Strayhorn enters governor's race as independent

[Gustaf]

Sam, unrelated, how is the situation nowadays for the Texas Democratic party on the local level (state legislature)? How dead are they?

[Gustaf]

Sam, unrelated, how is the situation nowadays for the Texas Democratic party on the local level (state legislature)? How dead are they?

Well, they're behind, but I wouldn't say dead, though life support might be more accurate. 

The Republicans have a 19-12 majority in the State Senate and an 87-63 margin in the State House.

The problem (or maybe it's not a problem) is that 3 of these Senate seats and about 5-10 of the House seats are classic rural blue-dog Democrats that could well go Republican if they retire, whereas there really aren't any large group of GOP seats for the moment that I see going the other way (some always do, mind you) but then again the Texas Senate and House districts have been gerrymandered for a long time so that they favor rural areas anyway.

All in all, I wouldn't be surprised if this type of margin (possibly growing slightly for the GOP, because of the reasons above) continues for a while, with the parties as they presently stand.

Not as bad as when it was the other way round then...
I would expect to Dems to be able to improve their situation as the number of Hispanics grow, but maybe that's wishful thinking?

[Gustaf]

Quite a lot of info, thanks Sam. That pretty much means no Dems in a while then.

[Gustaf]

Considering the fact that there are already two people sharing the Leftist vote, which is small to begin with, that sounds like a wise choice to me.