MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
One of the biggest surprises of election night was Texas. Democrats won races for U.S. Senate with James Talarico, and for governor with Gina Hinojosa. In every statewide election in Texas, Tuesday night, a Democrat won. And Texas Democrats will have control of the lower chamber of the state legislature - that's according to a race call by the Associated Press. NPR political correspondent Ashley Lopez is in Austin. Hey there, Ashley.
ASHLEY LOPEZ, BYLINE: Hey.
KELLY: Hey. Is Texas now officially a blue state?
LOPEZ: I mean, as someone who lived in Texas for a decade, I cannot believe I'm saying this, but yeah. I mean, at least for the next few years, Texas is a blue state. The fact that Democrats won up and down the ballot, practically shut out Republicans from statewide office, means that this will be a state governed almost entirely by Democrats. There's no way to put that besides - at least for now - this is a blue state.
KELLY: Well, and Democrats have been trying to flip Texas for decades, and they have failed to flip Texas for decades. What changed?
LOPEZ: Yeah. So it was a couple of things. I mean, for one, Democratic state party leaders made investments early on in the cycle, and it proved to be, like, pretty effective. But of course, there were those massive swings among voting groups. Young people swung big towards Democrats this cycle. And then, of course, there are Latinos, the swing voters to watch every election cycle, it seems now. I talked to Stephanie Valencia. She's a Latino pollster at Equis Research. And she told me that the national swing from Republicans to Democrats among Latino voters was massive in Texas.
STEPHANIE VALENCIA: You saw this national environment playing out in a very specific way in Texas, from the economy and cost of living and the cost of gas to immigration overreach and a set of broken promises from Republicans that Latino voters felt very acutely, and especially in Texas.
KELLY: Ashley, are you getting any sense of how Republicans may respond to this total seat change in Texas politics?
LOPEZ: Yeah. I mean, it kind of depends what Republican you talk to. Today, I talk to Artemio Muniz. He's a Republican operative in Texas, and he told me that he thinks it will be tough for the GOP to win back Latino voters if they keep moving to the right on immigration.
ARTEMIO MUNIZ: But it won't be hard, if we look back at our blueprint under George W. Bush, Rick Perry - guys that understand the Texas community and the Hispanic community, we have the pedigree within our party. So I think if we get enough people to wake up and change directions - right? - get away from this dinosaur politics mentality, I think we can do it within two years.
LOPEZ: Yeah. He says he thinks that Republicans are going to have to revisit their policies if they want to win back power.
KELLY: But you just said it depends which Republican you talk to, so I gather that's not a universal view?
LOPEZ: It's not. Which is why I think it's going to be interesting to see what lessons the GOP in Texas learns from all this. Last night, the state's now outgoing comptroller, Republican Don Huffines, lost his election, and he was a very conservative member of the state legislature for several years. And he blamed Republican losses on leaders not being conservative enough. And he said he thinks that the outgoing Republican Governor Greg Abbott played to the center too much, which I think very few people outside of the right wing of the party would agree with. But right now, all these Republican leaders that are on their way out, the party will have to come up with a plan to win back the power they managed to keep for multiple decades until now.
KELLY: NPR's Ashley Lopez, thank you.
LOPEZ: Yeah. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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