Sen. John Cornyn, a three-term Republican, has fended off his first actual problem from newcomer MJ Hegar in Texas regardless of Democratic fun
Sen. John Cornyn, a three-term Republican, has fended off his first actual problem from newcomer MJ Hegar in Texas regardless of Democratic funding in turning the as soon as reliably pink state blue this election cycle.
It’s the second election 12 months in a row during which a Democrat has come near unseating a Republican senator in Texas, following former Congress member Beto O’Rourke’s near-miss towards Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018.
Hegar, who ran for Congress in 2018 however has by no means held political workplace, had been trailing Cornyn within the polls by single digits; she seemed to be inside firing distance of her opponent and had erased his cash-on-hand benefit. In the course of a pandemic that made in-person canvassing inconceivable, nonetheless, the previous Air Drive helicopter pilot struggled to construct identify recognition throughout the state’s huge 254 counties.
Cornyn’s capability to compete with suburban and concrete voters helped carry him to victory. Nonetheless, he isn’t rising from the race unscathed. With Hegar biting at his heels, he was compelled to shift to the middle on sure points, together with his stance on providing everlasting protections to immigrant DREAMers who arrived within the US as youngsters.
Touting his file as a bipartisan dealmaker within the Senate, he sought to distance himself himself from President Trump, likening their relationship to a foul marriage (although he has forged votes supporting the president’s agenda 95 p.c of the time). Slightly than staking his candidacy on the president’s file, Cornyn framed his reelection marketing campaign as a battle to avoid wasting Texas from coastal liberals.
“I believe this election presents a transparent alternative between the individuals who recruited and supported MJ’s marketing campaign, which need to make Texas extra like California and New York,” he stated throughout a televised debate final month. “I need to make the remainder of the nation extra like Texas.”
Texas’s altering voters drove Cornyn to the center
Texas is at a political turning level, largely introduced on by demographic change. The state final backed a Democrat for president in 1976, and Republicans have held state legislative chambers and the governorship since 2003. However the state is changing into more and more city, and Hispanics are on monitor to develop into its largest inhabitants group by mid-2021, two developments that usually favor Democrats.
That long-promised transformation has been sluggish to reach, partially as a result of state Republicans have sought to curb voter participation: Simply this 12 months, they’ve banned counties from sending mail-in ballots to all registered voters, restricted the variety of poll drop-off areas to only one per county, and tried to cease drive-through voting. Nonetheless, Texas Republicans seemed to be in actual strife this 12 months up and down the poll.
Cornyn, for his half, had been making an attempt to painting himself as a reasonable on sure points as Hegar climbed within the polls. That was significantly clear in the best way he spoke about his immigration coverage.
Although the Republican Occasion has largely mirrored Trump’s restrictive immigration insurance policies, Cornyn made a Spanish-language advert purchase in September touting his help for the DREAM Act, which might provide a path to citizenship for 1.eight million unauthorized immigrants nationwide who got here to the US as youngsters. The invoice, which is a few twenty years within the making, has been blocked repeatedly in Congress, typically along with his help and typically with out.
He voted towards variations of the invoice in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2018, which immigrant advocates cite as proof that he’s no ally of DREAMers. If he actually supported younger unauthorized immigrants, he would have referred to as for a vote on a standalone invoice to legalize them that handed the Home in 2019, Mario Carrillo, a Texas-based spokesperson for the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, stated in a press release.
However Cornyn’s aides have touted his help for different variations of the invoice, together with a 2018 proposal that coupled everlasting protections for DREAMers with $25 billion in funding for Trump’s border wall and different border safety measures.
Cornyn’s determination to spotlight that vote steered that he was shifting to the center, Tory Gavito, a Democratic strategist and president of the donor community Option to Win, stated.
“There isn’t a doubt that the organizing that has gone into Texas has pulled him to the left,” she stated.
As in different races nationwide, well being care was a prime difficulty
Each Cornyn and Hegar’s campaigns highlighted their competing visions of what the American well being care system ought to appear to be, a difficulty that was prime of thoughts in a state with one of many worst coronavirus outbreaks nationwide. Coronavirus hospitalizations peaked over the summer time after Texas turned one of many first states to reopen its financial system, and there have been regarding indicators that Texas is due for an additional surge as circumstances have just lately spiked in El Paso and North Texas.
Pandemic or not, entry to well being care is a matter that looms giant in Texas, which has the best uninsured fee nationwide and is one in all 12 states which have but to increase Medicaid beneath the Reasonably priced Care Act’s joint state-federal program; it has supplied well being care protection to people with incomes under 138 p.c of the poverty line (about $17,600 for a single grownup) since 2016.
Hegar, who labored for a Texas hospital system for 5 years, has embraced a “Medicare-for-all-who-want-it” system modeled after the well being care system within the navy. She sought to attract consideration to Cornyn’s historical past as a number one proponent of repealing and changing the ACA within the Senate, and of receiving marketing campaign contributions from pharmaceutical executives.
Cornyn claimed that, even when the ACA had been repealed, he would nonetheless protect the legislation’s protections for People with preexisting circumstances, which most People help, and permit folks beneath the age of 26 to remain on their dad and mom’ medical insurance plans.
“You already know, preexisting circumstances is one thing all of us agree needs to be coated,” he stated in a marketing campaign advert that aired in October, echoing different Republican senators in shut races.
Nonetheless, he supported the Republican-led Higher Care Reconciliation Act in 2017, which might have allowed insurers promoting plans on the person market to disclaim protection or enhance prices for folks with preexisting circumstances. He additionally supported the Defend Act in 2019, which, regardless of Senate Republicans’ efforts to invoice it in any other case, would permit insurers to supply “skinny protection aimed toward wholesome prospects, and significantly costlier insurance policies with complete protection for individuals who would possibly really want expensive care,” in response to the LA Instances.
“It blows my thoughts that John Cornyn can sleep at night time after making an attempt to tear away care from tens of millions of Texans,” Hegar instructed Vox throughout an interview in October.