美国最大的红州共和党人通常不必处于守势。但距离选举日不到三周，他们正陷入恐慌。备受丑闻困扰的参议院候选人肯·帕克顿在民调中落后于詹姆斯·塔拉里科。自9月初以来，全国共和党人已向广告投入约2亿美元，试图挽救他的竞选活动——以及他们在参议院的多数席位。德克萨斯州三届州长格雷格·阿博特过去的选举都以两位数优势获胜，但今年他不得不抵挡民主党挑战者吉娜·希诺霍萨，夏季期间其支出是对方的六倍。“我们担心德克萨斯州，”唐纳德·特朗普本月初承认。
REPUBLICANS IN AMERICA’S biggest red state don’t usually have to play defence. But less than three weeks before election day, they are panicking. Ken Paxton, the scandal-plagued Senate candidate, is trailing James Talarico in the polls. Since early September, national Republicans have poured about $200m into ads in a bid to save his campaign—and their Senate majority. Greg Abbott, Texas’s three-term governor, has won past elections by double digits, but this year is being forced to fend off a Democratic challenger, Gina Hinojosa, outspending her six-to-one over the summer. “We’re worried about Texas,” Donald Trump admitted early this month.
帕克顿是一个独特糟糕的候选人，因刑事调查和婚姻不忠而备受困扰。但他并非共和党人在德克萨斯州面临的唯一问题。2024年转向特朗普的南德克萨斯州拉丁裔选民，现在似乎又开始回流到民主党；达拉斯和休斯顿郊区的足球妈妈们对总统的怨气感到厌倦。在超过二十年的不间断执政后，德克萨斯州共和党人正苦于找到获胜的信息——老套的竞选口号不再奏效，该党现在正试图通过质疑外国人是否属于这里来激发基本盘。即使该党能在11月3日保住德克萨斯州的权力，其控制力也正在松动。
Mr Paxton is a uniquely bad candidate, dogged by criminal investigations and marital infidelity. But he is not Republicans’ only problem in Texas. Latinos in South Texas, who swung to Mr Trump in 2024, now appear to be drifting back to Democrats; soccer moms in the suburbs of Dallas and Houston are tired of the president’s rancour. After more than two decades of unbroken rule, Texas Republicans are struggling to find a winning message—old campaign lines aren’t working and the party is now trying to whip up the base by questioning if foreigners belong. Even if the party hangs on to power in Texas on November 3rd, its grip is loosening.
与其他地方的共和党候选人一样，德克萨斯州的候选人也受到特朗普不受欢迎程度的拖累。据《经济学人》的追踪显示，总统的全州批准率为-18。据一份泄露的录音显示，帕克顿9月对捐款人说，特朗普在达拉斯举行的中期选举集会拖累了他的支持率。阿博特10月7日在圣安东尼奥的特朗普集会上明显缺席。他的竞选团队称是日程冲突；那天他出席了路易斯安那州边境附近一家医院的剪彩仪式。
Like Republican candidates elsewhere, those in Texas are dragged down by Mr Trump’s unpopularity. The president’s statewide approval rating is -18, according to The Economist’s tracker. Mr Paxton told donors in September that Mr Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas sank his numbers, according to a leaked recording. Mr Abbott was conspicuously absent from a Trump rally in San Antonio on October 7th. His campaign cited a scheduling conflict; that day he attended a ribbon-cutting for a hospital near the Louisiana border.
德州的政治身份长期以来十分稳固，在很大程度上抵挡住了全国范围内的左倾趋势。如今，共和党人在孤星州惯用的论点正在失去说服力。多年来，边境安全的呼声团结了德州共和党人，并赢得了许多独立选民的支持。该党现在可以夸口说，问题已经解决——在特朗普先生任内，边境遭遇数量大幅下降，8月份较拜登总统任期平均每月下降了94%。但该问题的重要性也在下降。十年来首次，选民将生活成本排在移民问题之上，视其为“面临的最大问题”。
Texas’s political identity has long been so secure that it has largely withstood any national leftward tilt. Now Republicans’ tried-and-true Lone Star arguments are losing force. For years, calls for border security united Texas Republicans and won over many independents. The party can now boast that the problem has been fixed—border encounters have plunged under Mr Trump, down 94% in August from the average month under Joe Biden. But the issue is also less salient. For the first time in a decade, voters rank cost of living above immigration as the “biggest issue facing the state”.
华盛顿的驱逐出境打压行动也无济于事。许多德州人对移民特工在法庭听证会上逮捕外籍出生工人、拘留在该国生活数十年的祖母们的做法感到愤慨。“斯蒂芬·米勒和在华盛顿特区掌权的人们，将移民政策从对德州共和党的净正面影响，变成了中性或负面影响，”该州资深共和党游说人士比尔·米勒说。7月，一名联邦特工在休斯顿杀死一名男子后，帕克斯顿先生未表示任何哀悼。“我所知道的只是，我们需要支持我们的执法人员，”他说。
Washington’s deportation crackdown doesn’t help. Many Texans bristle at immigration agents’ habit of picking up foreign-born workers at court hearings and detaining abuelas who have been in the country for decades. “Stephen Miller and the guys calling shots in DC have taken immigration policy from being a net positive for Texas Republicans and made it neutral or negative,” says Bill Miller, a veteran Republican lobbyist in the state. After a federal agent killed a man in Houston in July, Mr Paxton offered no condolences. “All I know is that we need to stand behind our law enforcement,” he said.
