Texas Democrats say they have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time to prepare for their national convention in a few weeks as support for Vice President Kamala Harris grows to become the party’s nominee.
In a national political cycle that’s already seen unexpected turns this month, Sunday brought the latest with President Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 race for the White House.
Omar Narvaez is a Dallas City Council member and a pledged Biden delegate who now supports Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee for president.
“It took a couple of beats for us to digest that President Biden would not be our nominee anymore,” Narvaez said.
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“We’ve got to unify; we’ve got to get ready because we don’t have a lot of time.”
The last four weeks were largely spent on internal debate for Democrats – that became quite public – with calls for President Biden to back out of the race after a poor debate performance on June 27.
All of it happening while Republicans worked to present a united front at their convention last week in Milwaukee, just hours after former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13.
Matthew Wilson with SMU political science says Republicans were successful in holding a united convention and the attention now turns to see if Democrats can coalesce quickly behind Harris.
“Democrats have been in some state of disarray but they’re getting their ducks in a row pretty quickly,” Wilson said.
Congressional Republicans moved quickly on Monday too. Representative Beth Van Duyne of Irving said the administration’s approach at the border won’t help Harris with Texas voters.
“You know, if that’s the best they’ve got to run, I look forward to November,” Van Duyne told NBC 5.
Shelby Williams is chair of the Collin County GOP and admits that if Democrats quickly unite behind Harris, it cuts into Republicans' perceived unity advantage, still, it is not enough to slow the momentum the GOP feels it now has heading into November.
“It doesn’t matter who they swap President Biden out for at the convention,” Williams said. “Countless people are just done with the record of the last four years.”
Narvaez points to increased fundraising in Texas and nationwide in the last 24 hours as signs that the party is quickly uniting behind the Vice President. He adds her presence at the top of the ticket will help energize a growing portion of the electorate who had expressed concerns about voting for Trump or Biden.
“We see folks that maybe weren’t so excited about the two candidates were in both parties, you’re starting to see folks getting excited,” Narvaez said.
