Joe Biden, Donald Trump at US-Mexico border will spotlight competitive politics in Texas

The dueling visits to the Texas border Thursday by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump not only focus the political spotlight on the ongoing immigration crisis, but they also underscore the risks and opportunities for both parties in a region of the state once considered an impenetrable Democratic stronghold.

Biden will arrive in Brownsville, the seat of Cameron County and the largest city in the Rio Grande Valley, with a mission to blunt the Republicans' success in painting the Democratic administration's border security and immigration policies as an unmitigated failure. And Republicans believe their framing of the issue as Biden's fault presents them with an opportunity to pick off a South Texas congressional seat held by a Democrat, and perhaps a few legislative seats, in November.

"Here in South Texas, Republicans have doubled our numbers from the last presidential election," said Adrienne Pe?a-Garza, the Republican chairwoman for Hidalgo County, situated along the border about 60 miles from where Biden will speak. "And so we're just continuing to activate on the ground and share our message."

Voting trends in Hidalgo and Cameron counties over the past few presidential elections are what provide Pe?a-Garza and her fellow Republicans their optimism in South Texas. In 2012 and 2016, the Democratic presidential ticket won about 70% of the vote in Hidalgo County. That share plummeted more than 10 percentage points in 2020 in the first Biden-Trump matchup.

Cameron County historically has been more Republican-friendly, but not so much that Democrats had to worry about losing political offices. In the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, Democrats sauntered off with about 65% both times. In the last go-round, Biden netted only 56% in the county.

More: A Joe Biden photo op at the border? Here's what mayors and governors say they really want.

Pe?a-Garza said Hidalgo County is ripe for Trump's picking in November.

"I think he'll get 50% — more than 50%, God willing," she said.

The shift toward Republicans is even more striking in Maverick County, home of Eagle Pass, a city of about 29,000 along the Texas-Mexico border that has become ground zero for the immigration crisis and where Trump will hold his event. In 2012 and 2016, more than three out of four voters cast ballots for the Democratic presidential nominee. Four years ago, Biden carried Maverick County with just 54% of the vote.

In 2022, Republican Monica de la Cruz won an open congressional seat anchored in Hidalgo County, beating her Democratic opponent by about 12,000 votes out of about 149,000 ballots cast. This cycle, Republicans are targeting the district to De La Cruz's east where veteran Democratic U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez is seeking reelection. Gonzalez won by a comfortable 8-point margin in the last election.

Matt Angle, a Texas Democratic operative active in several congressional campaigns and other races dating back more than three decades, said much of the Republican gains in South Texas are illusory. The district that De La Cruz won was redrawn after the 2020 census by trimming out Democratic-leaning Latino voters and adding in conservative white voters from counties well north of the Rio Grande Valley, he said.

"What they did was they diluted the voting strength of Hispanics, particularly along the border, and then increase the amount of the population in the rural parts of those districts," Angle said. "My biggest frustration is this illusion that Republicans are doing better along the border. Well, it's no coincidence."

Regardless, Angle said, the upshot is that Democrats can no longer afford to take South Texas for granted.

More: Border security will be Biden's focus during his visit to Texas. Here's what we know.

"The problem for Democrats is for us to then say, 'Well, that's all it's (gerrymandering) so we don't need to work,'" Angle said. "Make no mistake, Democrats need, we need to do a lot better job along the border ... and tell the story about how Republicans are not only nonresponsive to Hispanics, they're openly hostile to them."

University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus said that when it comes to the twin issues of border security and immigration, Democrats have been out-messaged by Republicans dating back to Trump's first campaign for president and throughout the past three-plus years of Greg Abbott's governorship.

"I think the president has to go on offense (in Brownsville) by playing a bit of defense," Rottinghaus said. "He's got to be able to blunt the momentum Republicans have on the immigration issue.

"My take is that the Republicans are winning on the immigration issue, and if that is what the race is about, then Republicans up and down the ballot are going to take victories in November."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Joe Biden, Donald Trump at border puts Texas in political spotlight