Texas Democratic Senate candidate Royce West was fed up. In the final days of early voting for the runoff election, frontrunner MJ Hegar put out a new ad in which she says that Texans will “stand together against the systemic racism that has hurt Black Americans for far too long” as photos from recent Black Lives Matter protests splash across the screen. The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC), Senate Democrats’ political arm that is backing Hegar, had come to her aid with a coordinated $605,000 TV ad buy to run the commercial in major Texas metros in the final days of what looks to be an unexpectedly competitive race.
West, a Black state senator from Dallas, took umbrage, saying on social media that Hegar’s invocation of the Black Lives Matter movement in an ad being promoted with money from the DSCC was a “big dose of hypocrisy … because the very dollars she is using to paint such a rosy picture were denied to the minority candidates in this race.”
The DSCC threw its formidable weight behind Hegar with a December endorsement, just as the crowded primary race—which featured several Black and Hispanic candidates—was getting off the ground. Critics said it was a heavy-handed attempt to clear the way for Hegar, a white woman, while hurting the other candidates’ ability to raise money and support. At the time, West, who had also lobbied for the endorsement, called it a “slap in the face” to the state’s Black voters and contended that the DSCC was “trying to lock African Americans out of the process.”
