Politics of Texas
For about a hundred years, from after Reconstruction until the 1990s, the Democratic Party dominated Texas politics, making it part of the Solid South.
[2] A number of political commentators had suggested that Texas is trending Democratic since 2016, however, Republicans have continued to win every statewide office through 2022.
[4] But beginning in the early 20th century, voter turnout was dramatically reduced by the state legislature's disenfranchisement of most blacks, and many poor whites and Latinos.
[5] From 1848 until Dwight D. Eisenhower's victory in 1952, Texas voted for the Democratic candidate for president in every election except 1928, when it did not support Catholic Al Smith.
[6] In the post-Civil War era, two of the most important Republican figures in Texas were African Americans George T. Ruby and Norris Wright Cuney.
Ruby was a black community organizer, director in the federal Freedmen's Bureau, and leader of the Galveston Union League.
His protégé Cuney was a person of mixed-race descent whose wealthy, white planter father freed him and his siblings before the Civil War and arranged for his education in Pennsylvania.
The Solid South exercised tremendous power in Congress, and Democrats gained important committee chairmanships by seniority.
In the post-Reconstruction era, by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Republican Party became non-competitive in the South, due to Democrat-dominated legislatures' disenfranchisement of blacks and many poor whites and Latinos.
[5] Although black people made up 20 percent of the state population at the turn of the century, they were essentially excluded from formal politics.
Some of the most important American political figures of the 20th century, such as President Lyndon B. Johnson, Vice-President John Nance Garner, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, and Senator Ralph Yarborough were Texas Democrats.
But, the Texas Democrats were rarely united, being divided into conservative, moderate and liberal factions that vied with one another for power.
Beginning in the late 1960s, Republican strength increased in Texas, particularly among residents of the expanding "country club suburbs" around Dallas and Houston.
The election, to Congress, of Republicans such as John Tower, (who had switched from the Democratic Party) and George H. W. Bush in 1961 and 1966, respectively, reflected this trend.
Nationally, outside of the South, Democrats supported the civil rights movement and achieved important passage of federal legislation in the mid-1960s.
In the South, however, Democratic leaders had opposed changes to bring about black voting or desegregated schools and public facilities and in many places exercised resistance.
John Tower's 1961 election to the U.S. Senate made him the first statewide GOP officeholder since Reconstruction and the disenfranchisement of black Republicans.
In the 1992 election, Bill Clinton became the first Democrat to win the Oval Office while losing Texas electoral votes.
This result significantly reduced the power of Texas Democrats at the national level, as party leaders believed the state had become unwinnable.
Despite increasing Republican strength in national elections, after the 1990 census, Texas Democrats still controlled both houses of the State Legislature and most statewide offices.
With the Legislature unable to reach a compromise, the matter was settled by a panel of federal court judges, who ruled in favor of a district map that largely retained the status quo.
In the first elections following the redistricting, the Republicans enjoyed a gain of six seats in the 2004, giving them a majority of the state's delegation for the first time since Reconstruction.
In 1835 Antonio López de Santa Anna assumed dictatorial control over that republic and several states openly rebelled against the changes:[citation needed] Coahuila y Tejas (the northern part of which would become the Republic of Texas), San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Durango, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Yucatán, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, and Zacatecas.
"[33] In writing the majority opinion Chief Justice Salmon Chase opined that: When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation.
However, Texas was impacted by the economic downturn just like many other states, and by 2011 was suffering from tens of billions of dollars in budget deficits.
