Why Democrats Believe 2026 Could be the Year of 'Blexas'

Iran's Defeat by Trump in 3 Devastating Charts-and What Happens Next.

Key points

• A new accord Democrat rooted in rural America, Yarborough won East Texas by pledging to protect workers from Sizeable Oil, Major Banks and Sizeable Landowners.
• "For the first time since '72, we've recruited a Democrat to run for every state and federal office, " state party Chair Kendall Scudder, 36, informed Newsweek.
• O'Rourke created a second bid at statewide office in 2022, taking on Governor Greg Abbott.
• Today, nevertheless, Scudder stated the party is not just debt-free with staff in Austin, it has additionally opened offices in Dallas, Houston, Amarillo and Eagle Pass.
• During that period, the state party had been under the leadership of Gilberto Hinojosa, who'd held the role since 2012.

Few topics ignite passion in Democrats like the idea of Blue Texas, or "Blexas" as the phenomenon is called. And with the match-up between Democratic state Representative James Talarico and scandal-plagued Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton polling neck-and-neck, the possibility of Blexas has been hard to ignore this midterm cycle. Once a Democratic stronghold that produced the likes of President Lyndon B. Johnson and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, Texas voted Reagan in 1980 and has grown redder ever since. Not since 1994 have Democrats won statewide. Today, the caricature of the gun-toting, oil-loving Texas Republican has left a cultural mark on the GOP like no other. To win in Texas would be to defeat the Republican psyche. Knowing that, Democrats have spent tens of millions in the state in 2018, 2022 and 2024, only to suffer repeated defeats in return. Texas Democratic Party leaders would say there's a reason for that-those resources funded the top of the ticket while ignoring the absence of the political infrastructure and downballot energy needed to win statewide. This year, that's changed. "For the first time since '72, we've recruited a Democrat to run for every state and federal office, " state party Chair Kendall Scudder, 36, informed Newsweek. "This year, we have our first coordinated campaign since '82, where all the candidates are folded into it, and what that's going to mean is that the next election cycle we're going to have infrastructure to work from." From Florida to Michigan and Minnesota, Democrats have proven this primary cycle that an energized organizing base can overcome an avalanche of dollars. Talarico at present outpaces Paxton-who has faced securities-fraud charges, whistleblower allegations and a 2023 impeachment attempt, all to which he has denied wrongdoing-in the fundraising race. Nevertheless, Republicans understand that losing Texas wouldn't just possibly lose them the Senate; it could threaten the highly coalition they rely upon to win the White House. President Donald Trump's MAGA Inc. Super PAC controls a $400 million war chest waiting to be unleashed for this particularly kind of race. If that were to happen, grassroots organizing could be the difference maker. Notably, a Party With No Guests As a boy growing up in an East Texas farming family, Scudder was surrounded by Democrats. That's how things were in those days. But as the years passed, that community grew steadily red. Nonetheless, Scudder maintained his "populist Ralph Yarborough-style views." A new accord Democrat rooted in rural America, Yarborough won East Texas by pledging to protect workers from Sizeable Oil, Major Banks and Sizeable Landowners. Scudder thought that same message could win over voters in the state's deeply red 2nd Senate District in 2018, so he decided to run for office. The message resonated enough to win him 41 percent of the vote, but it was not enough to overcome the institutional hurdles he faced when campaigning. As Scudder observed, at that time there was no coordinated campaign, the term for a joint political operation where the state party and campaigns pool resources to backing candidates up and down the ticket. There was additionally minimal local party infrastructure. In practice, a charismatic candidate atop the ticket can rally a certain segment of voters, but there's another segment at the bottom of the ticket that needs to be engaged directly. If a party doesn't field candidates at the local level. It has been the case for the Democratic Party in plenty of parts of Texas since '72, they're missing out on voters, making a statewide win far less probable. In 2018, former Congressman Beto O'Rourke was that charismatic candidate. A prolific fundraiser, O'Rourke raised $80 million that cycle and came within 2.6 points of beating Senator Ted Cruz, showing Democrats nationwide that the dream of Blexas was feasible. Nevertheless, he additionally became deeply aware of the state-level infrastructure needed to achieve that dream, and it was missing at the time. "There was a chairman, there were county chairs and precinct chairs who were awesome and phenomenal and doing their best with the resources they had, but the resources were almost nothing, " O'Rourke informed Newsweek. "We just had to do that all from scratch." In 2019, O'Rourke founded the person-to-person organizing group Powered by Individuals. It filled the year-round organizing void that Democrats were lacking by building a network of thousands of volunteers dedicated to registering voters and speaking directly with individuals concerning the problems Democrats backing. O'Rourke created a second bid at statewide office in 2022, taking on Governor Greg Abbott. Nevertheless, in a year that was unfavorable to Democrats, he lost the race by