If Texas Is The New Bellwether For The Nation, Millennial And Minority Attorneys Have Plenty Of Reason To Remain Optimistic

“Are we a nation of states? / What’s the state of our nation? /
I’m past patiently waiting / I’m passionately smashing every expectation / Every action’s an act of creation! / I’m laughin’ in the face of casualties and sorrow / For the first time, I’m thinkin’ past tomorrow.” — Lin-Manuel Miranda “My Shot” (Hamilton)

It has been said that Texas has usurped the Midwest as the bellwether for the nation’s political landscape. If this is indeed the case, then millennial and minority attorneys should be rather optimistic. Even after some emotional losses nationwide, the blue wave’s crest was able to topple the wall of incessant gerrymandering.

As CityLab’s staff writer Kriston Capps noted:

O’Rourke may have failed in his bid to unseat Ted Cruz, but thanks in part to his strong showing, Democrats made pick-ups in the House. Colin Allred upset the powerful Republican incumbent Rep. Pete Sessions, while first-time candidate Lizzie Pannill Fletcher took out the longtime GOP incumbent Rep. John Colberson. While Pete Olson held on in Texas-22, at press time, it appeared that Gina Ortiz Jones would squeak out a narrow win against Rep. Will Hurd.

Women and people of color managed to mount strong insurgent campaigns in a bastion of power for established, older white men: a microcosm for the national mood.

Many believe the Dallas Cowboys are America’s team yet are sickened by the prospect of one of them kneeling during the anthem. I hate to break it to those citizens, but nothing is as patriotic as protest. As I wrote last year in An Open Letter To Jerry Jones For Monday Night Football:

From the very first kneel-down, this was about police brutality. Kaepernick’s original stance about police brutality doesn’t change just because others are trying to co-opt this message to be about disrespect to our flag or to the military. Try to find one NFL player kneeling who doesn’t honor our military, you simply can’t. Maybe you don’t agree with it, but aren’t others allowed to dissent?

When people express dissent through peaceful protesting, often others want to control how, where, and when they should protest. You can protest, just not on this bridge. You can protest just not at this lunch counter. You can protest, just not during my football game. Believe it or not, protesters do not have to follow the majority’s agenda.

It may not be convenient for you. It may not be comfortable for you. But this is exactly the point.

The symbolism wasn’t lost on me — in the city of America’s team, Colin Allred, a civil rights attorney who is a millennial, minority, and a former NFL player, decided to throw his helmet in the ring against Pete Sessions, one of the most powerful men on the hill. Regardless of the outcome, Allred was ready to make a splash and disturb the stagnant waters of the DFW Metroplex. It just so happened that by the end of the bruising midterm elections, he was weighed and measured and proved, although relatively wet behind the ears, he was not out of his depth.

Here is an excerpt from our February 2018 feature piece on Colin Allred titled, Berkeley Law Alum And Former NFL Player Colin Allred On Following Obama, The American Dream, And His Path Back To Dallas:

Renwei Chung (RC): Why is diversity inclusion important in our legal and political systems?

Colin Allred (CA): Our diversity is our strength as a nation and as a society. In this country, we mark our progress against the ideals laid down in our foundational documents: equality, freedom and justice. To continue the march towards those ideals, we have to have diverse voices in the room.

Diversity in the legal profession and in politics is fundamentally about representation and who has a voice in the creation and application of our laws, and it’s about providing role models for our kids that show them that they can grow up to be leaders, too.

We still have a long way to go to reflect the incredible diversity of faiths, colors, and creeds of our country and it’s vital that we make that diversity a priority.

RC: Last April, you put your hat in the ring and announced you’re running for Congress. What motivated this decision?

CA: We need a new generation of leadership to come forward that seeks public office as a form of public service. I am running for Congress now to return this seat to the people I grew up with and who have for too long been forgotten by its Representative and a Congress that has lost its way.

I believe in the people of North Texas because I am one of them and because this area gave me the opportunity to chase my version of the American Dream.

Stories like mine shouldn’t be unique, but increasingly they are. I believe that government can’t create equal outcomes, but we can and must do so much more to create equal opportunity. This task cannot wait until 2020; the work must begin now.

