Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Predicts Democrats Will Win Texas in 2020

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez holds an immigration Town Hall In Queens on July 20, 2019 in
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Hannah Knudsen

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) said in a tweet Friday that Democrats will work hard and win over Texas in 2020.

The freshman lawmaker responded to a tweet from MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, which read, “Time for the GOP to start fully freaking out about Texas.”

Ocasio-Cortez took Hayes’s sentiments a step further in a tweet completely in Spanish, telling supporters to get ready because they are “going to work hard and win in Texas”:

Hayes’s tweet followed Rep. Will Hurd’s (R-TX) decision not to seek reelection, leaving the 23rd Congressional District of Texas wide open.

“I have made the decision to not seek reelection for the 23rd Congressional District of Texas in order to pursue opportunities outside the halls of Congress to solve problems at the nexus between technology and national security,” he wrote:

It is a tight district, as Hurd narrowly edged out Democrat challenger Gina Ortiz Jones in 2018, winning by less than one percent.

Republican Texas Reps. Pete Olson and Mike Conaway also recently announced they will not seek reelection, sparking Democrat hopes of a series of congressional upsets in 2020:

Some, such as former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D), believe Texas will be in play in the general election as well:

President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Texas by 9 points– 52.2 percent to 43.2 percent. The current Real Clear Politics averages of hypothetical Texas general election matchups show Trump beating every candidate except for Joe Biden (D), who is up by 2.5 percent.

As Breitbart News reported last month, the GOP is beefing up resources in Texas to prevent the blue shift Ocasio-Cortez and her counterparts predict:

Donors are reportedly strengthening efforts in the state and primarily focusing on GOP voter registration efforts. The broad goal involves registering at least one million new Republican voters ahead of 2020. One specific group, Engage Texas, led by Houston real estate developer Richard Weekley, hopes to raise millions ahead of the presidential election.

According to reports from the Washington Examiner, Engage Texas was “set up as a 501(c)4, political nonprofit organization and plans to raise and spend $25 million by Election Day next year.”

“Without our 38 electoral votes, no Republican candidate has a path to victory for the foreseeable future. That is why we are asking for the support of people around the country,” Republican Party of Texas chairman James Dickey told Breitbart Washington editor Matt Boyle on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday in April.

“One of the things that we face as a challenge in Texas is people assume that Texas always has been and always will be red. That’s not true. It was only 16 years ago that Republicans even took the Texas House,” he continued.

“Democrats have been pouring money and pouring resources into Texas to try and flip Texas,” Dickey added.

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