Nationally, the Democratic Party, which gave indispensable assistance (“Basket of deplorables!”) to the election of today’s president, seems intent (“Impeach!”; “Abolish ICE!”; “Free stuff!”) on a repeat performance.
In Houston, however, in Texas’ 7th Congressional District, in what might turn out to be the year’s most instructive House race, Democrats seem serious about winning, and if they do with Lizzie Fletcher, they will have a template for 2020.
One of her handouts inexplicably describes her as a “fierce advocate,” as though Americans are experiencing a fierceness deficit and pine for a ferocity infusion. Actually, she speaks with the measured precision of an attorney who has worked at a major law firm and who is fluent in the business school patois of her corporate clients.
The ginger group Our Revolution, which is a residue of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, supported a candidate to her left in the seven-candidate primary, perhaps because Fletcher would not genuflect at the requisite altars: She has endorsed neither a single-payer health care system nor Medicare for all nor putting lipstick on socialism, least of all a ban on off-shore drilling.
In New York and then in Massachusetts, two 10-term House incumbents, both males, have been defeated in primaries by females running to the incumbents’ left in safe Democratic districts. Here, in a district held by Republicans for the past half-century, a woman is not far behind the Republican incumbent.
A fifth-generation Houstonian, Fletcher is striving to become just the fourth person to represent the current iteration of the 7th district. It was reconfigured in 1966, when it was won by 42-year old George Herbert Walker Bush, who still lives in it. After his two terms, it was held for 15 terms by Bill Archer, who rose to the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee. His successor, John Culberson, 62, wants to “let Texans run Texas” but is not a conscientious objector to non-Texas money he can send home from his perch on the Appropriations Committee.
Political earthquake possible
Culberson’s conservatism had a Trumpian tang six years before Trump came down his tower’s escalator: In 2009, Culberson co-sponsored a “birther” bill that would have required presidential candidates to prove that they are natural-born citizens. A legislative lifer, Culberson won the first of seven two-year terms in the state House in 1986 at age 30. He won his 2016 congressional re-election with 56 percent of the vote.
If the best kind of generals are lucky ones, Fletcher, 43, is that kind of candidate. The tight Senate race between incumbent Ted Cruz and Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke is apt to energize Democratic turnout statewide. Culberson perhaps did nothing untoward when he sold a biotech stock 10 days before the shares lost 99 percent of their value, but the optics are not optimal.
A Fletcher victory might be an early tremor of a political earthquake. In presidential politics, Democrats have three large, safe states — California, New York and Illinois — with a combined 104 electoral votes, 38.5 percent of 270. Texas, the Republicans’ only such state, today has 38 electoral votes and after the 2020 census will have two, perhaps three more.
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