Ten years after Donald Trump was first elected President, the Republican Party has placed its chips on a region that would have made little sense at any other time in the last century: South Texas. Yet, if current polling holds, the GOP may have already overplayed its hand.
Congressional districts from San Antonio down to Brownsville, aggressively (and perhaps foolishly) redrawn at Trump’s orders, are at the crux of any Republican midterm hopes to hold the U.S. House, and state legislative races are similarly key to the party keeping its comfortable supermajority in Texas’ lower chamber. Up to the top of the ballot, where South Texas voters were key to James Talarico’s primary victory and where Brownsville-raised Gina Hinojosa sits one rung down, the region may hold the car keys. All as Republicans run without the man who seemed to break Democrats’ hold in the area on the ticket.
With weeks left to go, proclamations of another “red wave” coming to the region—after Trump flipped the majority-Latino South Texas border in 2024 and the GOP seized a state Senate seat while holding onto a congressional and state House district snagged two years before—are no more. Instead, national GOP leadership, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, is anxiously coming to stump for South Texas’ GOP candidates, working to convince voters that the stakes are high for the Republican Party this year.
