Two recent articles on that topic. Number one, from the Chron:
Texas Republicans’ controversial move last summer to redraw the state’s congressional maps with the aim of flipping five Democratic seats this fall may be complicated by President Donald Trump’s low approval ratings, experts say.
High prices on gas and groceries, along with a nationwide immigration crackdown that has sometimes turned violent, have led pollsters to predict a “blue wave” in November’s midterms. The GOP counted on Texas Latinos, in particular, to maintain the support they showed for Trump in 2024, political scientists said, but may have inadvertently weakened some of their advantages as the president’s approval rating plummets among the demographic.
Several South Texas districts, including two that were redrawn to favor Republicans by double digits, now appear to be legitimate toss-ups, experts said. The shift could even influence contests in deep-red areas like the newly redrawn Congressional District 9 east of Houston, though the state’s political experts still give Republican Alex Mealer an edge over Democrat Leticia Gutierrez.
More than 60% of Latino Texans now have an unfavorable view of the president, according to polling by the Texas Politics Project, one of the highest rates in nearly a decade.
Even a few Democratic pickups could determine control of the U.S. House for the last two years of Trump’s term, said Sean Theriault, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin.
“South Texas districts are going to be more competitive… and I think that as the election gets closer and closer we’ll see them start drifting toward the toss-up category,” he said. “Those districts I think are going to determine who’s the majority (in the House).”
While Democrats are growing optimistic about the South Texas races, other redrawn districts now held by Democrats still appear to favor Republicans. Congressional District 32 now lies in staunchly conservative suburbs of Dallas and East Texas, while District 35, in the San Antonio area, also appears to favor the GOP.
CD-9, too, is still rated “solid red,” according to the Cook Political Report.
The south Houston seat held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Green for more than 20 years now covers predominantly Latino territory in conservative pockets of Harris and Liberty counties. Democrats hope the district’s new demographics might favor Gutierrez given Trump’s dip in support among Latinos. But political observers still make Mealer, who is campaigning with a 37-to-1 fundraising advantage, the heavy favorite.
“Republicans have made themselves a little bit more vulnerable, but the national environment would have to get much, much worse before they’ve put themselves in any big danger” in CD-9, Theriault said.
Texas Democratic Chair Kendall Scudder said the party is mounting aggressive campaigns in every district but acknowledged that winning even one of the seats the Republican redistricting targeted would represent a success.
“If Republicans fail to steal five seats, that is a huge win for Democrats because the dice are loaded and it’s been stacked against us,” Scudder said.
It’s curious to me that this article focused on CD09 while only mentioning CD35 in passing, given that CD35 Democratic candidate Johnny Garcia has raised a bunch of money, gotten the support of the DCCC, and raised his profile considerably following the Maureen Galindo debacle. It’s also rated “Likely Republican” by Cook, so more favorable to Dems. Believe me, I’d love nothing more than for Dems to rally to Leticia Gutierrez’s support in the hope of keeping that twerp Alex Mealer out of office. That doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
And article #2, from Politico:
Not long after Texas Republicans sliced up their congressional map to create five new GOP seats, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar approached House Speaker Mike Johnson with a question: Who should I thank, you or the White House?
Cuellar’s new district is redder at first blush — President Donald Trump won it by 10 points in 2024, as opposed to a 7-point margin before. But when Cuellar’s team crunched the numbers, they were shocked to find it actually might be more favorable to him. House Democrats, Cuellar included, performed a whole percentage point better in 2024 in the new district. Democrats down-ballot had won there. And it was still overwhelmingly Hispanic.
Cuellar told POLITICO he showed the figures in disbelief to Johnson, who scanned the ledgers. Thank the White House, Johnson said. (Johnson spokesperson Greg Steele said he “didn’t know any details” about the anecdote, but said the veteran Texas politician “will lose this seat.”)
Cuellar, alongside Rep. Vicente Gonzalez and a pair of Democratic challengers in the new South Texas districts, are trying to do what seemed unlikely a year ago: Ride local discontent over a lagging economy and Trump’s harsh immigration crackdown to overcome Texas Republicans’ aggressive gerrymander.
“Hispanics are having buyer’s remorse,” Cuellar told POLITICO in an interview during a South Texas Builders Association conference in the Rio Grande Valley.
[…]
Cuellar and Gonzalez are both running against well-funded opponents in majority-Hispanic districts that stretch north from the border into south-central Texas. Sandwiched between them is a skinny strip of a district where Tejano music star Bobby Pulido is challenging GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz — a seat Democrats had held for nearly a century before she triumphed in 2022. And in a new district that stretches south and east of San Antonio, one of House Democrats’ prized recruits, former sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia, is facing GOP businessman Carlos De La Cruz, the congresswoman’s younger brother.
Trump rode concerns over former President Joe Biden’s border policy to flip once-deep-blue South Texas, winning 14 of 18 border counties, and he won every new South Texas district by 10 points or more. But that will only hold up if the GOP can maintain the historic high-water mark the president managed in the region.
“[Republicans’] plan backfired, and now we’re seeing Latinos shift back to our party, the same Latinos that they thought they had in the bag,” said Garcia.
Monica De La Cruz is adamant Hispanics will stay with her party, but she acknowledges the immigration crackdown has made things tough.
“Whether I’m at church, at the grocery store, while I’m in activities with my children, I’m hearing those same concerns — that people are feeling frightened in the community,” said Monica La Cruz. She said she has emphasized to Republican congressional leadership that immigration should be “focused on cartels, on traffickers and on violent criminals.”
That could be enough to sway voters away from the party, other Republicans warn.
“I don’t think Latino voters that voted in 2024 will stick around,” said Massey Villarreal, a Houston-based businessman who previously chaired the Republican National Hispanic Assembly. “[Trump] is targeting the Latino community. He’s separating families. He’s breaking businesses.”
On a recent weekday morning in Pharr, a community 15 miles north of the Rio Grande River, some 200 construction executives, elected officials and others, almost all of them Hispanic, funneled into a cavernous event center. A mariachi band and Mexican folk dancers greeted them. Then, on the screens overhead, video footage showed an early-morning ICE raid targeting construction workers.
“Those of you all that hunt, you got to know when the hunting is good, right?” said Jacob Monty, an immigration attorney. “They hunt our workers early in the morning on the way to work.”
Local construction industry leaders have warned for months that Trump’s immigration raids were causing a labor shortage and driving up costs. Now, many are furious.
“Let’s be real. We voted for this,” said Ronnie Cavazos, president of the South Texas Builders Association, the group hosting the event. “I’ll take the blame.”
Gonzalez and Cuellar attended the conference, pledging to the construction executives in attendance that they would fight for their workforce. Few Republican officials attended.
I’m never going to be a fan of either Henry Cuellar or Vicente Gonzalez, but they are very much doing the most important thing in politics, which is showing up. Neither this story nor the previous one mentioned CD23, also rated “Likely Republican” by Cook. I think both that and CD35 are due for a re-evaluation, especially if the statewide races are being viewed more favorably for Dems. You don’t get to a close race for Governor without districts like those two (and, let’s be honest, more than a few others) also being more competitive for Dems. No guarantees, obviously, just an observation that these things are related.