The Party of Action, Not the Party of Talking Heads
Ruy Teixeira asked two Democrats who won Trump districts how they did it. The answers were showing up, the economy, and telling the truth about immigration.
Gabe Vasquez represents a New Mexico district larger than the state of Pennsylvania, with 180 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border and the Permian Basin in it. Don Davis represents 22 counties in eastern North Carolina, on his third run under his third new map. Both districts went for Trump. Both members won anyway.
At WelcomeFest, political scientist Ruy Teixeira opened up their panel by laying out the hole they were climbing out of, and neither of them argued with the premise. But they also presented a simple formula for winning: breaking from their party when the party broke from their voters.
The numbers behind the question.
“If you look back to the high point of 2012, the Democratic margin has literally been cut in half among non-white working class voters, from 64 to 32 points. That’s an extremely heavy decline.”
Add the Hispanic margin falling by half to two-thirds depending on the data source, a Black vote decline concentrated among men and voters under 45, and a youth vote that collapsed. Vasquez and Davis prevailed anyway.
“They just want to be heard.”
Vasquez started by refusing the national frame. His answer to why Democrats lost ground with Latino voters is that there is no such thing as the Latino voter, not even inside one district.
“The Latino vote is not uniform. Even in a district like mine, because it is so big and because the lifestyles and the economies and the issues are so vastly different, the Hispanic community thinks much differently about politics in the southeast than they do in the southwest, in Albuquerque than they do on the border.”
His district runs from Bracero-program families who came in the 1960s, to sixth and seventh generation families from Spanish land grants, to a majority-Hispanic oil and gas workforce. What connects them is not ideology.
“That’s why doing things like hosting carne asadas at the park, regardless of what area I’m talking about, people will show up for that, because it’s a non-threatening, non-political space that’s part of one of our cultural traditions, and it allows people to open up and listen.”
He ran Spanish-language radio, TV, and digital. He outperformed every statewide candidate in his district. And he was blunt about what the ticket-splitters were telling him.
“When you ask folks in the district why did you vote for Trump and why did you also vote for Vasquez, the unifying link there is the economy.”
“The party has left me.”
Davis hears one sentence more than any other in eastern North Carolina.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the party has left me. That’s what I hear.”
North Carolina Republicans have been touting the collapse in Democratic registration. Davis reads the same data differently, and his read is the more useful one.
“Perhaps there’s a turnoff on the Democratic brand. But at the same time, if the independent numbers are increasing, they’re not sold on the Republican brand either. So people are sitting here saying, I’m going to just look at the person, the candidate, and try to figure out the ballot.”
That is the whole Welcome thesis in a registration table. The voters splitting between Donald Trump and Donald Davis are not looking for a party. They are looking for a person.
Trump won the economic argument. Davis says so out loud.
He told the story of a young Black truck driver he met knocking doors, who was with him and not with the top of the ticket.
“I asked the question, why would you not be interested in supporting Harris? He said, I’m concerned about my pocket, my wallet.”
Then the part Democrats keep skipping.
“If you couple some social issues and sprinkle on top of perhaps not winning the economic argument, the affordability argument, at the same time we’re trying to convince everyone that it’s not really an issue, then people begin to question and have doubt.”
The problem was not only that Democrats lost the affordability argument. It was that they spent a year telling voters there wasn’t one.
Presence is a strategy, not a courtesy.
Davis’s second answer was simply showing up, in all 22 counties, on purpose, repeatedly.
“In eastern North Carolina, people feel left out and forgotten. They feel that if they get a chance to see an elected official, it’s only around election time, and after the election is over, they will likely never see this person again.”
And knowing the specifics. When Martin General Hospital closed, it wasn’t one community losing a building.
“You’re talking a $30 million economic impact in a small rural community, nearly 300 jobs on the line. People for years, their families may have worked at the hospital. And more important, if they get sick, it’s not just easy to go down the street.”
Four out of a hundred.
The most alarming number of the panel wasn’t electoral. North Carolina keeps getting ranked the best state in the country to do business. Davis pointed out that east of I-95, where most of his district sits, would rank worst if it were its own state. Two-thirds of the state’s growth is happening in two of its 100 counties.
So he asked a room of about 100 early-college students how many planned to come back home after school or the military.
“Four. Four. We have to truly help our young people in eastern North Carolina realize that they can live the American dream and stay home. It’s one thing to leave because you want to leave. It’s another thing to feel that you have no other choice but to leave.”
The grandmother test on immigration.
Asked whether talking economics was enough to clear the trust deficit, Vasquez went straight at the issue his colleagues avoid. His mother naturalized through an employer-sponsored visa. His grandmother waited 16 years for a family visa.
“She did it the right way. Now imagine a wave of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers at the border who are getting placed in places across the country, receiving work authorization and stipends, and how that makes somebody like my grandma feel.”
“That’s one of the things that many of my colleagues in D.C. don’t understand on immigration, when they assume that all Latinos have this very progressive view. In my district I talk to them about why the Mexican American population was pissed off at Biden’s policies, why they didn’t think it was fair. They felt cheated, and we had to address that.”
He was equally direct that the current enforcement regime is cruel and that voters reject it too. His point is that opposing ICE is not a position on immigration.
“The Democratic Caucus has to be more comfortable with acknowledging one, that we have borders, and two, that there are right ways to achieve a level of border security that Americans are comfortable with.”
For Vasquez that means technology at ports of entry, where the overwhelming share of drugs, human smuggling, and counterfeit goods actually move. He chairs the New Dems’ Border Security and Immigration Task Force, and he described building the plan as filling a void.
“Not only are we going to oppose ICE, not only are we going to oppose the draconian tactics of this administration, but we’re going to provide a sensible alternative, which the majority of Americans actually want to see. A legal, a fair, a just system that includes border security and that includes fairness to the American worker.”
The complacency problem.
Teixeira pressed the obvious 2026 question. Hispanic voters are snapping back, Black voters are snapping back, young voters are snapping back, and Democrats are poised to do well. Isn’t all of that thermostatic, and doesn’t it let the party skip the work?
Davis answered with the distinction he keeps returning to.
“If we totally lead to the fear and have no answer, what happens? You’ve relied on the fear. Everybody’s afraid of Trump and what’s going to happen, but then you go into the majority and you have no agenda, no clear purpose. Where is that taking you in the long term?”
Vasquez’s version was operational. He said the incoming majority needs bipartisan wins, not revenge, and that he’s already working with Greg Casar on a shared economic agenda rather than waiting to fight over pre-cooked bills.
“Rather than having pre-cooked proposals and then battling over them, and then going on TV and arguing about who’s right and who’s wrong.”
Then the line to end on.
“What voters are most frustrated with, and why we have such a low approval in Congress, is because the things that we need to get done never get done around here. That’s how we reach the median voter. They need to see that Democrats are going to be the party of action, not the party of talking heads.”