If this defection, covered by Katie on Monday, were merely a one-off event, I'm not sure it would merit much additional attention. But it's not. Let's walk through some of the breadcrumbs: (1) Over the last year or so, Republicans have made major gains in South Texas, boasting revitalized and surging support among Hispanics. Major news organizations have taken notice and written about the emerging phenomenon. An excerpt from a New York Times story published in May:
Hispanic Republicans, especially women, have become something of political rock stars in South Texas after voters in the Rio Grande Valley shocked leaders in both parties in November by swinging sharply toward the G.O.P. Here in McAllen, one of the region’s largest cities, Mr. Trump received nearly double the number of votes he did four years earlier; in the Rio Grande Valley over all, President Biden won by just 15 percentage points, a steep slide from Hillary Clinton’s 39-point margin in 2016. That conservative surge — and the liberal decline — has buoyed the Republican Party’s hopes about its ability to draw Hispanic voters into what has long been an overwhelmingly white political coalition and to challenge Democrats in heavily Latino regions across the country.
Though Mr. Biden prevailed, the falloff of support in a historically loyal but socially conservative region signals trouble for a Democratic Party seeking to hold together a broad voter constituency. Many counties in this stretch of South Texas are more than 90% Hispanic and traditionally the state’s bluest—unlike Florida, where there are many more Republican-leaning Latinos. It is a place that Democrats counted on, and, according to residents here, didn’t understand enough to see what was coming...Democrats didn’t counter Republican messaging on three issues important to Latino voters: pandemic shutdowns, oil jobs and abortion...Locals said they saw support for the Republican Party growing in the past year. Mr. Guerra, the former Roma mayor, started to see pro-Trump posts on his Facebook feed. The most fierce, he said, were from the wives and girlfriends of Border Patrol agents...
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(2) A Republican won the June mayoral race in an overwhelmingly-Hispanic border city in Texas:
Republicans in Texas celebrated on Monday after winning two closely watched mayoral elections in the state on Saturday, taking control of cities in Democratic counties. The party was particularly buoyed by its performance in McAllen, a border city of 143,000 that is 85 percent Hispanic, where Javier Villalobos, a former chairman of the local Republican Party, defeated a candidate backed by local Democrats by 206 votes out of 9,282 cast. Texas Republicans, including Gov. Greg Abbott, hailed Mr. Villalobos’s victory as part of a larger political realignment of Hispanic voters that revealed itself in the 2020 election, when President Biden drastically underperformed against expectations, and previous Democratic margins, in several Texas border counties with large numbers of Hispanic voters.
(3) GOP gubernatorial nominees in Virginia and New Jersey improved markedly among Hispanics a few weeks ago:
Strongest swings in Fairfax come from heavily Hispanic precincts pic.twitter.com/b74YKmEnOF
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) November 10, 2021
So the shifts in New Jersey should be much more concerning to Democrats than the more-or-less uniform swing we saw in Virginia. Here's Passaic County, with precincts aggregated by town/township. Biggest swings from 2017 are in heavily Hispanic areas. 1/ pic.twitter.com/aRFDVZn5zr
— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) November 3, 2021
(4) A state legislative seat in Texas flipped to red in a special election this month, in which a Latino Republican won a district that had gone for Biden by 14 points a year prior – and that is nearly three-quarters Hispanic:
Republican John Lujan has won the special election runoff for Texas House District 118, flipping the Democratic-friendly seat in San Antonio. The victory by Lujan gives Republicans an early win in their drive to make new inroads in South Texas after President Joe Biden underperformed there last year. With all vote centers reporting Tuesday night, Lujan was leading Democrat Frank Ramirez 51.2% to 48.8%, according to unofficial results...The seat on San Antonio’s South Side favors Democrats and Biden carried it by 14 percentage points last year. But the GOP had gone all in to capture the seat, hoping to score an early victory in their quest to make new gains in South Texas after Biden's underwhelming numbers throughout the region.
(5) And now the aforementioned development, which broke this week:
Breaking: Texas Rep. @RyanGuillen (D-Rio Grande City), has switched his party affiliation to the GOP.
— Brad Johnson (@bradj_TX) November 15, 2021
He makes the announcement alongside @GovAbbott, @DadePhelan, @MattRinaldiTX, @CatParksTX, @TXGOPCaucus chair @JimMurphy133, & other House Republicans. #txlege pic.twitter.com/VogHtc0nL6
The Republican State Leadership Committee released a statement on this announcement, which they note comes despite Rep. Guillen winning re-election by double-digits just a year ago:
“John Lujan’s upset victory earlier this month in a district with a majority Hispanic population already proved that Texans are fed up with the failures of Democratic leadership and Ryan Guillen’s party switch makes that fact all the more clear,” said Republican State Leadership Committee President Dee Duncan. “Today’s Democrat leaders are so focused on appeasing their fringe-left base by putting teachers’ unions ahead of parents, pushing socialist tax and spending schemes, and fighting for open border policies, that even elected officials in their own party cannot support their radical agenda anymore. We welcome Representative Guillen to the Republican Party with open arms and look forward to working with him as he partners with the Republican majority to deliver solutions for the people of his district.”
Here is a portion of Guillen's remarks:
"Friends, something is happening in South Texas, and many of us are waking up to the fact that the values of those in Washington, D.C., are not our values, not the values of most Texans," Guillen said. "The ideology of defunding the police, of destroying the oil and gas industry and the chaos at our border is disastrous for those of us who live here in South Texas."
This Democrat was one of the most conservative members of his party in the legislature, and his survival as a Democrat was further threatened by redistricting. Republicans say they'd been courting him to join their ranks for some time. In short, there appears to be a change afoot. Whether it's a large or a modest realignment is not yet established, but the movement of many Hispanic voters away from the 'reliable Democrat' camp would be an earthquake in American politics – and would pose a grave threat to the Left's identity-obsessed racket.
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