Here are the latest thoughts on the future:
It has been nearly two decades since a Democrat was elected to statewide office and nearly 40 since the party carried Texas in a presidential race; White House hopefuls stopped trying to win here a long time ago.
But after a generation's worth of Democratic failure, many are convinced the state is on the cusp of competitiveness, thanks to the rapid growth of Texas' minority population, especially Latinos, and a slow rebuilding of the party from the ground level — city, county, legislative offices — up.
"It's inevitable," said Matt Angle, a Democratic consultant whose Lone Star Project has chipped away at Republican dominance over the last several elections. "But only with a lot of hard work."
Among those drawn by the prospect are some of the data-driven strategists of President Obama's campaigns, whose targeting and mobilization boosted black and Latino turnout and twice helped win such battlegrounds as Ohio, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada. They have dispatched field teams throughout the state, hoping to apply their organizing techniques to Texas, where millions of eligible minority voters have either failed to register or haven't bothered voting.
After two decades, the permanent party organization has withered and needs to be rebuilt, which takes time.
. . . one of the higher hurdles facing Democrats in Texas [is] the lack of viable statewide candidates. When Gov. Rick Perry said Monday he would not run again in 2014, the odds-on favorite to replace him, Republican Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott, already had more than $18 million in the bank. Democrats, meantime, are struggling to find a single plausible contender.
Building a campaign infrastructure, something Texas Democrats sorely lack, is vital. But "you also need to create some organic reason for people to want to vote for you and identify with you," said James Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas in Austin. That, he and others suggested, requires a compelling — or at least viable — slate of statewide candidates.
Democrats talk up the prospects of San Antonio's mayor, 38-year-old Julian Castro, and his twin brother, Joaquin, a congressman from the city. Neither, however, is expected to run for higher office any time soon.
Davis, 50, was touted as a possible gubernatorial candidate even before her attention-grabbing filibuster, which blocked — at least temporarily — Republican passage of sweeping antiabortion legislation. But although the Fort Worth Democrat has expressed a desire to run statewide, she also knows of the challenges she would face in 2014.
State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio lawmaker and head of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said Democrats were wise to rebuild their party from the bottom up, rather than counting on a candidate to do it from the top down. That's been tried, he said, "and when the campaign folded, so did the computer that had all the data."
