Texas faces turbulent political moment

For a quarter century, Texas Republicans have run a ruby-red state, building a conservative bastion where government is limited.

Now, the mounting tensions of racially-motivated rhetoric, a polarizing president and Republican infighting have rocked Texas’s political leadership to its core. And the state may soon face a tipping point brought on by shifting coalitions of voters who want change, in Austin and Washington.

The tumult is creating turnover that has startled even the closest observers of Texas politics. In just the last week, Reps. Kenny Marchant (R), Pete Olson (R), Will Hurd (R) and Mike Conaway (R) have said they will retire rather than seek a new term in 2020.

The nation’s attention has been focused on Texas this week because of the killings of 22 people by a long shooter who attacked a Walmart in El Paso. The shootings were even more disturbing for a manifesto allegedly written by the accused shooter that described an “invasion” of immigrants.

So far, newcomers to Texas from blue states — states with stricter gun control laws, a stronger social safety net and a looser approach to international immigrants — have been bigger change agents than Hispanics in the state — a large number of whom have tended to stay home on Election Day.

“In Texas, we have been waiting for what’s called a Pete Wilson moment for a quarter century,” said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University, referring to the former California governor who led the campaign to pass a controversial anti-immigrant law in 1994, setting the state on a trajectory toward its current liberal status. “A Pete Wilson moment that would awake the Hispanic electorate has never come.”

It's far from clear that the El Paso shootings — the fifth mass shooting in Texas in the last five years — will be that moment, though its potential for further roiling the state’s politics is obvious.