Now is an “opportune time to reevaluate” party strategy after last election’s “red wave” resulted in Republican representatives gaining control of the government, Texas House Representative Gina Hinojosa said at a conversation on Monday.
Evan Smith, LBJ professor and Texas Tribune co-founder, moderated the discussion with Austin-based representatives John Bucy III, Sheryl Cole and Hinojosa. The event, hosted by the Patman Center for Civic and Political Engagement, is part of a semester-long speaker series called LBJ Conversations.
During the discussion, Bucy said the Democratic Party’s difficulty appealing to voters is not due to its values, but the way the party presents its messages.
“Fighting for healthcare, fighting for public schools, fighting for infrastructure — these are important things, but I think we’ve somehow lost the narrative about why the Democratic Party is better for you, and we have to articulate it better,” Bucy said during the event.
Ella McFarlane, a government and sociology junior who attended the event, said she agreed that Democrats are consistently losing elections due to their poor campaigning and not their policies.
“I could tell you exactly what Donald Trump was going to do to ‘fix’ the economy,” McFarlane said. “(Democrats) were not as clear.”
Hinojosa said the limited Democratic National Committee campaign funding in Texas also contributed to the difficulty of electing Democrats to the legislature. However, Bucy said money is “incredibly helpful,” but the “silver bullet” is grassroots organizations.
“It takes 10 or 15 people in a room that care,” Bucy said.
Republicans currently hold 88 of the 150 seats in the Texas House. Cole said she wants to “get something done” this legislative session and anticipates bipartisan action on housing affordability.
“I want to have those fights (on school vouchers and diversity, equity and inclusion), but I also want to look past that and try to find some things we can find common ground (in),” Cole said.
Hinojosa said Democrats should “be prepared to take advantage” of a “backlash” against Trump, based on the Democrat victories seen halfway through Trump’s last term.
“If history repeats itself, we have a good shot in the next midterm election,” Hinojosa said.
