By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Arkansas is now dominated by Republicans, so the outcomes of most of next year’s elections aren’t in doubt here. Our neighbor, Texas – that’s where things are getting interesting.

Texas, formerly one of the country’s reddest states, is turning a shade of purple, with potentially huge electoral consequences for the entire country.

The state has 36 House members, nine times as many as Arkansas. Twenty-three are Republicans and 13 are Democrats, and both senators are Republicans.

But four Republican House members have recently announced they are retiring – three of them in competitive districts, which is no coincidence. The latest, Rep. Kenny Marchant, is leaving office after eight terms in a Dallas district after being re-elected with only 50.6% of the vote last year.

Prior to that, Rep. Will Hurd, the only African-American Republican in the House, and one of two in Congress, announced he is not running for re-election. A critic of President Trump who represents a district on the Mexican border, he was re-elected in 2018 by fewer than 1,000 votes.

The retirements reflect two realities. One is that serving in the minority party in Congress is no fun. House members spend their days flying back and forth to Washington while raising money for their hardly-ending campaigns, but unless they are in the majority party, they have little hope of getting anything passed. Expect Arkansas’ all-Republican delegation to start retiring, too, if Republicans don’t take back control of the House soon.

The other reality is that Texas’ demographics are rapidly changing, and it has become one of the nation’s most diverse states. As reported by Politico this week, Latinos will become the state’s largest population group by 2022.

Each voter is an individual, of course. But as a group, Latinos vote for Democrats more than Republicans for a variety of reasons that predate Trump. According to the Pew Research Center, in last year’s elections they comprised 30% of Texas’ eligible voters, and they voted almost two to one for the Democratic candidate for Senate, Beto O’Rourke, over the incumbent senator, Sen. Ted Cruz, whose father is a Cuban immigrant. In the governor’s race, Latinos voted 53-42 for the Democrat.

The growing Latino population is a big reason Texas elections have been tightening in recent years. In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney beat President Obama there, 57-41%, a spread of 16 points. In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton, 52-43%, a spread of nine points. In 2018, Cruz beat O’Rourke, 50.9-48.3%, a spread of 2.6 points. The governor’s race, meanwhile, was not close, with incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott winning 56-42.5%.

Those retiring Republicans who barely won in 2018 know the numbers will be even more disadvantageous in 2020. Again, each voter is an individual, but in politics these days, changing demographics are often the real reason one seat flips from one party to the other. After the 2012 elections, the Republican National Committee wrote an after-action report describing the party’s need to appeal to more Latino voters, and someday soon it may do that. But President Trump hasn’t improved the situation. Twenty-eight percent of Latinos nationally voted for him in 2016 – about the same as Romney. We’ll see what happens in 2020.

Why does this matter outside of Texas? Two big reasons. One is that one of every 12 members of the House of Representatives is a Texan. The other is that Texas has the nation’s second most Electoral College votes with 38, a number that could grow after next year’s census. Three of the nation’s five largest states – California, New York and Illinois – reliably vote for Democrats. If Democrats started winning Texas, they would have 142 electors, more than half the 270 needed to win the White House. Add Florida, another toss-up state, and they would have 171.

All this means Texas will be a battleground state in 2020, particularly at the congressional level. Both parties are pouring money and resources there. At the presidential level it’s probably still red, for now. But at some point in the very near future – and maybe next year – it will be purple.

It’ll be interesting to watch from our vantage point in very red Arkansas, where our six Electoral College votes are surely going for Trump.