While all eyes are on the presidential race for most Texas voters, four San Antonio-area political whisperers say they’re keeping their gazes trained on several battles farther down on the ballot.
During a “Keys to the 2024 Election” panel discussion on Thursday that was the final event of the San Antonio Report’s 2024 CityFest, campaign consultants from both sides of the aisle told politics reporter Andrea Drusch they’ll be watching local House Districts 118 and 121, as well as the state-level races for who will sit on the Fourth Court of Appeals.
Drusch was joined on stage for the discussion by Laura Barberena, owner of VIVA Politics LLC.; Ana Ramón, executive director of Annie’s List; Kelton Morgan, president of CSG Inc.; and Demonte Alexander, founder of Citizen Reach, LLC.
“[The San Antonio area is] in two of the tier one races,” Ramón said. “We call them tier one because these are big priority races for Annie’s List. One is 121, … the other one is 118.”
House District 121, located on Bexar County’s North Side, wasn’t considered much of a battleground until recently, when Gov. Greg Abbott poured money into the GOP primary to defeat state Rep. Steve Allison (R-Alamo Heights) and install Marc LaHood, who agrees with him on school vouchers. Running against LaHood is Democrat Laurel Jordan Swift, who in the final stretch has picked up unusual support from Allison and other Republicans frustrated with Abbott’s primary meddling.
Without an incumbent to defeat, Texas Democrats now see House District 121 as a seat they could flip, and have been putting resources in for Swift.
Bexar County’s Southside House District 118, on the other hand, is one of the few House seats that both parties see as competitive, and has drawn tremendous spending from both Republicans and Democrats in the past month. School vouchers are proving to be a pivotal discussion point in this district as well.
The redrawing of congressional and state House district lines, which typically happens every 10 years after the U.S. Census is taken, is affecting these races, Morgan said.
“If 121 was being run on 2020 lines — before it was redrawn — I think [Swift] would win there,” he said, pointing to the addition of more Republican voters when the district was redrawn after the 2020 Census. “I think ultimately, that race is close, but I see Democrats having a better chance in 118.”
Meanwhile, Republicans are also turning their attention to a trio of seats on the Fourth Court of Appeals — a more politically competitive region where the GOP has had some limited success in recent years. Last election cycle Republican Lori Valenzuela (R-Place 7) narrowly won her race to hold a seat that she was appointed to by Abbott while on the same ballot fellow Republican Todd McCray lost to a Democratic incumbent in the race for Place 6 by an equally small margin.
This year, Texas Republicans are putting money behind three more Fourth Court of Appeals candidates on the Nov. 5 ballot.
“You’ve seen just in the last two weeks, a PAC called Judicial Fairness PAC… has dumped about $15 million in the court of appeals races statewide,” Morgan said. “About $1.5 million of that is here.”
The consultants said they’re also waiting to see if Bexar County’s voter turnout will be closer to 2018 or 2020 numbers, with more or less turnout likely to have implications on who wins the top of the ticket.
“Right now, Texas is voting more like 2018 than like 2020,” Democratic strategist Ramón said. “We really need to start punching up into 2020 [numbers] if we want to see some of the movement that we are hoping for on our side of the pod.”