almost 11 points despite raising over $67 million. In 2024, former Congressman Colin Allred took on Cruz but lost by 8 points while raising $80 million. Newsweek contacted the Republican Party of Texas for comment. During that period, the state party had been under the leadership of Gilberto Hinojosa, who'd held the role since 2012. Newsweek contacted Hinojosa for comment. Scudder-who by that time had cut his teeth as chairman of the Dallas Central Appraisal District Board of Directors-sought the state party chairship in March 2025 and won. When he began, the party was $500, 000 in debt and had one brick-and-mortar office in the state capital, Austin. Today, nevertheless, Scudder stated the party is not just debt-free with staff in Austin, it has additionally opened offices in Dallas, Houston, Amarillo and Eagle Pass. "I think that the power structure of the party had felt really comfortable with only having an office in Austin because they had learned how to build influence through proximity, " Scudder remarked. "But other people around the state weren't feeling that, and having these offices around the state and having staff all around the state allows people to have a connectivity to the party and a lifeline for help." The Tools To Win Part of being that lifeline involves running a campaign that brings Democrats in the reddest parts of the state into the fold. The vehicle for doing so is a $30 million coordinated campaign called "Texas Together" that includes the Texas Democratic Party, O'Rourke's Powered by Individuals, the Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee and what The Texas Tribune called "perhaps the best-funded Democratic group in the state, " Texas Majority PAC. Katherine Fischer leads the PAC as executive director, and she understands all too well the significance of having this kind of coordinated campaign in place. As field organizer for O'Rourke's 2018 campaign and organizing director for his 2022 campaign, she became intimately aware of the problems Democrats faced due to lack of political infrastructure and wanted to assist ensure future candidates would not face the same challenges. In her role with Texas Majority PAC-which has raised over $11 million since its inception in 2022-Fischer has backed the Texas Democratic Party in recruiting candidates to run for office by offering them the resources to be successful, whether that be with tools to aid in fundraising, messaging or creating campaign videos. Understanding the difficulty first-time candidates face in assessing pricing for campaign services, the PAC supported pre-negotiate rates with campaign vendors to ensure all Democrats in the state have a fairly priced option for election services. On top of that, the PAC has aided in mobilizing paid and grassroots organizing efforts. "We basically wanted to build a structure that would be ready to go to be useful for the Senate candidate, whoever it was going to be, so that they didn't have to start building from zero, " Fischer informed Newsweek. "This way they could inherit something that was functional, that had volunteers already being put to use, and that was contacting voters consistently, not just showing up like two weeks before election day, which is enormous." The National Model The Texas Democratic Party's focus on reaching voters where they are mirrors the strategy of the national party. Under Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, the DNC has invested $1 million a month in state parties, sending $17, 500 to blue states and $22, 500 to red states. For context, the strategy has proved controversial, especially among those in Washington. This person fear a late ad blitz by the GOP will erase the gains of such organizing work. Right now, the DNC has regarding $16 million in cash on hand while the Republican National Committee has around $129 million. For state party chairs, especially in red states, the program has largely been viewed as a lifeline. Jane Kleeb, president of the Association of State Democratic Committees and a DNC vice chair, has supported champion the strategy. As chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, she understands the challenges Democrats face in red states, noting that prior to the program's inception, "most" red states were carrying out the organizing functions described above with just one or two paid staff members. Kleeb stresses that "no other entity" maintains year-round infrastructure like state parties, and when those parties are virtually nonexistent, it's not just harder to field candidates but Democrats additionally become disconnected with voters. That disconnect harms the party brand, Kleeb remarked. It makes campaigning all the harder for Democrats trying to win in red states, especially when they must build a statewide political network from scratch. While a charismatic candidate is often far more moving to individuals than the concepts of voter registration, candidate recruitment and institutional relationships, it is the presence of those things that often determines victory or defeat in an underdog race. While Blexas may still be a reach in the eyes of plenty of, the changes Democrats have produced since 2018 at the particularly least allow a candidate like Talarico to focus all-in on the task of winning. "Candidates need to be focused on their campaign, their issues, their persuasion audience, talking to the base, beating their opponent, " Kleeb informed Newsweek. "The party needs to be focused on that infrastructure: the offices, the precinct and block captain program, the voter registration, etcetera. All those pieces that are critical to obtain the entire ballot elected as Democrats."

