A new political group is putting big money into voter turnout efforts in Bexar County, where its leaders say years of underfunding have left behind major urban center that’s critical to eventually turning the state blue.
The so-called Texas Majority PAC is funded primarily by national Democratic donors, but run by alumni of Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s campaigns, who are trying to break Texas’ three-decade streak of Republican dominance in statewide elections.
“Bexar County is like a treasure trove,” the group’s executive director Katherine Fischer said in an interview with the San Antonio Report. “There are a ton of Democrats there who no one has ever reached out to and encouraged them to vote.”
Though Bexar County is not the smallest of the state’s large urban counties, said Fischer, who was the organizing director for O’Rourke’s gubernatorial campaign, statewide campaigns still often view it as a “second-tier” county in terms of political opportunity, behind Dallas County and even Travis County, home to Austin, which has a smaller population.
“I think part of it is just the wealth of the county,” she said. “It’s harder for local candidates to raise money, and that is how a lot of money flows through counties.”
This year, Bexar County is receiving about $1.6 million infusion of grants and in-kind help from the Texas Majority PAC — roughly the same amount the group is spending in much larger Harris County, which is home to Houston.
“Bexar County is a very blue county, that’s historically been extremely underinvested in,” Fischer said. “Our bet is that if you put more resources into Bexar County than it normally receives, you’ll get a larger return there than you would in Harris County or Dallas County.”
Enduring Democratic optimism
Over the past decade, several national Democratic groups have set their sights on turning Texas blue — with little success to show for it.
But the Texas Majority PAC is charting some new territory in its approach.
For one, the group was intended to be a multi-cycle effort.
Though its top leaders have grown increasingly optimistic that Democrat Colin Allred could pull off a victory against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) this year, they set out viewing a statewide breakthrough in the next four to eight years as the more realistic goal.
A second major difference comes thanks to the loosening of some rules by the Federal Election Commission, which allow the PAC to raise large amounts of money from a single donor and coordinate directly with candidates on field operations.
In Bexar County, that’s allowed the PAC to distribute about $1.6 million in direct contributions and in-kind help to various Democratic entities.
Two of the recipients are progressive groups that have already been engaged in on-the-ground organizing efforts in Bexar County, but got a funding infusion to hire more canvassing staff. The Texas Organizing Project is focused on mobilizing low-propensity voters in communities of color, and Fair Shot Texas is aligned with the labor union representing government workers.
“It’s a great partnership,” said TOP’s Co-Executive Director Michelle Tremillo, who estimated Texas Majority PAC’s money helped expand her group’s canvassing team by about 30% this year. “They provided funding early in the cycle to ensure we would be properly staffed by the time election season came around.”
A third group, the Bexar County Democrats PAC, was created after the FEC ruling to help Texas Majority PAC beef up the Bexar County Democratic Party’s voter outreach program.
“We’re always begging statewide campaigns to focus more in Bexar County … the votes are definitely here,” said Bexar County Democratic Party Chairwoman Monica Ramirez Alcántara, who met with the group’s leaders over the course of several months while they determined whether the partnership was a good fit.
“We were all on the same page about the voters that we were all looking for, and I believe that’s why the partnership works, because we had a very similar strategy,” she said.
The Bexar County Democrats PAC is run by another alumni of the O’Rourke gubernatorial campaign, executive director Kelly Thomas, whose staff works out of the the Northeast Bexar County Democrats’ campaign office on San Pedro Avenue.
The group employs several salaried field organizers, as well as a team of about 100 paid canvassers.
Fischer said much of their turnout efforts have focused on House District 118 on San Antonio’s Southside, where Democrat Kristian Carranza is running to unseat Republican state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio).
But between the additional staffing capacity at TOP, Fair Shot and the Bexar County Democratic Party, virtually every walkable precinct in the county will have been walked by door-knockers leading up to the Nov. 5 election.
“We think that if there’s enough money spent to actually go do that outreach [in Bexar County], you’ll see it in the numbers on Election Day,” she said.
