact that Brown never polled above 53 percent in all of those surveys. In fact, in his 2012 campaign, Brown earned his seat in the Senate by beating a far less well-funded Republican with only 50.7 percent of the vote, winning only 25 of Ohio’s 88 Counties.
Bottom line: Because Ohio is an extremely expensive state in which to campaign (a fact that could favor Renacci), and because Brown has yet to pull together a strong statewide coalition, this race is most likely going to come down to the wire.
Ohio 1st Congressional District Race
Instead of having a race focused on foreign policy or financial issues such as tax cuts and tariffs, it seems that the residents of Ohio’s 1st Congressional district—pitting 10-term Republican Congressional incumbent Steve Chabot against relative newcomer Aftab Pureval—should prepare themselves for a high-stakes campaign focusing of abortion and health care.
The $660,000 Pureval raised in the two months after he launched his campaign in January was unquestionably impressive. According to Pureval, a former Proctor & Gamble lawyer and Hamilton County Clerk of Courts for the last 18 months, it was the most any Chabot challenger had raised in one quarter. It’s also relevant that the national pro-abortion rights group (NARAL) and the Ohioans for Economic Opportunity both recently and quite publicly launched independent expenditures against Chabot for his votes in opposition of a woman’s right to choose and the Affordable Care Act.
For the Republican, facing a well-funded challenger that is openly pro-choice in the generally conservative-minded 1st Congressional District is rare. But while being so openly pro-choice has brought national attention and money to Pureval’s campaign in Hamilton and Warren Counties to unseat the deeply rooted incumbent, the Democrat also has opened himself up to a counter-attack as having gone too far. Last December, Pureval posted a photo of himself on Facebook with a self-described “personal hero”: former Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards. Since then, he has accepted a large campaign donation from a controversial late-term abortion doctor. According to one reporter in Cincinnati, the contribution from this controversial obstetrician-gynecologist (credited with being the first doctor to publicly describe the late-term procedure as “dilation and extraction”) will be used by the Chabot camp as a principle difference between the candidates.
Being openly supportive of late-term abortions likely will make it difficult for Pureval to find common ground with a majority of voters in Ohio’s 1st Congressional District. Since first being elected to Congress in 1994, Chabot’s only loss was to pro-life Democrat Steve Driehaus a decade ago, and pro-life Democrat John Cranley is only other candidate to be even somewhat competitive—losing to Chabot by four points in 2006.
As a lifelong Cincinnatian who served as a city councilman and Hamilton County commissioner for five years each before being elected to Congress in 1994, it’s no wonder that Chabot has won election after election by healthy margins. He shares the values of the residents of the district.
Bottom line: Despite the money raised by Pureval, and the outside money being “independently” spent on his behalf, this election is most likely going to end as so many others have—with Chabot winning.
Ohio Gubernatorial Race
Ohio’s current and previous attorneys general lead their respective party lines in the open race for the state’s governor’s office. In fact, this race is a return to 2010 Midterms, where former U.S. Senator Mike DeWine defeated then incumbent Attorney General Richard Cordray by just over 1 percent. Eight years later, they face each other once again, this time aiming for Ohio’s highest statewide office being vacated by term-limited two-time Republican Gov. John Kasich. Although Kasich is ineligible to run for another term, his legacy and tenure as governor will undoubtedly have an impact on the outcome of the election. According to the latest Quinnipiac Poll (June 7-12), Kasich has a net +16 approval rating. Gov. Kasich is encouraging the Republican ticket to run on his administrations track record, especially on the economy, where 520,000 new jobs have been created and job creation in the state is outpacing the rest of the nation.
With 69 percent of Ohioans agreeing that the state is moving in the right direction (Quinnipiac June 7-12), it seems like a no-brainer for Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine to attach his campaign to the Kasich administration. But that would have been a risky primary strategy, with Kasish sporting a higher approval rating amongst Democrats in Ohio than Republicans, largely a result of his outspoken criticism of President Donald Trump. As an independently elected member of the Kasich cabinet, that leaves DeWine with the challenge of threading the needle between rallying the Republican base to turn out in November without alienating Democrats and Independents who supported Kasich and propelled him to two terms.
Leading the Democratic ticket is former Ohio Attorney General and former Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Richard Cordray. Considered a top-tier recruit for Democrats, Cordray won 86 of 88 counties in the primary and cruised to victory over former U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich. But Cordray’s stint in Washington, D.C., from 2012-2017 as Director of the CFPB forces him to play catch-up introducing himself to voters. Quinnipiac’s latest survey (June 7-12) found that more than half of the electorate in Ohio didn’t know enough about Cordray to form a favorable or unfavorable opinion of him. The period leading up to Labor Day will be critical for the campaign to define Cordray’s image among voters.
A full analysis of this race isn’t complete without mentioning the impact the running mate of each nominee will have on the race. On the GOP side, DeWine is teamed up with incumbent Secretary of State Jon Husted. Originally a candidate for governor himself, Husted joined the DeWine ticket in November 2017 and the duo went on to carry 83 of 88 counties in the May Republican primary over a formidable opponent in current Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor. Perhaps no ticketed gubernatorial race in the nation will have more campaign experience than DeWine and Husted, who have run eight times combined statewide.
On the Democrat side, a similar dynamic played out in the primary with former U.S. Congresswoman Betty Sutton originally running in the Democrat primary for governor before dropping down to join the ticket with Cordray. Sutton was elected three times to the U.S. House of Representatives before 2010 redistricting forced her to run in a new district against GOP Rep. Jim Renacci, where she was defeated.
The 2018 Cordray vs. DeWine rematch will be completely different than the first round. In 2010, it was Democrats facing political headwinds; in 2018, it’s Republicans in a precarious position. In 2010, Cordray was the incumbent. This year, DeWine and Husted both currently hold elected statewide offices, while neither candidate on the Democrat ticket has appeared on a general election ballot in Ohio since 2012.
Bottom line: The strength of both tickets, combined with the purple nature of the state, points to this race being a pure toss-up all the way until Election Day.
