Free Republic

AUSTIN, Tex. — FOR most of a long, hot summer, Wendy Davis’s campaign for governor here resembled a cowboy lost in the desert — horseless, stumbling and finally just left for dead in the remorseless Texas heat. Despite a strong national profile, she trailed her Republican opponent, Attorney General Greg Abbott, sometimes by double digits. Among the experts, a conventional wisdom set in: Ms. Davis can’t win, Republicans can’t lose and Texas won’t change. Yet as summer has turned to fall, Ms. Davis has entered new territory: Last week a poll by the Texas Lyceum, a nonpartisan, nonprofit educational institution,...

You don’t have to live in Texas to hear the incessant reminders by demographers and political pundits that the Lone Star State is on track to become majority Hispanic. By the time of the 2010 census, Texas had already become a “majority-minority” state, with minorities outnumbering Anglos by some two million—and with Hispanics alone accounting for 37.6 percent of residents. Although projections vary, within the next 10 to 20 years, Texas will likely have a Hispanic majority. You’ve also probably heard that this Hispanic surge is turning Texas, which has been a reliably Republican state in presidential politics since 1980,...