Is this Texas election about potholes or Commies? Congress election blurs campaigns

The fire-and-brimstone ads in the mailbox say it’s election time.

Democrats are campaigning for city and school offices. But Republicans seem to be campaigning to save the county, or the nation, or at least the Republican Party.

Stunned at losing the presidential election last fall both nationwide and in Tarrant County, GOP candidates and activists are running vivid and partisan local campaigns up and down the ballot to promote Trumpism in the May 1 election, or at least slow the county’s leftward shift.

“Hello Patriot’s!!!” shouts the Facebook page of a Bedford candidate running to “STOP the Liberal indoctrination” — not in Washington, but at Tarrant County College.

With Arlington, Mansfield and south Tarrant County also voting in a partisan U.S. House District 6 election, local campaigns that usually focus on potholes or teacher pay are now reframed as Republican-vs.-Democrat.

Republican Facebook groups, some laced with QAnon conspiracy fantasy comments, breathlessly urge voters to “Keep Fort Worth Red” or “Protect the Fort” in city and school races. Dissenting commenters accuse candidates of aiding and abetting liberals or QAnon.

Worried about riots, elections, gun rights, immigration or LGBT rights, Republicans are making this the first midterm election of President Joe Biden’s administration.

The tone is driven by the District 6 race and ads like Mansfield wrestler-turned-lawyer Dan Rodimer’s TV spot (lines: “Let’s defeat [Nancy] Pelosi and make America Texas again,” and “Commies are ruining America”).

“The radical message of the far left has Republicans on guard against such unimaginable positions as ‘defunding the police’ or critical race theory in our schools,” county Republican chairman Rick Barnes of Keller wrote by email.

Yet in most of Tarrant County outside Fort Worth, the only police funding issue is whether pinchpenny suburbs with tight budgets will spend much on police at all. (Fort Worth voters, on the other hand, just approved an extra $1 billion over 10 years.)

And critical race theory simply studies whether America’s legacy of segregation has perpetuated racism.

Let’s ask Black residents of Aledo and Confederate flag-waving Parker County about that.

Meanwhile, with former President Donald Trump staying out of the District 6 race so far, Democrats seem less focused on partisan messages, even with county chair Deborah Peoples running for Fort Worth mayor.

County party director Marco Rosas defended the effort.

“Our organizing started cycles ago,” he said, pointing to recent Democratic victories in Texas Senate, county commissioner, peace justice and constable races.

Rosas said Democrats have “even more steam” going into the May elections.

Maybe not. Waxahachie Republican Jake Ellzey appears to be pressing Fort Worth Democrat Jana Lynne Sanchez for the second District 6 runoff spot behind the early frontrunner, Arington Republican Susan Wright.

“Biden’s border crisis and his executive orders targeting gun owners have Republicans really fired up,” said Wright’s Austin-based campaign consultant, Matt Langston.

Early voting begins Monday at any of 43 locations across Tarrant County. The typical turnout is 8%-9%.

If Republicans seem more fired up than in most May elections, there’s a simple reason, according to Craig Murphy, one of the county’s busiest political consultants from his Austin-based Murphy Nasica & Associates.

“Democrats and Republicans are both motivated” after the huge presidential election turnout, he wrote by email.

But “the rule of thumb is that the party that lost [last election] is more motivated than the party that won,” Murphy wrote by email.

This election isn’t short on candidates. There are 377 across the county.

The question is how many other people will vote.