Democrats kicked off the election season by rallying with loyal supporters Monday, but the opening salvos laid out by local officeholders and candidates at Monday’s AFL-CIO breakfast underscored the party’s new focus on dampening enthusiasm for the GOP among rural Republicans.
Gathered at the Grand Hyatt River Walk, party leaders vowed to hold Republican incumbents accountable for what they called failures of leadership during Winter Storm Uri, the shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School as well as fallout from the social agenda conservative lawmakers pushed in the last legislative session.
The move comes as Texas Democrats acknowledge they have to do something to cut into Republicans’ advantages in rural territory, which for years has allowed the GOP to win statewide, even while losing in the urban centers.
“Our job is not to convince our friends to vote … our job is to convince Republicans and people in rural Texas, to say, ‘These people have nothing to do with you. They don’t care about you,'” said State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde.
“There’s not a bill that a Republican files to help rural Texas,” Gutierrez said, explaining his midterm message to rural voters. “They are not for your economic interest, and we must make change for the better.”
Since the mass shooting in Uvalde in May, Gutierrez has focused his attention on demanding answers for the community and families of the 21 victims. He has also become one of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s most vocal critics both on the campaign trail and in the media, taking every opportunity to criticize the state’s role in Uvalde as the governor gears up to campaign for a third term.
Gutierrez kicked off the speakers at Monday’s event so that he could make it to a morning TV hit on MSNBC.
Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Beto O’Rourke, who had to cancel recent events in San Antonio due to a bacterial infection, followed Gutierrez in using the event to criticize state officials. O’Rourke’s unconventional Senate campaign famously declined to attack Republican Sen. Ted Cruz until the very end of the race in 2018 — an approach he is certainly not taking this time.
“We’re going to win because we’re running against the worst governor in the United States of America,” O’Rourke said Monday. “You don’t get to choose your opponent, but in this case we could not have asked for a better contrast.”
O’Rourke went on to highlight a recent report by Fox News San Antonio indicating that the radio system used by first responders in rural south Texas had been in disrepair for years before it failed during the shooting.
Though local officials asked for it to be repaired, their requests were ignored, and the problems worsened as additional law enforcement agents began using the system for Abbott’s border security efforts known as Operation Lone Star.
“Law enforcement in Uvalde going back years begged the chief of DPS, Steve McCraw, and Governor Greg Abbott personally to make sure that they had the radios so that they could communicate in the chance that they had an incident like the one that they had in Uvalde at the end of this last school year,” O’Rourke said.
“Though the governor was warned repeatedly year after year, he was unwilling to do a single thing to help that community or prevent that tragedy,” he added.
Sharing a stage with San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, O’Rourke also echoed the mayor’s criticism of energy companies’ profits due to Winter Storm Uri, saying that as governor he would seek to connect Texas to the national grid.
“Those five days while you were freezing in your homes, pipeline companies, their CEOs, energy traders made $11 billion in illegal profits,” said O’Rourke. “The mayor has called this the largest transfer of wealth in Texas history, and you and I, the ratepayers, were left holding the bag.”
Monday’s event came as San Antonio labor organizers say they’re seeing a surge in grassroots energy created by pandemic-era working conditions. Their supporters filled the Grand Hyatt’s Texas Ballroom.
O’Rourke’s campaign staff formed a union with his support, and the first event of his gubernatorial race was held by Communications Workers of America members in San Antonio, he told the crowd. Gesturing to the audience, one event speaker vowed that organized labor would deliver Bexar County for O’Rourke.
Much of the governor’s race is now focused on rural parts of the state, but O’Rourke’s campaign said it has launched two TV ads in the San Antonio area and has field office here.
