A left-leaning group is planning to spend $6 million organizing Latino voters in Texas, a group that has trended away from Democrats but is pivotal to their hopes of picking up seats in Congress.Somos Votantes has started a $2 million statewide voter education push centered on door-to-door conversations and voter registration. Its affiliated political committee, Somos PAC, is preparing a $4 million advertising campaign focused on three South Texas House districts, where they aim to channel voter angst about the economy into support for Democratic candidates in Republican-leaning districts. “We’re really hoping that we can reconsolidate support for Democrats by presenting the positive economic vision that Democratic candidates in these House districts have,” said Melissa Morales, the founder of Somos Votantes.Texas is at the crossroads of the fight for control of the U.S. House in the November midterms, and winning back Hispanics who were drawn to President Donald Trump in 2024 will be key to Democrats’ chances there.
Last fall, Republicans in the Texas Legislature, acting on pressure from Trump, redrew district boundaries in the GOP’s favor, aiming to pick up as many as five Democratic House seats. They made a bet that the decade-long shift of working-class Hispanics toward the GOP was not an aberration, though that’s far from a foregone conclusion.Somos PAC is targeting three districts where Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024: The 15th District, where Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz is facing Tejano music star Bobby Pulido; the 23rd, which is currently vacant after Republican Rep. Tony Gonzalez resigned after admitting an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide; and the 35th, a largely new district created in the recent redistricting.
