Battleground: Suburban Texas

» DMN: Texas' battleground is older suburbs (William McKenzie)

Great read by McKenzie. Still a bit of clarity needed in how suburban voting trends have been created to date, though. Namely, I think Kronberg oversimplifies.

First, the good ...

Mostly white, educated, professional families moved to the bedroom community in the middle of the last century for spacious ranch-style homes, good schools and employers like Texas Instruments. Over time, Richardson's population evolved; today, its school district offers courses to students born into 84 languages. Shopping centers cater to émigrés from China and Korea in a prosperous Asian community.

Republicans can't expect to win suburbs with growing minority populations with a message aimed only at white conservatives.

This is borne out in census data. In picking over Bill Bishop's "The Big Sort," I confess to dwelling on those suburban areas that are beyond the tipping point for some of the changes that McKenzie hits on. But even if you look at counties like Montgomery, the demographic trends are very real there, as well. They just aren't as dominant and they haven't shown up yet in the form of electoral shifts. Still, the demographic shift alone refutes Bishop's point in every Texas suburban county. There are still some exurban examples the theory can cling to, but even those are likely to be revisited in another decade.

Now, Kronberg ...

I remember traveling through Williamson County with Democratic Senate nominee Richard Fisher in 1994, when he held an afternoon meeting at a park to recruit like-minded suburban professionals. The effort was valiant, but church picnics draw more folks.

Fourteen years later, a Democrat may win in Williamson County, which has voted solidly Republican in every presidential and Senate race for at least 16 years. The Quorum Report's Harvey Kronberg attributes Ms. Maldonado's chances to the numerous professionals who retained their Democratic leanings as they fled pricey Austin north across the county line.

This is the oversimplified case of a pundit more conscience of getting a soundbite into print rather than exploring reality. I don't doubt that some of what we see in Williamson is liberal Austinites moving to be rid of all those hackey-sack-playing T-sips. But that doesn't explain it all. It probably doesn't even begin to explain it. What of the new arrivals who see the more suburban layout of Round Rock as far more navigable than the winding streets of Austin? What of those who move in from the more rural counties, but don't want to move further into the hustle and bustle of Austin-dom? I could keep adding examples like these if I wanted. A Dallas/Collin parallel might include the Asian influx that follows with some of the high-tech companies in the area. (Where did they move from? ... and how do we explain their "sorting" into majority Anglo turf?) The bottom line is that a reductionist point such as Kronberg's shouldn't even be making the final cut in articles exploring the issue in the manner McKenzie begins to.

After the election, I'm hoping to do some followup on Dem voting patterns in areas such as Texas suburban counties. The working theory with Obama is that he shouldn't do too poorly in those areas, and at least won't be a drag on downballot races in those environments. Without a doubt, the economic situation casts the outcomes in a potentially different light. But it still warrants a lot of attention to see the results there.

Here's why: 2010 will be a very different election here in Texas than 2002 was. 2002 was the last "John Sharp" style campaign, with swing voters hunted in rural areas and in East Texas. Given the history of East Texas and Democrats, there was a lot of sense in this approach. If you get them to come home, you're back in the game. Sharp added a fair amount of appeal around his base in Victoria and played well in rural areas due to his own political history. Being a former comptroller also gave him entree to a lot of business types over his term in that office. It wasn't a bad notion for him to run the way he ran. Unfortunately, it proved to be a losing strategy that has now faded in terms of it's electoral profitability.

For Democrats to win in 2010, the road to Austin goes through Plano and Round Rock ... and even Sugar Land. Those swing voters, I suspect, will show up in larger numbers for Democrats this November than East Texas swing voters did for any Democrat in the past. The math is better there and the stylistic fit with a Democratic message of competence and fiscal responsibility is far better than the cultural square dance required to "head east." In other words: better to fight for a voter who cares about schools that work in Frisco and maintain a better connection with them in the face of election debates than to "connect" with voters in Marhsall who run at the first mention of immigration.

SIDENOTE: The AP notes that tonight's Presidential debate is set in America's "first suburb." Poignancy doesn't get any easier than that.