Democrats Should Be Freaking Out a Little About South Texas

The crowd — awash in boots and red-white-and-blue accessories — is in high spirits, fueled by sliders, guac and chips and margaritas. A mariachi band waits in the wings for the grand finale. Onstage, Ms. Flores, whose surprise victory in a special election in June made her the first Republican to represent the Rio Grande Valley in the U.S. House since 1871, gives a shout-out to the local candidates working the crowd. “Elections at the local level matter just as much,” she tells those assembled. “I need you to vote Republican from top to bottom. Every election matters,” she stresses. “Their election matters just as much as mine.”

She is not wrong. And Democrats would be wise to start freaking out a little more about the Republican Party’s growing focus on local races in its quest to transform the political landscape of South Texas…

To make this happen, Republicans are working to exploit a couple of key weaknesses in the opposition. One is Democrats’ complacency about the electorate in South Texas, born of the assumption that it has always been and will always be blue — a dangerous corollary of the equally dangerous conventional wisdom that Hispanic voters will always vote blue.