Ayala: Texas GOP just doesn't like who's showing up at the polls

Photo of Elaine Ayala
Texas Governor Greg Abbott answers questions after signing several pieces of legislation relating to the Second Amendment in Alamo Hall at the Alamo on Thursday, June 17, 2021. The bills are scheduled to take effect on September 1.


Marvin Pfeiffer, San Antonio Express-News / Staff Photographer

Texas Republicans have an overriding problem.

The state’s growing Latino electorate and its younger voters have learned to flex their muscle.

In the 2018 and 2020 elections, in the state’s major cities, they showed excitement about voting. They were enthused about the Democratic Party, if not every individual Democratic candidate.

In 2020, former President Donald Trump nevertheless won the state, so did numerous Republican state officeholders.

But the GOP sees what’s coming in Texas and in other states where get-out-the-vote campaigns have mushroomed.

Voting rights leaders such as Stacey Abrams of Georgia have inspired them to register and vote. Former congressman and presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke has been on the road with his voting-rights project “For the People: The Texas Drive for Democracy.”

In response, Republicans have narrowed their appeal.

They’ve not been innovative about attracting younger voters, nor have they moderated their most extremist views, especially about the Big Lie of 2020 election fraud and the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.

Texas Republicans have been focused on hanging on to their aging voters with policies of hate and guns and against safe, legal abortions and expanded Medicaid.

In one of his most recent acts, Abbott vowed to spend $250 million to build a border wall rather than hone-in on a far more popular issue: reforming the state’s fragile power grid so regulators don’t have to beg Texans to turn their thermostats to 78 degrees or higher after completely failing us last winter.

The GOP’s desperation was just as obvious at a Thursday event at the Alamo, where Abbott signed new gun laws that will lead to more gun violence and shooting deaths. By Sept. 1, it will be legal for anyone over 21 to carry handguns in public without a license.

A photo commemorating the event said all you need to know about where Republicans are in 2021. It showed Abbott shaking hands with Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association as House Speaker Dade Phelan and other Republicans — all of them middle-aged white men — applauded.

They’re the same middle-aged white men legislating women’s bodies.

They looked elated. Some of them looked smug. They weren’t appealing to more voters, especially not Latino or young voters.

So, how do they plan to win elections in the future?

The old-fashioned way: voter suppression designed to make it harder to vote, perhaps even for their own.

The strategy is bankrupt but as old as the nation itself, documented brilliantly by the film, “All In: The Fight for Democracy.”

Voting rights expert María Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino, summed it up this way: “What Texas is doing now is preventing the future from voting.”

She’s talking about young Latinos. In the United States, one of them turns 18 every 30 seconds.

The Texas legislation hanging in the balance is Senate Bill 7. It would’ve passed in May were it not for a group of Democrats who walked out of the Texas House, breaking its quorum and forcing the legislative session to end.

Abbott has vowed to call a special session this summer to bring the bill to a vote. If passed, it will ban drive-thru voting and limit polling places, the hours of voting and voting by mail. It would encourage more partisan poll watchers. Just what we need.

SB7 could allow a judge to toss out an election, even without evidence of widespread fraud.

Republicans say the bill is about preserving election integrity. It’s Orwellian.

This week a group of state Democratic leaders went to Washington to ask for federal help. A headline in a Rolling Stone magazine story online called it a “Now-or-Never Moment.”

Texas Democrats can’t fight anti-voting measures alone and asked congressional leaders to fight for passage of the For the People Act, which limits partisan redistricting and expands early voting, automatic voter registration and mail-in voting.

They met with Vice President Kamala Harris, who said Texas is why federal election laws are needed.

Kumar of Voto Latino said SB7 will have a disproportionate impact on Latino voters and their ability to turn out at the same rate as they did in 2020.

Texas was “dead last in access to the voting booth,” she said, noting that in 2018, it moved up to 41st among the 50 states after a surge in Latino voters, young ones in particular.

That’s why Texas Republicans are determined to undermine voters of color and young voters.

They just don’t like who’s voting.