EDINBURG — Hidalgo County Democrats hope the high voter turnout numbers during early voting will help their statewide counterparts.
County Judge Ramon Garcia hosted candidates running under the Democratic banner for sheriff, state district court judge and constable, as well as the Texas Supreme Court and the state’s 13th Court of Appeals.
County Democratic Chair Ric Godinez told the crowd that if statewide Republicans win, they’d cut funding for local law enforcement and education.
While it’s still unknown which candidates or party they voted for, a higher percentage of Hidalgo County voters have been to the polls than in any of the state’s biggest counties.
The county’s elections department released data Wednesday showing Hidalgo County leads all of the state’s 15 most populous counties in the percentage of registered voters who cast ballots in the first two days of early voting. The nearly 13,000 votes cast in person on Monday and Tuesday in the county constituted 4 percent of registered voters. Williamson County, in central Texas, had the second-highest percentage at 3.2 percent.
Almost 3,000 more mail-in ballots brought the percentage of registered Hidalgo County voters who’d cast a ballot to 4.9 percent — just a touch higher than Galveston County’s 4.82 percent.
Garcia said he was confident those votes were mostly for Democrats.
And Democrats hope the high turnout here — where they have historically held a significant edge — will benefit the party’s candidates in races that span more than just the Rio Grande Valley.
Dori Contreras Garza, a justice on the 13th Court of Appeals that stretches from the Valley up Texas’ Gulf Coast to Wharton County southwest of Houston, said she’ll depend on votes from Hidalgo County to offset gains that her opponent Doug Norman will receive farther north.
“He, unfortunately, will get the benefit of straight-ticket Republican voting,” Garza said of Norman, a Corpus Christi attorney.
But not everyone is ready to hand the Valley to Democrats.
Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is running for governor, has set expectations high for the area, saying his goal was to win Cameron County and come close in Hidalgo County.
“My sense is that they're a bit insecure about what's going to happen this cycle,” said Aaron Peña, a former state representative from Edinburg who switched from Democrat to Republican in 2010. “My sense is that the statewide ticket is not going to do well at all."
He added the early voting counts seemed to belie the warnings from Democrats that Texas’ voter ID laws would keep people from the polls.
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