DNC adds Texas to list of battleground targets
Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw reacts to Democrats' push to turn Texas blue.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, has dismissed claims by Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that the Lone Star State is within his grasp in November if he wins the party's nomination.
At a rally this past weekend, Sanders said he "doesn't believe for a minute" that Texas is a conservative state.
"We’re going to win here in Texas. And in November we’re going to defeat Trump here in Texas," he claimed.
Crenshaw told "The Story" Democrats need only examine former Rep. Beto O'Rourke's electoral history to know that Texas is and will continue to be a red state.
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"We could always ask that question to Senator Robert Francis O’Rourke -- who is indeed not a senator but did try very hard," Crenshaw told host Martha MacCallum. "He spent three times the amount of money than Ted Cruz [in 2018] and still lost."
Crenshaw said he is not surprised that Texas Democrats are passionate for their candidates, but told MacCallum that a primary electorate does not always reflect the entirety of the state's voters.
"It surprises us that Bernie Sanders is leading the pack," he said. "It should shock us and surprise us. That doesn’t mean he has a chance of winning Texas as a whole."
He pointed to a recent special election for the Texas legislature, saying that the seat was important for Democrats who hoped to flip it.
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"So Beto was out there, knocking doors, national campaign money was flowing in. A lot of people came in to flip it. Guess what happened? The Republican won it by 16 points," he said, adding that the GOP won it by only eight points in the previous last election.
Looking ahead to the presidential election, Crenshaw remarked that much of the Democratic Party's platform will not fly with most Texans.
"Texans don’t like it when you talk about taking away their healthcare and destroying the Texas Medical Center via Medicare-For-All and creating a Green New Deal that would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs in Houston," he said. "Turns out we don’t like it when you talk about taking our guns or removing our border walls or this week, what the House Democrats are voting on, banning flavored tobacco.
"We don’t like these socialist policies, as it turns out."
MacCallum said that the latest RealClearPolitics polling average for Texas' Democratic primary puts Sanders in the lead with 22 percent, former Vice President Joe Biden at 20 percent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts at 15 percent, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg at 13 percent and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg at eight percent.
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