GOP trying to win border voters in Texas

 AP:

Just weeks before Election Day in Texas, once again there is big money, new signs of shifting voters and bold predictions of an upset that will turn heads across the U.S.

But this time, it’s coming from Republicans.

“We are going to turn the Rio Grande Valley red,” said Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, kicking off a rally in the Texas border city of Harlingen.

As Democrats embark on another October blitz in pursuit of flipping America’s biggest red state, Republicans are taking a swing of their own: making a play for the mostly Hispanic southern border on Nov. 8 after years of writing off the region that is overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats.

The task — like Democrat Beto O’Rourke ’s underdog campaign to unseat Abbott — is an uphill climb. But it is another way Republicans are putting plenty at stake on the Texas border, given that they are already refocusing the final sprint of the 2022 midterms on portraying the 1,200-mile boundary as rife with escalating danger and disorder as record number of migrants enter from Mexico.

Border Democrats say dramatic moves to bus and fly migrants across the country will backfire with voters, but also acknowledge they can no longer coast into office.

Still, the rare sight of contested races on the Texas border has widened cracks in an important Democratic stronghold two years after former President Donald Trump’s significant gains with Hispanic voters during the 2020 election caused both parties to scramble in unexpected ways.

“This is the first time we’ve ever had this many competitive races where the Democrats are like, ‘What are we going to do?’” said Republican Carlos Cascos, a onetime border Democrat who switched parties and later served as Abbott’s first secretary of state.

He’s doesn’t see Republicans sweeping races in the Rio Grande Valley, home to roughly 1.5 million people. But, he says, “I think this area has been taken for granted a lot. In the Valley, you’re born two things: a Catholic and a Democrat. Things are changing.”
...

Biden's open borders policy has made Democrats vulnerable along the Rio Grande.  It has also made Democrat candidates more conservative in that area. 

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