Mediaboss Marketing

The Texas Constitution

Fun facts about the document that guides the laws of the Lone Star State.

John C. Moritz/USA TODAY NETWORK

AUSTINPop quiz Question 1: What do Louisiana, Kansas, Kentucky and Texas have in common when it comes to politics? Answer: All have gone Republican in every presidential election this century.

Question 2: Pull Texas out of the mix, and then what do they have in common? Answer: They are all currentlyrun by Democratic governors. That's something Texas has not been able claim in almost 28 years. In fact, Democratshaven't won any statewide elections in that long, and there have been about 100 of them during that time.

By way of illustration, an online site for lottery players puts the odds of someone matchingthree of the six numbers in a Lotto Texas drawing at about 1 in 75. The payout for hitting three of six is a modest $3. But it stillmeans a Texas Democrat has a better chance of winning at least part of the Lotto jackpot than getting elected statewide.

So why can Democrats win at least sometimes in red states but not in Texas? There's not a one-size-fits-all answer, but there are some clues. And, like the Lotto analogy, evidence suggests that a little luck is often involved.

Let's look at Kentucky. It's home to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, arguably the most powerful Republican currentlyholding elective office. And it's arguably even redder than Texas. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 30 percentage points in 2016and crushed Joe Biden by 32 points four years later.

But between those blowouts, along came Democrat Andy Beshear. In 2019, one of the nation's few odd-year state elections, Beshear challenged Trump-backed Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. Beshear had come out for expanded Medicaid for economically distressed families and sided with public school teachers, whom Bevin had targeted as "selfish" and "ignorant."

More: MORITZ: 2022 is almost here, so now's time to start paying attention to midterm elections

Beshear, then the state attorney general, whose father had served as Kentucky governor, benefited from voters being turned off by Bevin's sometimes pugnacious behavior.He also ran into a bit of luck. Bevin's vote tally was just a hair'sbreadth below 50%, and pundits said the 2% pulled by the Libertarian candidate was enough to vanquish the Republican incumbent.

Louisiana elected Democrat John Bel Edwards governor in 2015, toward the end of Barack Obama's presidency. Recall that the Obama era midterm and off-year elections were brutal for Democrats, especially in the South. But Bel Edwards, who happensto share the same last name as Louisiana political legend Edwin Edwards (there goes that luck thing again), stuck to bread-and-butter issues as a way of not getting intertwined with his state's antipathy toward Obama.

Bel Edwards, who is not related to Edwin Edwards,was reelected in 2019. It didn't hurt that he is a gun rights advocate and anti-abortion in heavily Catholic Louisiana. And he campaigned heavily and turned outthe vote among Black Louisianans. The racewas close, but a win is a win. And the next year, Trump took Louisiana by a comfortable 60-40 ratio.

More: MORITZ: How unfamous people with famous names have fared in Texas politics over the years

Kansas is so Republican that no Democrat has carried the state in a presidential election since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. But in 2018, a good year for Democrats nationally, Laura Kelly pushed back against Trump's hard line on immigration and vowed to expand Medicaid. Kelly also aggressively courted Republican moderates who were uncomfortable with both Trump and former Gov. Sam Brownback.

So what does all this mean for Texas in 2022, not only in the governor's race but down the ballot as well? The easy, and perhaps flip, answer for Democrats is to pray for a long overdue change of luck. The harder, and so farunattainable, answer is tofind some way to make your own luck.

John C. Moritz covers Texas government and politics for the USA Today Network in Austin. Contact him at jmoritz@gannett.comand follow him on Twitter@JohnnieMo.

Read more here:
MORITZ: Democrats win in other red states, but in Texas, they're unable to crack the code - Corpus Christi Caller-Times