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Texas is a big conservative Republican stronghold. It hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 25 years. The last Democratic presidential candidate to win the state was Jimmy Carter in 1976.
So why does former state Rep. Karen Horita think Texas is just the perfect place for a Hawaii Democrat to campaign?
Horita, daughter of the late Hawaii developer Herbert Horita, has been in the local Democratic Party trenches for years. She helped with party politics before her three terms in the state House and then stayed involved as a volunteer.
Now for the third presidential campaign in a row, Horita is going off to a deep red state as a volunteer. In 2012 she campaigned in Florida for Barack Obama’s reelection and was working the Florida swamplands for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Today she flies to San Antonio, Texas, to campaign for U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who was once down 20 percentage points in a Senate race with Texas conservative Republican Sen. Ted Cruz that is now rated as a toss-up.
“It has been a great learning experience for me. I enjoyed going to a place where the people have no experience of a Democrat being in the majority,” Horita said in an interview. “It was working with people who were Democrats but were really quiet about it. It was getting people to see things through the prism of being a Democrat.”
Shirlene Ostrov, Hawaii GOP chairwoman, said her party has no plans to either send volunteers to the mainland or recruit workers from out of state. “We need everyone here working, we wouldn’t let them go,” Ostrov said, adding that she is “excited about the level of volunteerism and new Republican volunteers helping in local races.”
For Horita, today’s trip to Texas comes after five months of volunteering for the O’Rourke campaign from Hawaii.
As she explains, she was one of about a thousand volunteers sending out daily text messages to those who the campaign either thinks are supporters or could be supporters.
“Texas is really big: Geographically it is huge and it is the second-most populous state in the country,” Horita said.
“I’ve been sending between 1,600 and 4,500 texts a day. Maybe 18 to 12 percent comes back and I have to respond to them.”
The back and forth with supporters and possible supporters taught Horita that if Florida voters are different, Texans are a completely different animal.
“Texas will be a new adventure. It seems Texans really like to get in your face, no holds barred, just in your face.”
The O’Rourke campaign appears to be a model of technical sophistication and Horita said she is expecting she’ll be helping with web training and volunteer recruiting in Texas for the closing days of the campaign.
“Door-to-door campaigning in Texas is called a ‘block walk’ and every day somewhere in Texas there are block walks happening,” Horita said. “We are always inviting people to ‘block walks’ in Pearland or Abilene and then give a link to who is in charge of the block walk in that town.”
Horita is a volunteer without a job title but has been promised a still-somewhat-undefined place to stay in San Antonio.
“They said I have housing, but they don’t know where. So I’m just going to go to the campaign headquarters and ask what I should be doing, and if they don’t know, I’ll just start emptying trash cans; I can do that.”
A little aloha for the Lone Star State won’t make Texas blue, but it is a battle worth having.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.
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