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When Democrat Brandy Chambers read in The Dallas Morning News last month that her opponent, state Rep. Angie Chen Button, R-Richardson, now supports Medicaid expansion, Chambers could not believe it.

Shocked would be a good word, Chambers recalled in an interview.

Button and other Texas Republicans have long resisted expanding Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program, even though Texas has the countrys highest uninsured rate. But Button said she now sees the need for expanding the program due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has left many Texans jobless and without health insurance.

Button is not the only Republican lawmaker raising eyebrows about seemingly new policy positions now that the partys majority in the Texas House is on the line. Another endangered incumbent, Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, recently expressed regret for supporting the divisive bathroom bill that sought to limit public restroom access for transgender people and headlined the 2017 legislative year without ever becoming law.

That legislation, along with Medicaid expansion, is among a litany of issues that are cropping up in the final weeks of the Nov. 3 election that will decide the balance of power in the Legislatures lower chamber. The stakes are high, with the battle unfolding ahead of the 2021 redistricting process during which lawmakers will draw new political boundaries for the state.

Democrats are nine seats away from the majority after picking up 12 seats in 2018, some of which Republicans are serious about winning back. But in many cases, Republican lawmakers who have held the House majority since the 2003 session are facing the first truly competitive general elections of their lives and being forced to answer for votes in a way they have never had to before.

Take for example the Legislatures massive cuts to public education in 2011, which Democrats are using to try to undercut the GOPs renewed focus on school funding during the most recent session.

That was 10 years ago, and over the last four sessions since, weve steadily increased public education funding, Rep. Sarah Davis, R-Houston, said in a recent interview, playing down the issue.

While Democrats press Republicans over health care and public education, the GOP is hoping to portray their Democratic opponents as too liberal and beholden to national Democrats, seeking to put them on defense over issues including police funding and taxes.

For example, as Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Killeen, fights for reelection, he is airing a TV ad that claims the policies of his Democratic opponent, Keke Williams, would threaten Texas economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Its no surprise Keke Williams doesnt fight for us, a narrator says. Williams is bankrolled by out-of-state liberal extremists.

National Democratic super PAC Forward Majority is spending over $12 million in the state House fight this fall, and health care is its top issue. The Democrats dominant focus on health care mirrors the strategy they led with to help flip the U.S. House in 2018 and are relying on again this year to pad their ranks, especially in Texas.

Forward Majority is flooding state House districts with ads tying Republicans on the ballot to their partys yearslong push to repeal the Affordable Care Act and with it, its protections for people with preexisting conditions. The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to hear a Texas-led challenge to the federal health care law Nov. 10.

Forward Majoritys ads accuse GOP lawmakers of doing the bidding of insurance and drug companies when it comes to health care. And who suffers? a narrator asks. Patients with preexisting conditions like heart disease or cancer, denied coverage.

Republicans are pushing back by pointing to their passage of Senate Bill 1940 last session. If Obamacare went away, that law would allow the Texas Department of Insurance to take initial steps to temporarily bring back the high-risk insurance pool that the Legislature abolished in 2013. That option provided high-priced coverage to Texans with preexisting conditions who could not find it elsewhere, and by the time it was ended, it covered a small number of Texans 23,000.

One health-care expert Stacey Pogue, senior policy analyst at the left-leaning Every Texan think tank in Austin said the law is a wholly inadequate substitute for the Affordable Care Act.

It does nothing, Pogue said. Its perplexing that anybody would point to that as an achievement.

The dominant issue Republicans are using to criticize Democrats is law enforcement, with GOP candidates touting their support for police and seeking to tie their Democratic opponents to the defund the police movement. The term means different things to different people, but among some activists protesting police brutality, the movement aims to redirect some funds from police budgets to social services.

Abbott has done his part to make support for law enforcement the central issue of the general election for Republicans, asking candidates to sign a pledge against defunding the police and releasing multiple legislative proposals to punish local governments who cut police budgets.

While no Democrat running in a battleground district is known to have explicitly embraced the idea, Republicans are working to portray their opponents as being anti-law enforcement. A prime example is House District 67, where Leach, the incumbent Plano Republican, is airing a TV ad that labels his Democratic rival, Lorenzo Sanchez, an anti-police zealot.

The attack is based on anti-police Facebook posts from a Sanchez campaign staffer, including one calling police a terrorist organization, as well as a June campaign event where Sanchez said he agreed after a speaker advocated for taking guns away from police.

