Texas is likely to remain a Republican stronghold for generations

National Journal:

Battleground Texas is determined to make Texas a Democratic battleground, but the midterm elections prove Republicans aren't ceding Latino voters in Texas to Democrats without a fight.

It's no surprise that Texas Republicans easily won statewide races in an election cycle when President Obama's approval rating was underwater and low turnout favored the GOP. But the highlight for Republicans is that statewide candidates gained ground with Hispanic voters, a group that Battleground Texas was counting on to turn Texas from red to blue.

Battleground's founder and former Obama campaign operative Jeremy Bird had long pointed out that if the 4.2 million eligible Latino voters in Texas were all registered to vote, and the majority showed up to the polls, the demographic shift would be enough to empower Democrats in the state. That assumed, however, that Texas Republicans were not going to make a successful play for the Latino vote.

The Republican Party of Texas, after all, voted over the summer to no longer support in-state tuition for immigrants who'd been brought to the U.S. illegally as children. And, the state's two Republican senators made a statement on where they stood on immigration when they voted against a comprehensive bill in the Senate that would have given deportation relief to millions.

Still, Republicans in Texas fought this cycle on what has long been thought of as Democratic turf. The Republican National Committee hired seven full-time staffers from Latino communities to manage outreach efforts from San Antonio to Dallas, and volunteers across the country made contact with 850,000 Latino voters over the phone and face-to-face.

What Republicans found in Texas was that even as the national party had struggled over the years to win Latino voters, showing up often and early in Latino communities was a good way to begin to repair the party's fractured relationship with Hispanic constituents.

"This election is a sign that we absolutely can make gains," says Jenny Korn, an outreach director for Latino communities at the Republican National Committee.

Governor-elect Greg Abbott won with 44 percent of the Latino vote, and Sen. John Cornyn won 48 percent, both improvements over the 38 percent Gov. Rick Perry earned when he was elected in 2011 for his third term.

Republican strategists in the state point out tha Abbott made 17 visits to the heavily Hispanic Rio Grande Valley during his campaign and ran months' worth of ads featuring his Latina wife and mother-in-law. His campaign ran his first Spanish-language spot during the World Cup game between Mexico and Brazil.
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What the planners of Battleground found they had to deal with in Texas is that Hispanics in the state are largely not immigrants but natives.  They are Texans and treating them as such is a good way to get their vote and treating them as aliens is a good way to lose it.  The Battleground campaign themes were wildly out of touch with Texas and theri candidates were not very good.