遇到困难时，德州共和党人往往会吹嘘“德州奇迹”，即由低税收和宽松监管释放的经济繁荣。在2025年前的五年里，至少有184家公司迁至奥斯汀、达拉斯和休斯顿。去年11月，谷歌宣布投资400亿美元时，阿博特先生宣布该州为“总部中的总部”，并承诺将其打造为“AI发展的中心”。
When the going gets tough, Texas Republicans tend to fall back on bragging about the “Texas miracle”, the economic boom unleashed by low taxes and light regulation. In the five years to 2025, at least 184 companies moved to Austin, Dallas and Houston. When Google announced a $40bn investment last November, Mr Abbott declared the state the “headquarter of headquarters” and promised to make it the “epicentre of AI development”.
那些话如今困扰着他。今年，得克萨斯州人和美国其他地方的人一样，对数据中心愤怒不已。政治压力迫使阿博特先生要求立法机构废除曾帮助吸引数据中心来该州的那些减税政策。他的挑战者何诺萨抓住了这种虚伪。她在阿马里洛和格兰伯里等民主党很少获胜的农村地区竞选，将自己塑造为经济民粹主义者。一则广告写道：“格雷格·阿博特正在出卖你们。”
Those words now haunt him. This year Texans, like Americans elsewhere, turned furiously against data centres. Political pressure forced Mr Abbott to call on the legislature to repeal the very tax breaks that helped lure data centres to the state. Ms Hinojosa, his challenger, pounced on the hypocrisy. Campaigning in rural places such as Amarillo and Granbury where Democrats rarely win, she casts herself as an economic populist. “Greg Abbott is selling you out,” an ad reads.
州长的另一项重大政策优先事项——今年秋季推出的全民学校选择计划——在小城镇的共和党人中也不受欢迎，因为公立学校在那里是主要雇主。
The governor’s other big policy priority, a universal school-choice programme launched this autumn, is also unpopular among Republicans in small towns, where public schools are a top employer.
“经典论点已失去动力，新秩序尚未诞生，”奥斯汀民调员詹姆斯·亨森说。为了填补这一真空，一些共和党人正在尝试一种新信息，希望它能在11月及以后产生共鸣：“让得克萨斯州保持得克萨斯州”。这个口号的含义最近变得非常明确，因为政客们正在对他们声称从内部威胁得克萨斯州的外国影响发动战争。
“The classic arguments have run out of steam and a new order hasn’t been born yet,” says James Henson, an Austin pollster. To fill the void, some Republicans are testing a new message that they hope will resonate in November and beyond: “keeping Texas, Texas”. The meaning of that slogan has recently come sharply into focus, as politicians wage war on foreign influences they say threaten Texas from within.
首先是穆斯林。去年，阿布特先生试图阻止普拉诺的一座清真寺建设他称之为“沙里亚城”的总体规划社区，并将美国最大的穆斯林民权组织指定为恐怖组织。帕克斯顿先生试图但未能阻止穆斯林学校获得学校代金券。基本盘对此非常买账。在共和党初选中，帕克斯顿先生在特朗普先生的背书以及一条新攻击路线的帮助下击败了现任参议员约翰·科宁，广告指控科宁先生对“激进伊斯兰教”有“特殊的情感”。
First it was Muslims. Last year Mr Abbott tried to block a mosque in Plano from building a master-planned community he dubbed “Sharia city” and designated America’s biggest Muslim civil-rights group a terrorist organisation. Mr Paxton tried, unsuccessfully, to bar Muslim schools from school vouchers. The base ate it up. In the Republican primary Mr Paxton beat John Cornyn, the incumbent senator, with the help of an endorsement of Mr Trump and a new line of attack, with ads accusing Mr Cornyn of having a “special place in his heart for radical Islam”.
随后是合法移民。2021年1月，阿博特先生冻结了州机构和大学的H‑1B签证申请。四个月后，帕克斯顿先生对30家他指控使用“幽灵办公室”让“外国人入侵德克萨斯”的公司展开调查。2021年9月，争取铁路专员（实际上负责监管石油和天然气）的共和党人博·弗伦奇在X上发布了一张德克萨斯大学橄榄球队获胜庆祝的学生照片——几乎全部是棕色皮肤的学生。
Then it was legal immigrants. In January, Mr Abbott froze H-1B visa applications at state agencies and universities. Four months later Mr Paxton opened investigations into 30 firms he accused of using “ghost offices” to allow “foreign nationals to invade Texas”. In September Bo French, a Republican running for railroad commissioner (a job that actually involves regulating oil and gas), posted a photo of students celebrating a University of Texas football victory on X—nearly all of whom had brown skin.