When the issues first came up earlier this fall, Sanchez issued a statement that did not directly address them but said he does not support defunding police. As for the staffers comments, The Dallas Morning News editorial board reported that Sanchez told them that he cant be responsible for everything anyone associated with his campaign says. And in a story published last week by the Plano Star Courier, Sanchez said he believes in deadly force as a last resort but that it would be foolish to de-arm cops.

In other contests, the police-related attacks appear to have less of a basis. Rep. Steve Allison, R-San Antonio, is airing a TV ad in which he says, I stand with our police; my opponent wants to defund them. But the Tribune could not find any evidence of his opponent, Celina Montoya, expressing such support, and Allisons campaign has not provided any backup.

I think that theres absolutely, without question, room for us to have some criminal justice reform, but none of us are calling to, you know, abolish the police or anything of that sort. Its silliness, Akilah Bacy, the Democrat running against Republican Lacey Hull for an open Houston seat, said during a Texas Tribune event Friday.

Some Republican candidates are acknowledging they also have to say what they support when it comes to police reform. Justin Berry, an Austin police officer challenging Rep. Vikki Goodwin, D-Austin, is broadcasting a TV ad where he calls for "de-escalation training and body cameras for all officers. Those ideas also appear in a commercial from Jacey Jetton, the GOP nominee for an open seat in Fort Bend County. Jettons spot additionally advocates for ensuring our police look more like the communities they serve.

Republicans are also trying to put Democrats on defense on fiscal issues, claiming the partys candidates would support higher taxes and even a state income tax. In most cases, that claim appears to be based on Democratic opposition to Proposition 4, the 2019 constitutional amendment that made it harder than ever for Texas to institute a state income tax. Critics called the proposition a political stunt that could hamstring future generations when the Texas economy is not doing as well.

While Democrats insist that opposing the proposition does not equate to supporting a state income tax, Republicans say the optics are tough for Democrats.

Thats a very painful position, said Dave Carney, the governors top political adviser.

Abbotts campaign conducted a statewide survey in August and settled on taxes as one of the four most effective lines of attack against Democrats in battleground House contests.

In one race where the issue has flared up, Elizabeth Beck, the Democratic nominee against Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth, is asking TV stations to take down an ad hes airing that attacks her on taxes, saying it contains blatant lies. Among other things, the commercial claims she supports a statewide income tax, citing a 2019 tweet from her urging followers to vote against Proposition 4.

The ad also seizes on an October event where she talked about creating new streams of revenue New revenue means new taxes, a narrator says though it leaves out part of the event where she clarifies that she would not be in favor of raising taxes or creating a state income tax.

Gun violence is also factoring into some races, mainly at the behest of Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, the national gun control group. It announced last month that it would spend $2.2 million on digital ads and direct mail across 12 districts, seeking to elect a gun sense majority to the Texas House.

Everytowns ads invoke the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting in which a gunman killed 23 people and injured 23 others while targeting Hispanic Texans to criticize Texas Republicans for inaction on universal background checks. One spot says the coronavirus pandemic is not the only public health crisis facing Texas families.

A few Democratic challengers are bringing up gun issues on their own. In one of Democrats best pickup opportunities, Joanna Cattanach is running a TV spot against Rep. Morgan Meyer, R-Dallas, that says he has stuck to the far rights agenda voting to allow guns in schools. The commercial cites Meyers vote for House Bill 1387, the 2019 law that lifted the cap on the number of school marshals who could be armed on public school campuses.

Public education has also been an issue thats come up in a number of competitive races, with Republicans highlighting an $11.6 billion school finance reform bill the Legislature passed in 2019.

In Tarrant County, Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, has aired a TV ad casting himself as a lawmaker "on a new mission to improve Texas schools."

Tinderholt, a member of the hardline conservative Texas House Freedom Caucus, voted for the legislation, which was championed by GOP state leaders and received bipartisan support. But his ad is notable it marks yet another push by Republicans to bolster their credentials and track records at the Legislature on public education. Tinderholt faces a challenge from Democrat Alisa Simmons.

Democrats facing competitive reelection bids are also trying to capitalize on the school finance bill from last year. In Williamson County, Rep. James Talarico, a Round Rock Democrat, recently released a TV ad titled A teacher in the House. The ad highlights his experience as a teacher and how that helped him work across the aisle to pass historic school reform in 2019. Talarico faces a challenge from Republican Lucio Valdez.