Although The Dallas Morning News endorsed Beto over Cruz, endorsing Allred over Sessions was just a bridge too far for the publication. Ultimately the state of Texas wasn’t ready to turn blue, but its 32nd Congressional District — a former Republican stronghold and the home to SMU Dedman School of Law — collapsed from the fundamental shift of the region. It’s crazy to think that former Rep. Pete Sessions, a man so powerful he ran unopposed (by a Democrat) in 2016 would lose this year to the young upstart Colin Allred.

Last week, Texas Tribune’s Washington Bureau Chief Abby Livingston wrote:

Allred is a neophyte candidate, and it showed early on…. But Allred turned his campaign around, clinching the nomination and then outraising the incumbent — an alarm bell in any campaign, especially given Sessions’ status as a sitting committee chairman — by $500,000.

‘One of the rules that I had, as somebody who had to make the team every year in the NFL, was to worry about what I can control and to block out everything else,’ Allred said. ‘And that’s exactly how I’ve run this campaign.’

Should Allred win, there are also historical stakes. In a city with a painful racial past, Allred would join U.S. Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson and Marc Veasey in making the Dallas delegation majority African-American.

That point was not lost on [U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat, civil rights icon and close ally of Martin Luther King Jr].

‘It would be a great leap forward,’ Lewis said. ‘People would say, If Dallas can do it, then we can do it.’

As I have previously mentioned, from 2005 to 2008, I door-knocked over 20,000 homes in this region as an Edward Jones financial advisor in Utica, a city in Macomb County. After shaking thousands of hands and sitting at hundreds of dinner tables in the neighborhoods of Macomb, it would become rather clear that the Big Three’s backyard would begrudgingly pick Barack Obama over Mitt Romney, as the former candidate favored a government bailout of the U.S. auto industry. We saw a repeat of this history lesson with the coal companies and West Virginia during the last presidential race.

Less than a decade later, the Blue Wall would not hold. To the national audience’s surprise, Trump took Macomb — defeating Hillary Clinton 54 percent to 42 percent. He ended up capturing the state of Michigan by 10,704 votes. And the margin of victory (48,348 votes) in my old stomping grounds made all the difference. So many political pundits, analysts, and prognosticators missed the seismic shift in areas like the Rust Belt. They simply didn’t spend enough time on the ground in these flyover states. They ignored the seismographs and seismoscopes.

Having attended law school in the 32nd Congressional District, it seemed far-fetched to me that Pete Sessions would lose to a fresh-faced millennial who graduated from Berkeley Law in 2014. However, after featuring Allred on ATL, I was inspired to door-knock for his campaign. In one weekend, I learned the 32nd Congressional District was far more diverse than the areas of Highland Park and University Park, where my law school was located.

Whereas early in my past door-knocking experience I witnessed frustration, anger, and resentment from layoffs, downsizing, and economic struggles — this time I felt a sense of hope, optimism, and a belief in positive change for the community. In both cases, too many felt left behind. But instead of casting blame and faulting others for their lot in life, the residents in the 32nd District were voting for a politician and policies they hoped would help everybody — even those who may be deemed others and outsiders.

The xenophobia and nationalism I once warned were rising in our country have fully surfaced. But the dog-whistle propaganda campaign to dehumanize migrants and others has been countered by a wave of resistance. I used to think it would get worse before it gets better, but I’m now confident we have begun to stem the tide of misinformation and fear-mongering politicians.

Admittedly, with Beto netting only 48 percent of the vote, the state of Texas wasn’t ready just yet to fully rebuke Trump and his allies. But it was more than just the eyes of Texas that were on Beto’s campaign. He was able to arrest the entire nation’s attention — no easy feat in our current media landscape. His four-minute speech defending NFL players’ right to kneel and comment “I can think of nothing more American” than the right to protest have garnered more than 44 million views. Just as empowering, he proved a politician didn’t have to be beholden to PACs and special interests to have a platform.

Now a household name, many forget Beto was considered a longshot when he threw his hat in the ring. It is still too early to know what kind of ripple effect Beto’s campaign will have on the national political waters, but I believe the tide is high, the walls of gerrymandering will crumble, and change is coming. In the end, Texas’s loss may be the nation’s gain. The swell may just be forming.

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Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at [email protected], follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.