Highly-touted NRCC recruit Pierce Bush narrowly avoided coming in fourth place to a GOP candidate who didn’t run a single TV ad. Don’t worry, it gets worse!
As they say, everything’s bigger in Texas. Even the NRCC’s failures.
As the nation pores over primary results from the Lone Star State this morning, here are three Texas-sized takeaways from Washington Republicans’ rough night here. Saddle up.
Washington Republicans Burn Bridges, Get Bushwhacked in TX-22
The NRCC’s recruitment of Pierce Bush to run for Congress and his unceremonious trashing by Texas Republican primary voters is a national embarrassment for the Republican Party.
In Texas’ rapidly diversifying 22nd Congressional District, “top party strategists” recruited Bush to run for this seat based on their belief that “his family’s long-standing cachet in Texas, is precisely what they need to hold on to the state’s rapidly diversifying suburbs.” Have they met their party and its leader lately?
In his short-lived, spiraling misadventure of a congressional campaign, Bush endured brutal questions over his authenticity and conservative credentials.
From their perch in D.C. – not in Texas – Washington Republicans, spun anyone who would take their calls that Bush was a lock for the runoff while downplaying the other GOP candidates who would ultimately finish leagues ahead of Bush.
Pierce flopped so hard it would make Jeb(!) blush – finishing in third place, narrowly ahead of a candidate who didn’t run a single television ad but did oppose the Supreme Court ruling legalizing interracial marriage.
Now, Republicans now have two hardline conservative GOP candidates in ethically-challenged Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls and Republican megadonor and self-funder Kathleen Wall who have already commenced their nasty, expensive race to the right in a rapidly-diversifying district.
Politico also reports that “privately, some Republicans worry neither Nehls nor Wall will be able to gain traction in such a diverse district.”
TX-22 Democratic nominee Sri Preston Kulkarni now enters a general election with a near-three month head start on the two Republican candidates who will engage in mudslinging, negative ads and a steady stream of far-right antics between now and Memorial Day.
Other NRCC-Touted Texas Candidates Underperformed Expectations
While DCCC “Red to Blue” candidates Wendy Davis (TX-21) and Gina Ortiz Jones (TX-23) sailed through their primaries with huge margins of victory and continue to excel in grassroots, political and financial support, certain candidates that the NRCC has publicly touted labored through tough primaries and underperformed expectations.
On the Republican side of Texas’ 23rd Congressional District, things are looking rough as ever without retiring Congressman Will Hurd in the mix. Despite an endorsement from Hurd and backing from Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the NRCC, GOP establishment favorite candidate Tony Gonzales couldn’t even crack 30 percent support last night – even with a new Hurd-backed super PAC going on the air for him – and enters a runoff against conservative firebrand Raul Reyes.
Perhaps even more concerning for Gonzales is that candidates from the deeply conservative western portion of the district, Raul Reyes and Dr. Alma Arredondo-Lynch, together garnered more than 36 percent of the vote as part of a continued local Republican backlash to Hurd’s perceived shots at President Trump. Make no mistake: if the primary elbowing between the Gonzales and Reyes camps was any indication, this runoff is gearing up to be bitter, bruising and personal.
We’ve noted before how Will Hurd’s blessing is as much of a beltway boon as it is a local liability in TX-23. That’s especially the case in the rural, conservative strongholds with whom Gonzales will need to fix his relationship in order to be successful in a May 26 runoff and to have more than a prayer in November.
That’s one reason why Gonzales has put distance between himself and Hurd, claiming that he’s more conservative and more pro-Trump than Hurd ever was.
And as of this morning in Texas’ 32nd Congressional District, NRCC favorite and Betsy DeVos wannabe Genevieve Collins was barely winning her own GOP primary against a vastly underfunded opponent in Floyd McLendon. McLendon spent the final weeks of the campaign seizing on Collins’ stumbles, outraising her in the pre-primary period and attacking her in voters’ mailboxes. Collins felt so much heat that she cut herself (yet another) six-figure check one week out from Election Day.
In Texas, NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer Says Democratic Reps. Colin Allred and Lizzie Fletcher Will Be Re-Elected
When NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer dropped into Austin for an interview with the Texas Tribune, Emmer made a bold claim that has since been repeated four separate times by the party committee itself: “NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer identified Henry Cuellar as the most vulnerable Democrat in Texas.”
(As opposed to, say, Reps. Colin Allred and Lizzie Fletcher, who defeated longtime incumbent Republican congressmen in 2018 and whom the NRCC has vowed to target in 2020.)
With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Representative Cuellar is keeping his seat in Congress. And by Chairman Emmer’s logic so, too, are Allred and Fletcher this November. Strategery!
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