SAN ANTONIO – Texas’ new Congressional District 35 is an open seat that is expected to be competitive in November.
Texas Republicans redrew the maps last year, creating four new seats that lean red in the process. Voters will decide which candidates from each party will face off in the fall to claim the new seat in Congress.
“According to political operatives in South Texas and elsewhere, this is going to one of those competitive seats in the fall, could be won by a Democrat or a Republican,” said Scott Braddock, editor of Quorum Report, an independent online publication that delves deep into Texas politics.
District 35 was initially created back in 2010 and had been a Democratic stronghold.
Up until last year, the seat was held by Democrat Greg Casar, but Casar was drawn out of the very district he was representing in the U.S. House of Representatives when the new district map was drafted and signed into law.
Before the district map was redrawn, the district boundary lines for the most part followed Interstate 35 North going through Bexar County to include sections of San Antonio.
It included a sliver of Comal County, some of Caldwell County and stretched Hays County then expanded out, gabbing sections of Travis County, including parts of Austin.
That’s not the case anymore.
The new Congressional District 35 is now comprised up of Karnes, Guadalupe, and Wilson counties, along with a big chunk of south Bexar County. Austin is no longer included.
The new district contains less than 10% of its former constituents, according to the Texas Tribune.
The new district is now predominately rural communities that voting trends show lean more Republican, but Braddock said the section of Bexar County that is part CD 35 will carry a lot of weight.
“There’s a lot of Bexar County in that seat, in that district, and so people in San Antonio have an outsized influence over what happens here,” Braddock said. “I think it’s more than 25% of the actual vote in the district is going to happen right in the San Antonio area.”
He said the candidates vying for the U.S. House seat will have to shape their message to reach rural and city voters to make it through and beyond the primary.
“Whichever candidates come out of the Democratic and Republican primaries, they will probably want to pivot toward the middle to speak to that centrist voter by the time November rolls around.” Braddock said. “Both sides are going to be trying to figure out some way to talk about the issues that really speaks to those swing voters, people who could go either way toward a Republican or Democrat.”
Some of those issues are affordability, economy, water and immigration.
In all, there are 15 candidates running for District 35, 11 Republicans and four Democrats:
Randy Adams (R)
Josh Cortez (R)
Carlos De La Cruz (R)
Mark Eberwine (R)
Jay Furman (R)
Maureen Galindo (D)
Johnny Garcia (D)
Vanessa Hicks-Callaway (R)
Ryan Krause (R)
Larry La Rose (R)
Rod Lingsch (R)
Lingsch did not interview with KSAT.
John Lira (D)
John Lujan (R)
Whitney Masterson-Moyes (D)
Steven Wright (R)
Braddock said the Democratic side appears to have more shape to it due to fewer candidates, compared to the crowed Republican side that could be influenced by split endorsements.
“John Lujan, in this case, has the endorsement of the governor (Greg Abbott) and Carlos de la Cruz has the endorsements of President Trump,” he said.
“You just see Trump everywhere,” Braddock continued. “There’s sort of Trump saturation. With the governor, he’s been a little stingier about his endorsements, so in some ways it might actually go further than an endorsement from the president.”
Braddock went on to say that it does not mean that the endorsement from Trump is not important, but that Republican candidates are really testing how far it can go.
Braddock is anticipating runoffs in this race. And be it a Republican or a Democrat who ultimately wins, he said they more than likely set the political guidance of the new district.
“They get to set the tone for how that part of South Texas is going be represented,” Braddock said.
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