WTF is going on with the Texas (R) Congress members retiring?

[rufus dog]

I live in the OC which flipped blue in 2018. In our case we saw six to ten (maybe as high as 11) point R victories in 2016 get eliminated in 2018.

We had multiple factors in play. We never elected the flat out ignorant Repukes other than the Huntington Beach/Costa Mesa district (Dana Rorhbacher) which has a lot of older defense contractor retirees. Thus offspring who felt the Hispanics caused their problems. The defense contracting jobs left to the South in the late 80's so they never got the decent paying jobs like their father, so the MAGAt BS worked on them.

Also every third resident moved into the County since the late 80's, so we have a mixture of other US and International residents impacting our transition.

The sharp Repubs also realized that tRump literally fucked them with the tax law. People with huge mortgages saw write offs capped. But many didn't realize it until this April. Seeing that NJ districts with similar demographics also flipped, I would have to guess that the tax law had an impact, but also the fact that we are a very diverse society. I can't think of an area in the OC that is anywhere near the breakdown when I went to HS, (80% white, 20% Hispanic, with most of the Hispanics striving to get the middle class, while most of the whites were middle class) so I think numerous people saw through the tRump racial division. AND I am not concerned about the newly won seats in 2020 because now a shitload of ignorant repubs just got screwed on taxes. And when I say screwed, they took a 10 to 20k impact due to dipshit Donnie.

So back to my Texas question. they have no State taxes, but did the April tax shock hit many areas in Texas hard this April. The impact wouldn't be as great as in CA, NY, NJ, WA. But did these newly growing suburbs take a huge hit thus the Repuke Congresspeople running for the exits? If not, what is causing these people to drop?

And wouldn't it be so fucking sweet if Dipshit Donnie expedited the transition of Texas from Red to Blue!

[Bluesaph]

1. I live in Chino Hills

And this is a good point. And I have the same questions re Texas!

And hell yeah if Donnie Dumbass is the one who turns Texas blue!

[rufus dog]

3. Did your district turn blue?

Similar demographics along with an explosion of new residents. Many from outside the U.S.

[elleng]

2. They don't want to run 'with' trump, be seen as/required to support him;

the handwriting on the wall.

[rufus dog]

4. But the ones in the OC who lost in 2018 never backed off the tRump support.

Katie Porter barely won her seat, and she was up against a carpet bagging tRump supporter.

Also I get this with the gentleman who is giving up on his SW Texas district. He seems to have basic morals. But he seems to be the exception to Repukes, not the standard.

[elleng]

5. TODAY is different,

this weekend's misery will encourage an incipient movement, imo.

Katie Porter will SAIL in this time (as will others.)

[DFW]

7. Hurd was not a typical TX Republican

More typical would be my (happily now former) Rep. Pete Sessions, who was an odious lap dog to the far right. He was gerrymandered in by Tom Delay. Our previous Rep. was the very able Martin Frost, whom we had for 13 terms. But our part of Dallas has had a huge influx from enlightened, though far more expensive, parts of the country. The outlying Bible Belt areas that were gerrymandered into our district (TX-32) had no such increase in population, so we were finally able to boot Sessions out last year.

[HotRod Deluxe]

6. I'd say....

Rats deserting a sinking ship!

[JCMach1]

8. Couple of observations about the state I live in

1. Despite being a red state Trump is pretty unpopular among Republicans here.

2. Demographics are shifting quickly in many areas. Blue shift if moving out to the suburbs. For example, Collin county where I live went from +30 red to BETO losing by single digits.

3. These retirements are largely Bush Republicans who don't relish a tough reelection fight, or dealing with Trump.

[uponit7771]

11. +1, in mid cities DFW Red Don's SALT caps screwed people big time. Red Don's middle class tax ...

... increase also eliminated sales tax offset or it was a part of the cap also.

We were face bent on taxes last year when we move to MO.

Tax payers here in MO face bent on taxes too around Blue Springs, Southwest KCKS

[tanyev]

9. Sometimes gerrymandering backfires.

Say you've got a safe Republican district next to a swing district. Because you're greedy, you gerrymander that to be two Republican districts that are both less safe. A few years go by, demographics change a little bit, an odious narcissist becomes the face of the Republican party, before you know it, both districts are at risk.

[Gothmog]

13. There are actual mathematical formulas

Gerrymandering gives a candidate an advantage that helps but at some point that advantage goes away.

