Far From Abbott’s Promised ‘Dark Red,’ Harris County Drives Democrats to Victory Up and Down Ballot

Lest we forget, the outgoing (yes, outgoing) Governor Greg Abbott promised a throng of supporters in Harris County last year that he would spend big to turn the region “dark red.” That didn’t happen, to say the least. But at Cactus Cove, the West Houston bar where Letitia Plummer, the Democratic candidate for Harris County Judge, hosted the party faithful, the mood early on was admittedly touch-and-go. Not necessarily because they doubted Plummer—who outraised her opponent, Republican Orlando Sanchez, by some $100,000 this fall—but because, for decades now, when GOP coffers opened, the streets ran red.

In all, Abbott reportedly burned through upwards of $25 million in Harris County, to say nothing of all the various super PACs in our midst. He recruited candidates to ensure fierce competition in each of Harris County’s 24 state House seats. He hired “team captains” to out-organize Democrats at the precinct level. On the eve of the election, he even visited Houston himself to get out the vote. And yet, by any reasonable metric, his investments failed. He failed.

At time of writing, Harris County Democrats have flipped at least a handful of Republican-held state House seats and swept up and down through county offices. Sanchez conceded at around 9:30 p.m., roughly 30 minutes before Abbott himself took to the stage to bid his own adieu. At the statewide level, soon-to-be-Senator James Talarico pulled in around 66 percent with Paxton a little over 30. Abbott, who hails from Harris, was routed by about 30 points against Austin state Representative Gina Hinojosa. In short, Harris formed the backbone of the Democratic tsunami that swept across Texas.

“Y’all, we did this,” Plummer began her victory speech. “Tonight, I choose to be an optimist.” And why shouldn’t she? While her primary opponent, Annise Parker, practically treated her own anointment to the judgeship as a given—the Houston Chronicle labeled Parker “uniquely qualified” despite (or rather because of) her evident disdain for grassroots politics—Plummer’s progressive bona fides (what the Chronicle backhandedly dubbed her “ambitious goals”) were enough for Harris County voters to place their trust in her. Plummer can’t claim to have incited this statewide tidal wave, of course, but the very parts of Plummer that pundits and technocrats deemed a liability were her planche de salut.

Sanchez, meanwhile, tried to frame himself as a sort of moderate Republican in the mold of ex-judge Ed Emmett (minus Sanchez’s support for Republican Texas Railroad Commission candidate and wannabe Rhodesian Bo French). It apparently wasn’t convincing—or enticing—to enough voters.

Rodney Ellis, currently the longest-serving Democrat on Harris County’s commissioners court, over which Plummer will preside, likened Tuesday’s results to the thrashing he experienced as a staffer during the Reagan Revolution. The 72-year-old only spent 20 minutes at Plummer’s watch party and left well before the race had been called. For the next hour, he was at the gym in his county office watching the results come in from an elliptical machine. “If this night is as good as it looks like it’s going to be, I want to make sure I’m around to watch us govern,” he told me.

So what might governing look like with a Democratic governor—the first in over 30 years? Harris County doubtless took the brunt of GOP lawfare, but, statewide, municipalities are facing fiscal crises with deep structural roots. While Harris County may boast a 4-1 Democratic supermajority on the commissioners court and a Democratic mayor, the region’s feudalistic funding regime portends steep deficits at both the city and county levels, with city and county officials often at odds. 

“I’d be very surprised if the county, for the general fund, does anything other than no new revenue in the next cycle, which means about a $250 million shortfall,” Ellis said. (Plummer, contra Ellis and the other Democratic commissioners, at least for now, opposed their recent property tax increase.) Meanwhile, Houston’s estimated $25 million budget gap has ballooned to $88 million (Whitmire said the Harris County Appraisal District “surprised” the city with its property value estimates). 

Harris County has proven this go-around that it is, to borrow from Ellis, “predictably blue.” The rest of the state, of course, isn’t. Incoming Governor Hinojosa likely won’t want bailouts to be what she’s remembered for. She’ll be under immense pressure from the right, no doubt through a poisonous barrage of conspiracy mongering, clip farming, and monitoring her every move—not unlike what happened to Lina Hidalgo, Plummer’s predecessor, who ultimately became her own worst enemy. 

Still, that Harris County Democrats successfully passed the baton from Hidalgo to Plummer shows that the ideas that animate them have staying power. But, as Ellis told me, “Be careful what you ask for; you may get it.”

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