After Texas green-lit President Donald Trump’s plans to redraw its congressional districts last year, national Democrats trying to win back power in Washington D.C. are preparing to spend big against the Republican state lawmakers who were responsible.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which seeks to elect Democratic majorities in state legislatures across the country, added Texas to its list of spending targets, with roughly $50 million to spend in 2026.
While flipping Republicans’ 26-seat majority in the Texas House is likely out of the question this election cycle, Democrats are targeting five GOP-held seats with money and resources this year, including two in the San Antonio area.
Texas House District 121 stretches north from Alamo Heights to Bulverde, where Republican state Rep. Marc LaHood (R-San Antonio) is seeking a second term and faces an expensive primary in his first reelection race. The winner will face Zack Dunn, a prosecutor in the Bexar County District Attorney’s office.
In Texas House District 118, which cups San Antonio’s South Side, Republicans are trying the hold the seat state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio) left to run for Congress. They also have a competitive primary, and the winner will face Democrat Kristian Carranza, a longtime political strategist who ran against Lujan in 2024 and raised more money than any first-time state House candidate in Texas history.
The DLCC is working with the campaign arm of the Texas House’s Democratic caucus, which on its own doesn’t have much money to spend, but will now set the spending priorities for a budget buoyed by national money.
On a call with reporters Tuesday, state Rep. Christina Morales (D-Houston), who chairs the Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee, said the DLCC hasn’t committed a specific dollar amount to Texas races, but noted that the urgency to flip seats in the Texas Legislature has risen as a priority the more that body’s work impacts national politics.
By the numbers
Republicans currently control the White House, U.S. Senate and U.S. House in Washington D.C.
Of those, Democrats’ best chance of slowing down the GOP agenda in 2026 is flipping the U.S. House, where they only need to net three or four seats in a midterm where the party out of power typically picks up an average of 25 to 30 seats.
But Democrats already faced a much smaller number of potential targets nationwide in 2026, thanks to the redistricting overseen by Republican-led legislatures since the 2020 Census.
Last year the Texas legislature widened that gap further by engaging in an unusual mid-cycle redistricting effort that turned five Democrat-held seats into GOP pickup opportunities — in a state where Republicans already control 25 out of 38 seats.
Now state lawmakers are talking about another potential round of redistricting in the 2027 session, shoring up their majorities in the chambers responsible for drawing the maps.
“We think about the congressional seats, but what are they going to do to our seats in the state House and in the Senate?” Morales said. “The [Texas] House controls those district lines. … Everybody should be concerned about that.”
Tuesday’s press call came as Texas Democrats were unveiling plans for a $30 million coordinated campaign to help all of their federal, state and local campaigns in 2026, during which the party is targeting the governor’s office, a U.S. Senate seat, and many more offices up and down the ballot.
On that call, the executive director of the largest super PAC helping Democrats in Texas chimed in to say that House District 118 would be a major battleground for all the Democratic groups spending in Texas this year, in part because of the role it plays in statewide politics.
The district was a democratic stronghold where Republicans spent big to help Lujan flip red in 2022 and hold onto in 2024. Plus, it fits entirely inside the new 35th Congressional District — a majority-Hispanic district that Republicans drew as a pickup opportunity for themselves, but which Democrats also believe they can win.
“[House District] 118 is completely housed within [Congressional District 35], and it also includes a significant chunk of Bexar County that is absolutely critical,” she said. ” … We need to see better turnout in that [area] in order to win statewide.”