Candidate-specific issues have, of course, also emerged in certain races. In the open race for House District 96 in Tarrant County, the national Democratic group Forward Majority has criticized the Republican in the race, David Cook, for overseeing an attempt while serving as Mansfield mayor in 2016 to fund an indoor ice rink using a $1.8 million contribution from Mansfield schools.

The Mansfield City Council ultimately reversed course and decided against asking Mansfield ISD to be a funding partner after school district taxpayers pushed back on it, Cook told The Dallas Morning News in September. But Forward Majority still seized on the issue, saying in an ad it aired for the race that Democrat Joe Drago will "put kids ahead of politicians wasteful pet projects."

In another Dallas-area race, Linda Koop, a Republican running for the seat she lost last cycle to Democratic Rep. Ana-Maria Ramos, recently aired an ad knocking Ramos over her lone vote against a bill in 2019 to legalize childrens lemonade stands. Ramos, for her part, has argued that she voted against the legislation because it takes away local control and is about public safety."

Its unclear whether any of the issues that have emerged in some of the most competitive races will end up getting much play at the Legislature when it convenes for its regular session in January.

On top of questions over how exactly the Capitol will operate in the era of the pandemic, the uncertainty over which party will control the House is looming over what issues lawmakers could debate.

Matt Mackowiak, a GOP strategist and chair of the Travis County Republican Party, said the legislative session will likely be consumed by grappling with the billions of dollars in shortfalls facing the state budget and responding to the pandemic, among other issues.

The 2021 legislative session is going to be a very difficult one, he said, and its hard to predict which direction things will go until we see the makeup of the Texas House and learn who the new Speaker will be."

Every Texan, Everytown for Gun Safety and Facebook have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Texas Republicans, Democrats battle for control of House in 2020 election - The Texas Tribune

To the Editor:

Re Fearing a Rout on Capitol Hill, Republicans Start to Break Ranks With the President (news article, Oct. 17):

In a pathetic display of leaping off a sinking ship, some Republican senators are finding their dissenting voice. With the election near, the realization that their seat may be in danger has caused them to speak out in rebellion against their leader.

They are trying to save themselves and have shown their real two-faced approach to President Trump. After looking aside and winking at his mind-boggling tweets, statements, policies, lies and devastating failure to exhibit leadership in the face of Covid-19, they have found religion.

Too little, too late.

Harvey GlassmanBoynton Beach, Fla.

To the Editor:

Im sorry, but talk is cheap. What counts is the action one takes when confronted with an ethical choice. Virtually all these senators have voted to support President Trump throughout his corrupt, cruel and demeaning presidency. Only one, Senator Mitt Romney, showed the courage to convict Mr. Trump after he was impeached. Other Republicans have criticized the president only when they have decided to leave the administration or, in the case of elected officials, chosen not to run for re-election.

History will not be kind to these sycophants and enablers. In the meantime, the G.O.P. deserves the shellacking it is likely to face on Nov. 3.

Amy S. RichOrange, Conn.

To the Editor:

Often when I discuss the political situation with my Republican friends, their response to my criticism of President Trump is to admit that he has many faults, but that his policies are aligned with their conservative values. They point to his tax cuts, his reduction of anti-business regulations, his support of the military, his success in changing the courts and, of course, the economy.

But do they really support his other policies and actions? Do they applaud his trying to eliminate Obamacare, his gutting regulations that protect our environment, his withdrawing from our global relationships related to climate change, health and weapons reduction? Do they really admire him for building up our deficit to record levels, for his relentless fight to scrap DACA, for his bizarre relationships with North Korean, Turkish and Russian strongmen, not to mention the white supremacy crowd?

Do they like his cabinet member choices, his decisions about whom to pardon or commute their sentences? Do they really think he has done a great or even an OK job managing the pandemic? How about his constant efforts to restrict voting?

Bottom line: Will my Republican friends actually vote for Mr. Trump to lead this nation for another four years? I hope not.

Harding Bancroft Jr.Sharon, Conn.

To the Editor:

Re Meet a Secret Trump Voter (column, Sept. 29):

Bret Stephens introduces us to Chris, whom he presents as a surprising Trump voter because she is an educated gay woman from Manhattan who is not a lifelong Republican. What his profile reveals of her, though, is that she cares very much about her retirement account, she is suspicious of the media, and she doesnt like the homeless people living near her.

I saw no evidence that she gives any thought to the suffering that Donald Trump and his administration have inflicted on this country. She seems to me like a perfectly natural supporter of this president.