By Alex J. Rouhandeh National Political Correspondent. Newsweek is a Trust Project member.

See more of our trusted coverage when you search.to see more of our trusted coverage when you search.

Once a Democratic stronghold that produced the likes of President Lyndon B. Johnson and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, Texas voted Reagan in 1980 and has grown redder ever since. Not since 1994 have Democrats won statewide. Today, the caricature of the gun-toting, oil-loving Texas Republican has left a cultural mark on the GOP like no other.

To win in Texas would be to defeat the Republican psyche. Knowing that, Democrats have spent tens of millions in the state in 2018, 2022 and 2024, only to suffer repeated defeats in return. Texas Democratic Party leaders would say there's a reason for that-those resources funded the top of the ticket while ignoring the absence of the political infrastructure and downballot energy needed to win statewide. This year, that's changed.

"For the first time since '72, we've recruited a Democrat to run for every state and federal office, " state party Chair Kendall Scudder, 36, informed Newsweek. "This year, we have our first coordinated campaign since '82, where all the candidates are folded into it, and what that's going to mean is that the next election cycle we're going to have infrastructure to work from."

From Florida to Michigan and Minnesota, Democrats have proven this primary cycle that an energized organizing base can overcome an avalanche of dollars. Talarico at present outpaces Paxton-who has faced securities-fraud charges, whistleblower allegations and a 2023 impeachment attempt, all to which he has denied wrongdoing-in the fundraising race.

Nevertheless, Republicans understand that losing Texas wouldn't just possibly lose them the Senate; it could threaten the highly coalition they rely upon to win the White House. President Donald Trump's MAGA Inc. Super PAC controls a $400 million war chest waiting to be unleashed for this particularly kind of race. If that were to happen, grassroots organizing could be the difference maker.

As a boy growing up in an East Texas farming family, Scudder was surrounded by Democrats. That's how things were in those days. But as the years passed, that community grew steadily red. Nonetheless, Scudder maintained his "populist Ralph Yarborough-style views."

Meanwhile, a new accord Democrat rooted in rural America, Yarborough won East Texas by pledging to protect workers from Sizeable Oil, Major Banks and Sizeable Landowners. Scudder thought that same message could win over voters in the state's deeply red 2nd Senate District in 2018, so he decided to run for office. The message resonated enough to win him 41 percent of the vote, but it was not enough to overcome the institutional hurdles he faced when campaigning.

As Scudder observed, at that time there was no coordinated campaign, the term for a joint political operation where the state party and campaigns pool resources to backing candidates up and down the ticket. There was additionally minimal local party infrastructure.

In practice, a charismatic candidate atop the ticket can rally a certain segment of voters, but there's another segment at the bottom of the ticket that needs to be engaged directly. If a party doesn't field candidates at the local level. It has been the case for the Democratic Party in plenty of parts of Texas since '72, they're missing out on voters, making a statewide win far less probable.

In 2018, former Congressman Beto O'Rourke was that charismatic candidate. A prolific fundraiser, O'Rourke raised $80 million that cycle and came within 2.6 points of beating Senator Ted Cruz, showing Democrats nationwide that the dream of Blexas was feasible. Nevertheless, he additionally became deeply aware of the state-level infrastructure needed to achieve that dream, and it was missing at the time.

"There was a chairman, there were county chairs and precinct chairs who were awesome and phenomenal and doing their best with the resources they had, but the resources were almost nothing, " O'Rourke informed Newsweek. "We just had to do that all from scratch."

In 2019, O'Rourke founded the person-to-person organizing group Powered by Individuals. It filled the year-round organizing void that Democrats were lacking by building a network of thousands of volunteers dedicated to registering voters and speaking directly with individuals concerning the problems Democrats backing.

O'Rourke created a second bid at statewide office in 2022, taking on Governor Greg Abbott. Nevertheless, in a year that was unfavorable to Democrats, he lost the race by almost 11 points despite raising over $67 million. In 2024, former Congressman Colin Allred took on Cruz but lost by 8 points while raising $80 million. Newsweek contacted the Republican Party of Texas for comment.