[uponit7771]

10. Yes, I lived in Texas and taxes hit Texas hard too because of the SALT caps. Texas land owners pay..

... a good portion of state taxes for schools. Ours was nearly 3% where I lived and we were OK with it seeing the schools in even in the poorer areas of Texas were pretty damn nice.

Also Red Don got rid of the sales tax offset or it was capped along with everything else.

We were hit pretty damn hard with extra taxes

Also, Texas is light blue ... the KGOP put a SHIT TON of investment in gerrymandering and GOTV in rural areas and suburbs around DFW in the 90s and it paid off.

DFW is the 4th largest ... METRO ... area in the US, the city propers might not be big but the sub cities around DFW are huge and DFW could've been considered a red metro area mostly cause there's not a saturation of dem positions.

If DFW turned blue, just DFW then the country would be a new country politically.

[Gothmog]

12. Texas is turning blue due to demographics-Texas is an overwhelmingly urban/suburban state,

Link to tweet

[IronLionZion]

14. I hope there is a big blue wave across Texas

I imagine demographic changes might make some districts more competitive. Some Texans might oppose the idiotic wall idea for various logistical reasons, like taking people's land away. Property taxes and mortgage insurance and other tax deductions might be factors. Farmers might have felt the impact of tariffs.

Hurd's last election was very close, like 1000 votes.

[NewJeffCT]

15. I had some job opportunities in the Houston area back 2010-2013

Several opportunities came up and I ended up flying down there 3 times for 3 separate job interviews. One almost became a full offer, but then the company held off because the job could have potentially been outsourced a year later, even though it was a fairly high level job. But, twice I got to tour Houston suburbs for homes.

But, while they have no state income taxes, if you want a good suburban town/small city with good schools, you are going to be paying really hefty property taxes. The guidance that they had in the Sales Center for The Woodlands (a fairly upscale planned suburb of Houston with about 115,000 people) said that you could expect to pay about $15,000/year in property taxes on a new $500,000 home. Unless they did some major property tax reduction over the past several years, people in the suburbs of Dallas and Houston got nailed with those SALT limits. Towns like Katy and Sugar Land also had high property taxes.

Sugar Land was home to Tom DeLay for years, now the retiring Pete Olsen, who only won by 5 points against the Democrat in 2018, despite winning by 20 in 2016 and by over 30 in 2014.

[DeminPennswoods]

16. State governments get their money one way or the other

States that have no income tax usually have high sales taxes or personal property tax or property taxes or fees for every government service and so on.

Here in Pennsylvania, we have a flat personal income tax (few deductions and you have to an extremely low income to qualify to pay no state income tax) of 3.01%. There is no tax on retirement income. The business tax is relatively high, but few businesses pay it. Our 6-8% (depending on where you live) sounds scary, but it isn't applied to food, clothes and a other miscellaneous things.

[rufus dog]

17. Thanks to you and all the others for the detail

So in the OC it looks like tRump asshole ways were good for a 7 or 8 points swing. (similar in NJ)

Forgot that Texas drives a huge portion of revenue from Property tax, so even though the same house in SoCal might be 2 to 2.5 times more expensive, the property taxes are a huge cost driver in Texas. Basically the tax changes impacted us all equally. Where we have high deductions due to mortgage interest, Texans have high deductions due to property taxes.

Now the impact from Taxes are hitting all of us including the Texas cities and suburbs. And as pointed about above, the Gerrymandering resulted in districts being tighter so we may have the perfect storm of Repuke overreach coming back to bite them in the ass.

On a somewhat side note. Some people need a hammer to the head to get it. A neighbor stated to me that tRump was penalizing Californians to make the Dems get their shit together. He was blindly supporting tRump. When I explained to him (a recent home buyer who bought at 3X what I paid) that it sounded like income redistribution to the Red States AND he bought in at a very high cost, thus has very little margin if prices drop. Since the deductions were greatly reduced by tRump future buyers will be impacted, thus he and his family have much more to lose. In my case a 20% drop leaves me with 400 to 450k of profit. In his case, it puts him underwater. You could see his jaws tighten, I think I even heard his ass clench.

[NewJeffCT]

18. By comparison

A $2 million mansion in Greenwich, CT will be paying a similar property tax amount - around $15,000. Well, $2 million in Greenwich is a nice home, but not a mansion.

There are places in my state of Connecticut that do have much higher property tax rates, though. A $500,000 home in my current town in CT would probably be around $12,000 in property taxes.

[ooky]

19. They think they are going to lose.