Barth LandorChicago

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Some Republicans Are Abandoning the Trump Ship - The New York Times

Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri has not embraced QAnon, but is claiming that her Democratic opponent has displayed a disturbing pattern of putting sex offenders over our safety. (Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

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QAnon may be losing some of its online platformsbut the conspiracy theory is increasingly being enabled by the Republican Party.Ad Policy

This week, TikTok became the latest app to clamp down on QAnon, announcing a ban on content and accounts that promote the conspiracy theory. QAnon, which began in 2017 with an anonymous post on the Internet forum 4Chan by someone identifying themselves as Q and claiming to have a high-level government security clearance, revolves around the delusion that Democratic Party operatives, Hollywood stars, and members of the deep state are running a satanic child trafficking ring, and that President Trump is working to stop them. The ranks of QAnon adherents have grown remarkably this year, spreading misinformation online and inspiring real-world violence. TikToks action follows similar attempts by YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to slow the spread of Q-related disinformation.

But QAnon has already morphed from an online community of amateur detectives to a budding political movement, encompassing a mess of other conspiracist beliefs. Interest in QAnon has ballooned since the beginning of the pandemic and related economic shutdowns, when suddenly many people had nowhere to go but the Internet. Between March and July membership in 10 large QAnon Facebook groups grew by nearly 600 percent. During the same period, according to a Pew survey, the number of Americans who had heard or read a lot or a little about QAnon doubled from 23 percent to 47 percent; 41 percent of Republicans who had heard about QAnon said they thought it was somewhat or very good for the country. According to another recent poll, a majority of Republicans believe the conspiracy theory about deep state elites is at least partly true.

More than two dozen candidates who have endorsed QAnon or promoted QAnon content are vying for seats in Congress, according to Media Matters, almost all of them Republicans. Not all of these candidates are serious contenders. In Oregon, for instance, Jo Rae Perkins, who shared a video of a QAnon-related meme in which she took an oath to be digital soldier, is sure to lose her bid for Jeff Merkleys Senate seat. But at least one of these candidates is all but sure to win: Marjorie Taylor Greene, running in Georgias 14th Congressional District. Theres a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it, Greene said in a 2017 video, uploaded to YouTube this summer.Related Article

Misinformation about a vast child trafficking network has spread far beyond the bounds of explicit QAnon communities, circulating among Instagram influencers, yogis, and anti-vaxxers, often without explicit reference to Q. The fixation on pedophilia has also seeped into political campaigns even where candidates dont openly support the conspiracy theory. In September, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spent $250,000 on an attack ad against Democratic Representative Tom Malinowski, who represents a swing district in New Jersey, that opens with an ominous warning: In every city, in every neighborhood, around every corner, sex offenders are living among us. The ad goes on to claim that Malinowski tried to make it easier for predators to hide in the shadows and chose sex offenders over your family. It alleges that Malinowski worked as the top lobbyist for a radical group that strongly opposed the National Sex Offender Registry, referring to Human Rights Watch, where Malinowski was Washington director before serving as assistant secretary of state for democracy and human rights during President Obamas second term. In reality, neither Malinowski nor HRW opposed the existence of the registry. The deceptive thread that the NRCC is pulling on is a letter written 14 years ago by one of Malinowskis then-colleagues at HRW raising concerns about a crime bill that, among other things, required people convicted of sex crimes to remain on the sex offender registry for the rest of their lives, long after completing their criminal sentence.

Malinowski has described the ad as an effort by the Republican Party to align their message with the paranoia that QAnon is promoting, without directly endorsing the conspiracy theory. Malinowski was one of the co-authors of a House resolution condemning QAnon, which 17 Republicans and one independent voted against. In September, Malinowski received death threats after Q posted information about him on a message board, including an NRCC press release that, echoing the attack ad, falsely claimed that he lobbied to protect sexual predators.

Similar attacks have come up in other congressional races. In a suburban district in St Louis, Mo., Republican Representative Ann Wagner accused her challenger, Jill Schupp, of displaying a disturbing pattern of putting sex offenders over our safety. In Floridas 16th congressional district, the NRCC attacked the Democratic candidate, state Senator Margaret Good, for voting against a 2019 ban on childlike sex dolls. (Good said it was an accident.) In Michigan, the NRCC has described Democratic candidate Jon Hoadley as a pedo sex poet based upon a twisted and out-of-context interpretation of a satirical 2004 blog post.Current Issue

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Republicans in state-level races are also deploying QAnon-style messaging. In Oregon, Republican state Representative Cheri Helt aired a TV ad and sent mailers accusing her opponent, a local prosecutor named Jason Kropf, of fail[ing] to protect victims of human trafficking. The ads dont present any actual evidence of such a failure on Kropfs part, but rather refer to comments made last year by his boss, Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel, who described trafficking as not happening in the area. Helt has rejected the comparison between her campaign ads and QAnon, describing the conspiracy theory as a bizarre fantasy.