During that period, the state party had been under the leadership of Gilberto Hinojosa, who'd held the role since 2012. Newsweek contacted Hinojosa for comment. Scudder-who by that time had cut his teeth as chairman of the Dallas Central Appraisal District Board of Directors-sought the state party chairship in March 2025 and won. When he began, the party was $500, 000 in debt and had one brick-and-mortar office in the state capital, Austin.

Today, nevertheless, Scudder stated the party is not just debt-free with staff in Austin, it has additionally opened offices in Dallas, Houston, Amarillo and Eagle Pass. "I think that the power structure of the party had felt really comfortable with only having an office in Austin because they had learned how to build influence through proximity, " Scudder remarked. "But other people around the state weren't feeling that, and having these offices around the state and having staff all around the state allows people to have a connectivity to the party and a lifeline for help."

Part of being that lifeline involves running a campaign that brings Democrats in the reddest parts of the state into the fold. The vehicle for doing so is a $30 million coordinated campaign called "Texas Together" that includes the Texas Democratic Party, O'Rourke's Powered by Individuals, the Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee and what The Texas Tribune called "perhaps the best-funded Democratic group in the state, " Texas Majority PAC.

Katherine Fischer leads the PAC as executive director, and she understands all too well the significance of having this kind of coordinated campaign in place. As field organizer for O'Rourke's 2018 campaign and organizing director for his 2022 campaign, she became intimately aware of the problems Democrats faced due to lack of political infrastructure and wanted to assist ensure future candidates would not face the same challenges.

In her role with Texas Majority PAC-which has raised over $11 million since its inception in 2022-Fischer has backed the Texas Democratic Party in recruiting candidates to run for office by offering them the resources to be successful, whether that be with tools to aid in fundraising, messaging or creating campaign videos.

Understanding the difficulty first-time candidates face in assessing pricing for campaign services, the PAC supported pre-negotiate rates with campaign vendors to ensure all Democrats in the state have a fairly priced option for election services. On top of that, the PAC has aided in mobilizing paid and grassroots organizing efforts.

"We basically wanted to build a structure that would be ready to go to be useful for the Senate candidate, whoever it was going to be, so that they didn't have to start building from zero, " Fischer informed Newsweek. "This way they could inherit something that was functional, that had volunteers already being put to use, and that was contacting voters consistently, not just showing up like two weeks before election day, which is enormous."

Notably, the Texas Democratic Party's focus on reaching voters where they are mirrors the strategy of the national party. Under Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, the DNC has invested $1 million a month in state parties, sending $17, 500 to blue states and $22, 500 to red states. The strategy has proved controversial, especially among those in Washington. This person fear a late ad blitz by the GOP will erase the gains of such organizing work. Right now, the DNC has regarding $16 million in cash on hand while the Republican National Committee has around $129 million.

For state party chairs, especially in red states, the program has largely been viewed as a lifeline. Jane Kleeb, president of the Association of State Democratic Committees and a DNC vice chair, has supported champion the strategy. As chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, she understands the challenges Democrats face in red states, noting that prior to the program's inception, "most" red states were carrying out the organizing functions described above with just one or two paid staff members.

Kleeb stresses that "no other entity" maintains year-round infrastructure like state parties, and when those parties are virtually nonexistent, it's not just harder to field candidates but Democrats additionally become disconnected with voters. That disconnect harms the party brand, Kleeb remarked. It makes campaigning all the harder for Democrats trying to win in red states, especially when they must build a statewide political network from scratch.

While a charismatic candidate is often far more moving to individuals than the concepts of voter registration, candidate recruitment and institutional relationships, it is the presence of those things that often determines victory or defeat in an underdog race. While Blexas may still be a reach in the eyes of plenty of, the changes Democrats have produced since 2018 at the particularly least allow a candidate like Talarico to focus all-in on the task of winning.

"Candidates need to be focused on their campaign, their issues, their persuasion audience, talking to the base, beating their opponent, " Kleeb informed Newsweek. "The party needs to be focused on that infrastructure: the offices, the precinct and block captain program, the voter registration, etcetera. All those pieces that are critical to obtain the entire ballot elected as Democrats."

Taken together, the developments around why Democrats Believe 2026 Could be the Year of & #039; Blexas& #039 point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.