80% of Taylor County voters helped reelect the four-term Republican. Arrington’s only challengers: Independent Nathan Lewis and Libertarian candidate Bernard Johnson collected a combined-total of 20% of the county’s votes.
Linda Goolsbee, Democratic challenger for House District 71, explained that Congressional District 19 was gerrymandered years ago to bring in more of Lubbock, which is a bigger, Republican-dominated area with a lot of oil money backing Republican candidates.
Despite the challenges of running as a Democrat in rural West Texas, Goolsbee says that when there are a lot of Democrats together in a smaller location, money can be raised and spent in those areas to get good results, “My experience in life is that everything takes longer than you think it’s going to, and everything seems impossible until all of a sudden it is not. So I’m waiting for the all of a sudden.”
West Texas is still deeply red, but local Democrats hold out hope that that could change in the future.