Sex abuse conspiracies arent new, and these political campaigns arent the first to weaponize trafficking or soft on crime messaging. Still, its notable that Republican campaigns are going to such great, tortured lengths to tie Democrats to trafficking this year. QAnon leveraged the visceral horror of child sex abuse to reach new followers, to the extent that some of the people parroting QAnon talking points about trafficking dont necessarily think of themselves as subscribers to the conspiracy theory. The GOP, in turn, is winking and nodding at this new, active constituency, while trying to maintain some plausible deniability. QAnons online infrastructureits YouTube channels, Facebook groups, and hashtagscan be useful to Republicans, even as they try to sidestep the movements most unsavory aspects.

Trump, for his part, is barely even trying to sidestep. Last week, in an interview with NBCs Savanah Guthrie, he refused to disavow QAnon, claiming to know nothing about it. Then he offered this information, giving the movement a rosy gloss: I do know they are very much against pedophilia. They fight it very hard, said Trump, who has been credibly accused of sexual assault by at least 25 women. At the Republican National Convention in August, Trump boasted of [taking] down human traffickers who prey on women and children. Later that month, the media reported that a joint effort by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies had broken up a massive child trafficking ring in Georgia, an intervention that conservatives and Q-linked accounts credited to Trump. However, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed that the operation involved several unrelated cases of missing children, only some of them related to trafficking or sex crimes, and that federal authorities created a false perception of having busted a major criminal enterprise. On October 20, the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of a Center for Countering Human Trafficking.

Its hard to say how much misinformation about child trafficking will affect the outcome of individual races in a political landscape already largely defined as a referendum on Trump. QAnon has been spreading quickly among evangelical Christians, a constituency loyal to the president. But the movements soft front focus on child abuse (the vast majority of which actually occurs within a home or family, rather than as a result of trafficking) has also helped it find a foothold with white and suburban women, who were a crucial voting bloc for Trump in 2016. Moms groups on Facebook have amplified QAnon messaging, as have health and wellness communities and Instagram influencers. Polls suggest that white womens support for Trump is eroding, but its possible that for at least some of these voters misinformation about trafficking could be gateway drug, as Slate suggests, to Trump support. Spanish-speaking voters in Florida and other critical swing states are also being bombarded with conspiratorial misinformation on Facebook and WhatsApp, and from radio radio stations and websites created to look like news outlets. Its difficult to measure the effect exactly, but the polling sort of shows it and in focus groups it shows up, with people deeply questioning the Democrats, and referring to the deep state in particular, Eduardo Gamarra, a pollster and director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at Florida International University told Politico.

Beyond its influence in individual campaigns, QAnon is contributing to a broader conspiratorial din surrounding the election. Trump has already warned that the election is rigged and might be stolen from him. Misinformation about voter fraud and mail-in ballots is rampant. All of this is converging in a meta-narrative of a deep-state coupa story that, if not explicitly embraced by Republican leaders, might still be useful to them in the event of a contested election.

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QAnon Is Becoming a Republican Dog Whistle - The Nation

Erie native Tom Ridge, a Republican who is a former secretary of Homeland Security, Pennsylvania governor and U.S. Representative, said he will support Joe Biden for president.(Photo: CHRISTOPHER MILLETTE FILE PHOTO/ERIE TIMES-NEWS)

WASHINGTON Tom Ridge, a decorated Vietnam veteran, Republican congressman and two-time governor of Pennsylvania, becamethe first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 underGeorge W. Bush. Ridgehas joined a group that has grown to more than 600 national security officials, including more than 20 four-star officers, to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden for president.

Federal, state and local law enforcement officials are preparing for possible clashes at polling places, violence and larger demonstrations similar to social justice protests that spilled into the streets of dozens of American cities. President Donald Trump has castdoubt on the legitimacy of the vote andrefusedto commit to a peaceful transfer of power, leading members of Congress and election experts to worry about violence after election day.

Ridge, 75,talked about his concerns regarding the election and the presidential candidatesin an interview with USA TODAY. The questions and answers have been condensed.

