TX-SEN 2020 Megathread: Early Voting

[Indy Texas]

Cornyn wins by double digits.

I think his ceiling his probably 55%. That's what he got in 2008, when Texas was much more Republican and the Democrats nominated a sacrificial lamb.

[Indy Texas]

I just find it funny how 2020s Texas election maps are starting to resemble 1970s Texas election maps but with the parties flipped. The minor party wins the big urban counties plus the rural counties in a specific region of the state (the Panhandle for 1970s Republicans; South Texas for 2020s Democrats).

[Indy Texas]

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled 3 Green candidates shall be restored to the ballot:  their Senate nominee David B. Collins, their TX-21 nominee and their Railroad Commissioner nominee.

Corrected versions of mail-in ballots will now need to be re-sent to voters who've already been sent ballots which are now incorrect.

Tom Wakely for the 21st Congressional District

Tom Wakely lost the 2018 Democratic primary for governor, where he ran an unhinged one note anti-Trump campaign; he was the Democratic nominee for TX-21 in 2016.

Like most Greens, he's a leftist grifter who's serving as a useful idiot for Republicans.

[Indy Texas]

Apparently Royce West is now attacking Hegar

All these plains candidates and their sour grapes

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/09/royce-west-mj-hegar-texas-senate/

That is just bizarre. Their runoff wasn't even all that contentious. They both largely avoided personal attacks.

[Indy Texas]

https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1316050687688671232?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoo...

I think Royce knew exactly what he was doing.

[Indy Texas]

I think the more seats Ds can bring into play the better; more backups incase one of the core 4 fails, and a larger buffer for legislation in the case of a landslide, so you don't risk Manchin switching parties.

With Manchin having voted to remove Trump from office and him having voiced opposition to a party switch several times, it really does not seem likely that he'll switch parties. He is probably just gonna retire in 2024.

Yeah, I really think it depends upon if he wants to have a political future in WV or not. I think in reality he's a bit more liberal than he makes himself to be, but WV constrains him. Post WV-2018 senate election, he seems to have had less votes against the Democrats. I feel like if anything, Sinema might be a bigger bottleneck as she seems more willing to stand for her values, even when there's not much political gain, as by the time AZ-Sen will be up  again, AZ will prolly be a bluer state; if anything, she needs to worry about a primary challenger.

Manchin will be 77 in 2024. Unless his goal is to be carried out of the Senate chamber in a casket like his predecessor, I'm not sure what the point would be. He'd switch parties and be serving probably one more term at the most.

Robert Byrd's Senate was a very different place - he could work across the aisle in a depolarized environment and bring massive amounts of money to his home state. Manchin can't do that. Things just don't work that way anymore.

Better he retire from the Senate in 2024. If he wants to run for governor that year, he can probably eke out a narrow win (nothing's going to get better in WV under Justice and the GOP; he can run against all that) and it will likely be the last hurrah of the West Virginia Democratic Party.

[Indy Texas]

Texas GOP senator didn't "graduate" from Oxford University law program, as claimed in prior campaign

Bruh.

I'm mostly surprised that a GOP politician would even care enough to lie about this, given how they & much of their base tend to disdain higher education these days.

It looks like the lie originated in an earlier campaign in the '90s, when the GOP hadn't completed its Palin-Trump White-Trash-ification Process.

[Indy Texas]

A day before the election and Royce West is still being petty and useless.

https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1323336458556592129?s=20

[Indy Texas]

Note how Cruz basically got his final percentage, if Cornyn gets 48%, I don't think he wins

This is a good point. Democrats are just as likely to overperform polling as Republicans in Texas. I only rate TX-SEN as Lean R, and my hot take is that Hegar is actually more likely to win than Greenfield in IA.

Eh. Anecdotally, I know a bunch of Biden/Cornyn voters. Also anecdotally, no one is *excited* about Hegar. I like her, and I've voted for her, and my friends have too, but then they're like "So...if she wins...we get a Democrat in the Senate for 6 years.......and it's her??"

TBF, when the GOP finally broke through in Texas and elected a senator, it was John Tower - a diminutive college professor who'd lost a House race and a Senate race before and was regarded as a retread Generic Republican. And he ended up being in the Senate for four terms.

[Indy Texas]

Judging on the outcome of his corruption scandal, Paxton may not even be in office by the time 2022 comes upon us.

These cases can drag on for some time. And since the AG is a separately elected office, Paxton doesn't "answer to" Abbott and cannot be forced to resign. No idea if there's any mechanism for, say, the State Senate to "impeach" the AG and given how right-wing the Senate Republicans are (also, Paxton's wife is a state senator), it would be a nonstarter anyway.

Republicans are a grievance party now and Paxton can claim he's being unfairly treated by the Liberal Deep State. George P. Bush is foolish if he thinks he can successfully primary Paxton in 2022, as he seems to be preparing to do.

[Indy Texas]

The Mayor of Houston is arriving at the polls via horse-drawn carriage, as is custom.

https://twitter.com/brittanybritto/status/1323670554373664768?s=20