The current state of the 13 flippable 2020 Senate seats

[TexasTowelie]

24. Well you made me search online.

There is only one gay bar in Laredo (there used to be two). I doubt that there are any gay bars in the portion of Bexar county that is in his district so I doubt that he has much exposure with the gay population in that district.

FWIW, I think that Congressmen Gonzalez and Vela who are also in South Texas have somewhat similar records as Cuellar. The stated reason why they weren't targeted by Justice Democrats and AOC are because their districts are not nearly as blue as Cuellar's district. Occasionally I read the comments that are in the local media articles and there were some responses that said they would prefer Cuellar over Gonzalez because Gonzalez is an intellectual lightweight in comparison.

There simply is no tradition of liberalism in South Texas. Most of the region is over 50% Hispanic and Roman Catholic so we have to run candidates that appeal to those demographics. The educational institutions lean more towards vocational trades rather than the social sciences and liberal arts. The overall environment is more misogynistic than in urban areas or the rural areas of central Texas--those are the reasons why I went to college in Central Texas and why I would never want to move there again.

While I don't want bigots on our ticket, I would be reluctant to surrender the three congressional seats in South Texas over to the GOP by placing more progressive candidates on the general election ballot. In 2018, Democrats ran Eric Holguin for the 27th Congressional District representing Corpus Christi up to Wharton and he fared poorly in the general election since he is gay. Holguin won the Democratic primary this year, but I don't expect for him to do any better this election.

Let's face it, the region south of San Antonio is not going to elect liberal Democrats. The best thing that we can hope for is to hold onto those congressional seats so that we can keep Democrats as the majority party in the U.S. House. The "rock the boat" strategy to get more liberal representatives seems like a poor use of financial resources when we should be concentrating on other districts that we can flip from red to blue. Over $1 million was donated to Cisneros which could have been used more effectively elsewhere. I believe that Cuellar also spent that much on his campaign. Despite all the money that was spent, nothing was gained as far as getting a more progressive representative.