A: "I find unseemly, unworthy and unconscionable for an incumbent president to claim to know the heart and mindof Americans and to proclaim months before November 3, that he was going to win.And the only way that he couldn't win was through massivefraud. I never thought I must tell you, from the day I was a soldier in the '60s to the present day never thought that I'd see an American president try to undermine the most fundamental institution in our democracy. And that's our vote. That's the legitimacy of our elections."

"I am hopeful and prayerful that Americans will let the votes be counted so that we can let America's collective voice be heard. It'sno secret that there are a lot of patriotswho are concerned that his rhetoric and subtle encouragement could lead to spasms of violence in a post-election environment. It's interesting for a man who claims to be so supportive of law enforcement to also potentially create an environment where law enforcement lives in jeopardy because of violent protests. Again, it's inconsistent, inconceivable, but not surprising."

"It's just that litany of objections and concerns I have about the rule of law, about the Constitution, about his push back against the institution, about his preference for his own abilities, as opposed to the military, as opposed to the intelligence community. The list is almost endless. When he's decided that he's the smartest person in the room, regardless ofissues, including dealing with the coronavirus and ignoring the expertise brought to him by literally hundreds, if not thousands, of public health officials. So it's troubling to turn the reins of a country, the leadership of a country, to an individual who refuses to accept the guidance and counsel of experts across the board, when it doesn't suit his purpose."

"Vice President Biden hascertain personal qualities that I would like to see in my president: empathy, humanity, civility, character. They're moreimportant to me before I worry or tax policy."

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/23/pennsylvania-republican-ex-dhs-sec-tom-ridge-endorses-joe-biden/3736799001/

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4 questions on the election, its aftermath, Trump and Biden for Pa. Republican Tom Ridge - USA TODAY

Republicans in Texas are overwhelmingly behind President Trumps reelection, as are statewide officials like Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton.

But a few past GOP leaders support Democrat Joe Biden, including former Congressmen Alan Steelman and Steve Bartlett.

Perhaps the most prominent Texas Republican who is reportedly skeptical of Trump, former President George W. Bush, has made no public remarks about the 2020 race, although the New York Times reported in June that Bush wouldnt vote for Trump.

In a Zoom call with reporters on Wednesday, Jacob Monty, who was appointed to two positions by Bush, called on him to make a public statement.

I urge President Bush to denounce him and join so many Republicans and so many members of his own team that have jumped on board with Joe Biden, Monty said.

Monty is a lawyer and was formerly on the University of Houstons Board of Regents. Despite previously serving on Trumps National Hispanic Advisory Council, he now says Trump is an existential threat to both democracy and the Republican Party.

The call was organized by the Texas Democratic Party, and included Steelman, Bartlett, Monty, and former Republican consultant Pierre DuBois.

No one cares about the opinions of disgruntled former politicians, said Trump Victory Spokesperson Samantha Cotten. Texans are enthusiastic to reelect President Trump for four more years.

Texas Republicans are. A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll taken from late September to early October showed 92% of likely Republican voters said they would vote for Trump.

The presidential race overall, however, looks much closer than it was four years ago. A Quinnipiac University poll out Wednesday had the race even. Trump beat Hillary Clinton by nine points in 2016.

Despite their unity on ousting Trump, Bartlett and DuBois disagreed on whether to support the reelection of U.S. Senator John Cornyn.

Cornyn recently told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram he disagreed with President Trump privately on some issues, and tried to influence him behind the scenes.

In the Senate, though, Cornyn has almost always supported the president, as tracked by the news website FiveThirtyEight. For example, Cornyn voted against a proposal to block Trumps use of an emergency declaration to fund a border wall. He also voted against convicting the president in the impeachment trial.

Bartlett said he supports down-ballot Republicans, and Cornyn in particular. He called him a source of quiet strength.

I think John Cornyn, looking forward to a Biden presidency, will be a voice of reason and a voice of coming together, and a voice of rebuilding the traditional Republican Party, Bartlett said.

DuBois, on the other hand, said Cornyns interview with the Star-Telegram is just the senator angling for political survival, calling it too little too late.

DuBois said he tells his friends to vote against all Republicans.

If we want to rebuild the Republican Party after this election, there needs to be an absolute repudiation of it, DuBois said.

Cornyn is running for his fourth Senate term. His opponent is Democrat M.J. Hegar, an Air Force veteran.

The Quinnipiac University poll showed a competitive race, with Hegar six points behind Cornyn.

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There Are A Few Never Trump Republicans In Texas - KERA News