By Bo Erickson
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas, Feb 27 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump will travel to southern Texas on Friday to tout his economic and fossil fuel agenda, just days before Republicans face competitive primary elections in the state.
Trump has so far stayed out of his party’s high-profile battle over a U.S. Senate seat, but his visit to Corpus Christi places him near several contested U.S. House of Representatives districts where Hispanic voters, an important constituency for Republicans nationally, could determine the outcome in November’s midterm elections.
The trip follows a warning from a Texas Republican who said her recent loss in a state legislature race, despite Trump’s endorsement, was a “wake-up call” for the party.
The president’s economy-focused event springboards off his State of the Union address, which sought to draw sharp contrasts with Democrats on affordability and immigration enforcement as they aim to gain control of Congress later this year.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Trump will tout his “drill baby drill” agenda in Texas. The Corpus Christi area is the top exporter of liquefied natural gas in the U.S., with 42% of the product nationwide passing through its port.
Midterm elections are historically seen as a check on the sitting president, and Trump has warned his agenda will be derailed if his party loses power. But first, Republicans in the deeply conservative state must settle on who they want to represent them in November’s general election.
Public opinion polls show Senator John Cornyn, in office since 2002, trailing two challengers – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Representative Wesley Hunt – in Texas’ most cutthroat contest.
Unlike in Louisiana, where Trump encouraged a challenge to the incumbent Republican senator, the president has let the Texans duke it out in a contest made personal with accusations of sexual affairs and political ineffectiveness.
Republican candidates in the Senate and some House races are expected to attend Trump’s event on Friday.
CAN FORCED REDISTRICTING RESCUE REPUBLICANS?
At the president’s urging last year, Texas Republicans launched a redistricting fight aimed at improving the party’s prospects in U.S. House races. With the new map in effect, Republicans could gain up to five more seats across the state.
Hispanic voters in south Texas are key to the party’s electoral success, said Corpus Christi’s state Senator Adam Hinojosa, the first Republican to represent the Rio Grande Valley in the Texas Senate since 1874.
“We need the job opportunities, we need to make sure that our families are taken care of, we need to be able to afford all of the groceries and things to have a decent lifestyle,” Hinojosa said in an interview.
Crediting Trump’s border policy and pro-oil agenda, Hinojosa said he thought the president’s visit would help energize the Republican base.
Trump has prioritized maximizing U.S. fossil fuel production by rolling back environmental regulations and streamlining permitting for energy projects, benefiting places like southern Texas.
Even so, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 36% of people nationwide approved of Trump’s handling of the economy while 56% disapproved.
“It’s hard to know if he is perceptive to economic concerns,” Tiffany Ritchie, 50, a self-declared independent in Corpus Christi, said in an interview, noting she voted for Trump for the first time in the 2024 presidential election. “I would like to think he is, however, he is the kind of character who will just kind of throw anything against the wall and see if it sticks.”
Republicans are targeting two Democratic-held border districts: the Brownsville-area seat represented by Vicente Gonzalez since 2016, and the Laredo-area seat held by 11-term Representative Henry Cuellar.
In December, Trump pardoned Cuellar and his wife, but has since backed local Republican judge Tano Tijerina, accusing Cuellar of an “act of disloyalty” for seeking re-election as a Democrat.
“If Donald Trump wants to remind South Texans how terrible the economy is, he can be our guest,” Madison Andrus, spokesperson for the Democrats’ campaign arm, said in a statement.
(Reporting by Bo Erickson, Jarrett Renshaw and Nolan McCaskill; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Chris Reese)
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