Rep. Mayra Flores (R., Texas) is interviewed exterior the U.S. Capitol, June 21.
Picture:
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Pictures
Harlingen, Texas
The birds had been making an incredible racket. We had been making an attempt to shoot a marketing campaign industrial for
Mayra Flores
exterior the cotton gin the place her father as soon as labored. The foreman remembered Ms. Flores from when she was an adolescent. She’d toiled in the identical fields, now stuffed with birds so noisy our digital camera crew discovered it not possible to file. A employee retrieved a pistol from his truck and fired it into the air. The birds flew off and we obtained the shot.
The episode was emblematic of how out of contact the Democrats are with Texas’ conservative Hispanic group. Weapons are part of life within the Rio Grande Valley, the realm Ms. Flores, a 36-year-old Republican, now represents in Congress. So are religion, household, custom, onerous work, accountability and love for America—beliefs which might be in direct battle with the politics of grievance Democrats use of their one-size-fits-all outreach to minorities.
There have been different components that led to Ms. Flores’s victory in a particular election to fill the seat left vacant by the March retirement of Democratic Rep.
Filemon Vela.
The primary is Ms. Flores herself. She’s no profession politician; she is a respiratory-care nurse married to a Border Patrol agent. Although born in Mexico, she legally emigrated to the U.S. along with her mother and father when she was 6. She loves her group and grew bored with its remedy as a political soccer by media and political elites who do not know what life is definitely like close to the border.
The second key ingredient is what nationwide Democrats have finished to destroy their relationship with these voters. Individuals right here aren’t woke. They don’t say “Latinx” or announce their pronouns. They’ve a powerful religion in God and consider within the nuclear household. Many work within the oil and gasoline business or in agriculture. In brief, they’re all the pieces the fashionable Democratic Social gathering is just not. They usually concentrate. When Democrats speak about defunding the police or assault the Border Patrol for doing its job, they’re actively making Ms. Flores’s group much less secure.
Ms. Flores’s victory ought to alarm Democrats in all places. The thirty fourth Congressional District presently has the second-largest Hispanic inhabitants (84.5%) of any district in America.
Barack Obama
gained the district by 22.1% of the whole vote in 2012.
Hillary Clinton
gained it by 21.5% in 2016. However
Joe Biden
gained it by solely 4.2% in 2020. Hispanic assist for Democrats is slipping, and never solely in Texas. South Florida, which historically has despatched Democrats to Congress, turned crimson in recent times with the elections of Reps.
Carlos Gimenez
and
María Salazar.
Democrats have lengthy touted demographic modifications in border states like Texas and Arizona as a portent of a blue progressive future. They assume open borders will assist them win elections and overtly admit that’s their objective. What I discovered within the Rio Grande Valley is that their insurance policies could backfire. Hispanic People are patriotic and hardworking. They reject the woke drift of the Democratic Social gathering and are defecting to the GOP.
Earlier this yr the Home Majority PAC ran a Spanish-language advert towards Ms. Flores making an attempt to tie her to Jan. 6—a preposterous connection that fell flat. When requested why Democrats didn’t put extra assets into the particular election, Home Majority Chief
Steny Hoyer
mentioned, “I feel we made the judgment that it was just about a Republican seat.” However till Ms. Flores’s victory, this space had been represented by Democrats in Congress for 100 years.
Ms. Flores should now flip her consideration to working for a full time period. Her opponent within the fall election will probably be Democratic Rep.
Vincente Gonzalez,
who presently represents the neighboring fifteenth District. In October he introduced he would run for re-election within the thirty fourth District after redistricting left him with the impression that it was a safer seat for Democrats. However that was earlier than Ms. Flores’s stunning victory. Mr. Gonzalez has mentioned that nationwide Democrats have “forgotten concerning the brown individuals on the border.” However they haven’t forgotten, they simply can’t determine methods to enchantment to an aspirational group that loves God and nation.
Mr. Shields is a founding associate of Convergence Media, a former RNC chief of workers and the previous president of the Congressional Management Fund.
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Appeared within the July 2, 2022, print version.
