Is There A Best Primary Candidate In Texas-31 This Cycle?

John Carter (R-TX) is very right-wing-- but his district no longer is

TX-31 has a misleading PVI that hasn't kept up with reality. R+10 doesn't give you a good idea of where this district north of Austin is anymore. Most of the voters live in Williamson County, which basically went blue last year. Williamson Co. was still Trump country in 2016. He won the county 104,029 (51.9%) to 84,252 (42.0%). Districtwide, he did even better, winning it 53.5% to 40.8%. Bell County is still Republican but far fewer TX-31 voters live there. Last year came a reckoning for the Trump-GOP. Seemingly out of the blue, MJ Hegar almost beat John Carter, holding him to just 50.6%. And Beto won the county outright-- 105,850 (50.8%) to Ted Cruz's 99,857 (48.0%).

The district includes Austin suburbs like Round Rock, Cedar Park, Hutto and Georgetown, as well as Killeen/Ft. Hood and Temple up north. About a quarter of the population is Hispanic, 10% is African-American and there is also a substantial and growing Asian-American population.

After Carter proved himself so weak last year, he drew 2 primary opponents and 9 Democratic opponents. (Hegar, who probably would have beaten him next year, foolishly decided to run for the Senate nomination, along with around a dozen other Democrats.) So how do you pick between the 9 Democrats who are running. Someone suggested that I look into Donna Imam, a computer engineer and businesswoman. Her platform looks great. Her healthcare plank is epic and seeks to accomplish 7 goals.

• Establishes a single-payer plan that fortifies and accelerates Medicare for All (M4A)
• Scales healthcare infrastructure to cover everyone in the US
• Drastically lowers the cost of healthcare and prescription drugs
• Improves the quality of healthcare
• Decouples health insurance from employers
• Increases the number of healthcare professionals
• Reduces health and maternal health disparities experienced by Black Americans

She has similarly impressive planks she calls Education for All and Real Pay For All that "requires that all businesses pay what it takes for an individual to live within a reasonable commute, save for retirement, and get access to career advancement leading to higher pay." I need to make sure she understands what a minimum wage is though since she wrote that "Setting a random number for minimum wage makes no sense! Pay must reflect where we work and live." That was the rationale that conservative Democrats in Congress used to vote against increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. I liked the way Kai Kahele (D-HI) handled that question when I spoke with him last week. He said he would back $15 an hour as a minimum wage but that he would be more comfortable with $20 an hour.





Another Democrat in this is singer/songwriter Eric Hanke. His platform isn't bad either. He's for banning the sales of assault weapons, but his health care plank doesn't indicate he understands what Medicare-for-All is, even he's grappling to support it.

Jon Curtis looks like a Brooklyn hipster-- or a Texan. He's a Texan-- with an excellent platform, all the progressive stuff you want to see on first glance.

Another candidate, surgeon Murray Holcolm, describes himself as a progressive and his platform seems to back that up.

Dan Janjigian's website has a logo, a bunch of donate buttons and a photo of himself.

Omar Kadir is the Democratic Socialist in the race and he's emphasizing Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal.

Roderick Kutch has a Facebook page but no campaign website I could finds I have no idea where he stands on anything, although he sounds woke on his Facebook page.

Jeremiah Landin has a standard one-size-fits-all, garden variety issues page that doesn't give much away about what kind of a congressman he would be and how he would vote.

Chrstine Mann ran in 2018 and was beaten by Hegar in the primary. She knows what's right and feels an incremental approach is the way to go, the way many Democrats in Texas do. Her issues page looks like pretty standard Democratic fare if not terribly exciting.

Interesting that none of the candidates appears to berunning as an open conservative. I guess I should find out which one the DCCC is secretly backing. That would give it away. Meanwhile, I need to try to figure out which one of these candidates belongs on the Taking Back Texas thermometer on the right. Any suggestions?