“问题显然已经远比任何人想象的更严重，”他写道。包括卡尔·罗夫和科尼恩先生在内的被党内排斥的老派共和党人称该帖子为种族主义。德克萨斯州高层并未谴责此事。
“The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,” he wrote. Old-guard Republicans whom the party has ostracised, including Karl Rove and Mr Cornyn, called the post racist. Texas’s top brass didn’t condemn it.
关于谁属于德克萨斯的争论在郊区最为激烈。那里，惊人的增长把共和党据点转变为决定全州选举的政治战场。2020年至2025年间，达拉斯大都会区的增长速度超过美国其他任何地区。穆斯林人口随之增长，建起了相当于沃尔玛规模的文化中心，认同为印度教徒的人比例大约增长了三倍。在富裕的北部郊区弗里斯科，四分之一居民已是亚洲人，市议会会议变成了政治戏剧。
The fight over who belongs in Texas is most heated in the suburbs. There, dizzying growth has transformed Republican strongholds into political battlegrounds that decide statewide elections. Between 2020 and 2025, the Dallas metro area grew faster than any other in America. The Muslim population grew with it, building cultural centres the size of Walmarts, and the share of people who identify as Hindu roughly tripled. In Frisco, a wealthy northern suburb where a quarter of residents are now Asian, city council meetings turned into political theatre.
2023年春季的公开发言环节中，来自德克萨斯州外的发言人和影响者将一座拟建的清真寺比作纳粹招募中心，并称印度人是“抢工作者”。
During public comment sessions this spring, speakers and influencers from outside Texas likened a proposed mosque to a Nazi recruitment centre and called Indians “job stealers”.
这项政策最终并未得到弗里斯科居民的认可。今年6月，当一位市长候选人以民族主义言论参选时，他以16个百分点的差距落败。前市议员比尔·伍达德回忆说，随着候选人的言论变得越来越极端，竞选宣传牌甚至从居民家门前被撤走。“这些问题其实是在弗里斯科产生的，很多其他地方也是如此，”他说。他认为，这种制造恐慌的言论与人们与邻居们之间的友好关系背道而驰。
Ultimately it fell flat with Frisco residents. When a mayoral candidate ran on the nativist message in June, he lost by 16 points. Bill Woodard, a former city councillor, recalls campaign signs disappearing from front yards as the candidate’s rhetoric grew hotter. “The problems are manufactured in Frisco, and in a lot of other places too,” he says. The fearmongering, he argues, jars with people’s positive experience of their neighbours.
市议会首位印度裔美国成员伯特·塔库尔也持相同观点；他曾是特朗普的热烈支持者，他表示：“那些咨询公司总是擅长在选举期间利用各种手段来动员选民投票。”德克萨斯大学的民意调查显示，在油价高涨的背景下，社会问题很难引起人们的共鸣。
Burt Thakur, the council’s first Indian-American member and once an enthusiastic Trump voter, agrees. “It’s the consultant class doing what they do best,” he argues, “which is cleave on during election times and try to figure out how to get out the vote.”Polling from the University of Texas shows that social issues don’t resonate when petrol prices are high.
预计阿博特先生仍会再次当选，帕克斯顿先生也可能勉强获胜——他正在重拾共和党过去常用的竞选策略。塔拉里科先生曾表示“上帝是非二元性的”，现在帕克斯顿先生称塔拉里科先生属于“‘他们’那一派，而不是‘我们’这一派”。然而，随着全国范围内的共和党人都在探索特朗普之后的发展方向，德克萨斯州这些激烈的竞选活动无疑是一个警示：达拉斯的共和党策略师罗斯·亨特指出：“德克萨斯州堪称共和党未来的‘设计实验室’。”
Mr Abbott is still expected to be re-elected and Mr Paxton may eke out a win, too—he is reviving a tactic that has worked for Republicans before, saying Mr Talarico, who once said “God is non-binary”, is for “they/them, not you”. But, as national Republicans search for a post-Trump direction, the bitterly fought campaigns in Texas offer a warning. “Texas is the design shop for the future of the party,” says Ross Hunt, a Republican strategist in Dallas.
一些德克萨斯州的共和党人似乎热衷于利用分裂性言论来争取支持，但他们并未让选民（除了那些参加初选的7%选民之外）相信他们真正关心选民的处境和问题。亨特先生说：“如果这种态度能够受到应有的惩罚，我想没人会感到惋惜。”
Some Texas Republicans seem to relish the divisive zeal that is Mr Trump’s speciality, but they haven’t convinced voters—beyond the 7% who vote in their primary—that they care about them and their problems. “If we can see that attitude get punished a little bit,” Mr Hunt says, “I don’t think anyone will shed a tear.”■