Turning Texas Bluer-- For Real

Sane people don't think of the Green New Deal as "Fools Gold"

As you may recall, Mike Siegel fought a tireless grassroots battle in the gerrymandered 10th Texas congressional district, which goes from northern Austin through the city's northern suburbs, across Bastrop, Lee, Fayette, Colorado, Washington, Austin and Waller counties all the way into the exurbs (Tomball, Bridgeland and Cypress) northwest of Houston. The DCCC braintrust declared the district unwinnable and ignored the race entirely, even going so far as to urge local organizations to not contribute to Mike and help them in other districts instead. So, with no help from the DCCC at all, Mike held the incumbent Trump puppet-- architect of the family separation policy-- down to a 51.1% win. Two years earlier, Trump won the district by 11 points.

Mike decided to finished what he had begun, building of the grassroots energy of 2018 to defeat Michael McCaul in 2020. The DCCC decided he is too progressive for the district and has been surreptitiously supporting a Republican-voting elite EMILY's List creation named Shannon Hutcheson who is running a DCCC-approved GOP-lite campaign. That helped Mike win every single local endorsement in the race, most recently, the Harris County and Austin Tejano Democrats, the representation of the old guard in the Mexican-American community.

This people power has enabled Siegel's campaign to knock 34,000 doors to date and identify a huge number of likely supporters before the upcoming March 3 primary.

Recently, though, another wealthy non-grassroots candidate with virtually no chance to win, Pritesh Gandhi, has come out very negatively against Hutcheson, his SuperPAC allies at 314 Action spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on mailers like these two, hammering home a message by a candidate who doesn't have an inspiring positive message of his own:

As far as I can tell, the piece has had an impact in a district that hasn't seen negative campaigning like this since before the 2003 Texas gerrymander. Seems to have the combined effect of turning some voters away from Gandhi (for going negative), and turning some away from Hutcheson. The mailer was sent only to women Democratic voters. Gandhi is not only attacking Shannon but also attacking Siegel-- but for progressive policies. After originally claiming he supports progressive healthcare solutions, Gandhi (like his favorite presidential candidate, Mayo Pete) has now explicitly disavowed Medicare-for-All. He recently referred to both the Green New Deal and Medicare-for-All-- major planks in Mike Siegel's platform-- as "fools' gold" and "pipe dreams." Strangely, he considers FDR-- whose New Deal was referred to by conservative Democrats as "fools' gold and a "pipe dream"-- his favorite president.

Blue America has a page exclusively devoted to helping turn Texas blue. You can contribute to our progressive candidates by clicking on the thermometer above. Another one of the candidates on that page, as a matter of fact, has a spectacular new video I hope you'll watch. This shows who Jessica Cisneros is much better than I've ever seen before. Like Mike Siegel, she's what me need in Congress if we want to get serious about fundamental change in our country.