DALLAS, Texas – At the farmers market, 58-year-old Kody Johnson said he still believes in U.S. President Donald Trump’s ability to energize voters.
This belief is the basis of the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention. The midterm convention is the first event aimed at mobilizing voters ahead of November’s congressional elections, especially in a manner dominated by President Trump.
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The president, whose approval ratings have declined in recent months, will not participate in the vote, but is a major player in the presidential election.
“People will come from miles away (to see President Trump),” said Johnson, a Republican voter and quarry owner.
He argued that the convention, which President Trump hastily announced in June, could provide the impetus needed to prevent the rise of liberals in Texas, led by Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Tallarico, and maintain conservatives’ decades-long hold on statewide office.
“Texas is leaning toward purple,” he said. “This will definitely help…Trump can energize voters.”
Shania Spears, who was walking her dog in a downtown Dallas park, took a different view, describing herself as a voter who cares more about policy than political party.
The 29-year-old marketing expert for a technology company wondered how the convention would effectively address the state’s growing dissatisfaction with Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s leadership and President Trump’s second term.
How can this event help alleviate a range of issues that Texans continue to grapple with, she asked, particularly the persistently high cost of groceries and gas?
“It’s just entertainment,” Spears concluded. “It’s like a circus.”
Mid-term front line?
Texas has emerged as a frontrunner in the Nov. 3 midterm voting, and the convention cements its extraordinary importance.
J. Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in suburban Dallas, said the Lone Star State has long been held up as a symbol of the “red state model,” defined by a low-tax, low-regulation economic model and socially conservative policies.
The state’s three branches of government, the Senate, House and Governor’s Office, have been controlled by Republicans for three decades. A Democrat has not won a statewide office since 1994.
“Texas looms large in the Republican imagination as kind of a model state for Republican policy,” Wilson said, adding that Texas is home to major Republican donors and was also the “epicenter” of the shift in Latino support for Trump in 2024.
While Trump will certainly receive a warm welcome from his Texas home base, he said the location also highlights the state’s increasingly precarious position for Republicans.
Polls consistently suggest that Talarico, a Democrat, is leading or tied with Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Senate race. President Trump’s decision to endorse scandal-plagued Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the state’s Republican primary has added a decidedly personal element to the race.
Meanwhile, Gov. Abbott, who is close to Mr. Trump, faces an emerging challenge from Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, and three U.S. House districts along the U.S. border, including two currently held by Republicans, are up for contest in November.
Griffin Blackburn, 41, a Dallas bartender and Democratic supporter, told Al Jazeera that he sees the decision to hold the convention in Dallas as a sign of growing concerns about a liberal backlash.
“Honestly, I think this case shows how afraid and frightened they are,” he told Al Jazeera. “And how people feel about the Republican Party.”
A referendum?
On the policy front, Texas has adopted many of President Trump’s most aggressive agenda items, which some supporters argue bode well for the president’s vision for the country.
“What you’re going to hear is that Texas is kind of a testing ground or pilot space for these policies,” Javier Hidalgo, communications director for immigrant advocacy group RAICES Texas, told Al Jazeera.
He pointed to the Abbott government’s pressure on local governments to have local police enforce federal immigration enforcement on their behalf under so-called 287(g) agreements. The campaign predates President Trump’s efforts to leverage federal funding to states to win immigration and voting concessions.
Texas also recently passed a law that requires jurisdictions to coordinate with federal immigration authorities and allows local police to crack down on individuals suspected of entering the country without documentation, a policy that human rights groups say codifies racial profiling.
When it comes to voting rights, Texas has long imposed strict limits on voter identification and mail-in voting. The Brennan Center for Justice linked a 2021 law that placed further restrictions on mail-in voting to disproportionately deny voting to Latino, Asian, and Black voters.
Texas was also the first state to heed President Trump’s call for a rare redistricting exercise in the middle of the decade, redrawing the state’s congressional maps with the potential to add five more seats to Republican-held seats.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) denounced the move, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, as “unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.”
Hidalgo cautioned against viewing the popularity of candidates like Talarico as a referendum on a single issue, but said it could reflect broader backlash in the state.
“Voters will look at the candidates and see who is least likely to do more harm,” he said.
Trump first incident
How much damage President Trump will do to the Republican Party in the final stages of the midterm elections remains a subject of debate.
The president could become an albatross for some Republican candidates in battleground states, with his approval ratings down 20 points since January, according to some polls, and with the unpopular war against Iran continuing with no end in sight.
But Mark Jones, a political science fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, said the Texas convention emphasized that distancing is not an option.
“Typically in midterm elections with an unpopular president, candidates from major parties in battleground states tend to distance themselves from the president,” Jones said.
“But with Donald Trump, that’s not possible. Especially in his second term, he’s become inextricably linked to the Republican Party and the Republican brand.”
“I think the Republican Party across the country, and especially the Republican Party here in Texas, has decided that the best strategy is to embrace the president and hope that he can mobilize voters to vote in the midterm elections, where he won’t be on the ballot and don’t normally vote, starting in 2024,” he said.
Eating Vietnamese rice at a food court in downtown Dallas, Pat Ferguson, 54, had little faith that an unconventional midterm convention, especially one focused on winning the administration’s cause, would inspire voters.
“The conventions don’t affect anything that sways them,” said Ferguson, a Navy and Army veteran who said he has voted both Republicans and Democrats throughout his life.
“People vote with their wallets. They are feeling the impact of high oil prices,” he added. “They are feeling the impact of the tariffs indirectly or directly.”
“This is how Democrats lost (the 2024 election),” Ferguson said. “It’s hard for Republicans to say, ‘Everything is great. This is exactly how it should be.'”
