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Biden could challenge Trump in Texas

WASHINGTON — The president’s new campaign manager scoffed Friday at the idea that Joe Biden could beat Donald Trump in Texas, despite a raft of recent polls showing a dead heat and one that has the Democrat leading by 5 points.

“I would love — I would invite the Biden campaign to play in Texas,” Bill Stepien told reporters in a state-of-the-race briefing call. “They should play hard. They should go after Texas really, really heavily — you know, spend a lot of money in the Houston and Dallas media markets.

“I would invite them to do that. Please. I’ll even buy their first ad,” he said.

Too late.

The former vice president started running ads in Texas about two weeks ago, a one-minute spot urging Texans to wear masks and noting that “people are frightened” as the COVID-19 pandemic rages. It’s a sharp challenge to Trump’s leadership, though it doesn’t mention the president by name.

“I’m thinking of all of you today across Texas. I know the rise in case numbers is causing fear and apprehension. People are frightened. They’re especially worried about their parents, their grandparents, loved ones who are most at risk,” Biden says in the spot. “This virus is tough, but Texas is tougher.”

At the time, the Trump campaign insisted that Biden’s courtship of Texas is a “pipe dream.”

Trump demoted his former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, nine days ago, replacing him with veteran operative Stepien over frustration with sagging poll numbers and the embarrassment of a Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally that drew only about 6,200 people for an arena that seats 19,000. Parscale and Trump had boasted repeatedly in the days leading up to that event that 1 million ticket requests had come in, and the campaign had set up a large outdoor overflow area that remained empty.

Despite Trump’s optimism about Texas, momentum has been against him and the number of visits he’s made seem out of proportion if he truly views it as a state that’s safely in his column.

He returns Wednesday for a fundraising luncheon in the Midland-Odessa area, after a June 11 campaign-style event on police and race relations at a North Dallas church.

His 9-point margin over Hillary Clinton in Texas 2016 was the worst showing by a GOP nominee for president since 1976, when President Gerald Ford lost Texas and Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter ousted him from the White House.

A Dallas Morning News/University of Texas at Tyler poll released July 12 showed Biden leading by 5 percentage points.

“We’re many points up in Texas,” Trump said the next day. “Fake news. Phony polls.”

Other polls show a closer race in Texas, including a CBS/YouGov poll from the same weekend that found a statistical tie, with Trump leading 46% to 45% — still far worse than any polls in the final months of the 2016 campaign.

“Three polls in a row show Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump” in Texas, said Texas Democratic Party spokesman Abhi Rahman. “Trump has visited Texas more times than any other state in the country besides Florida. ... Trump is spending more in Texas on Facebook ads than nearly any other state in the country. False bravado only works when there is a modicum of truth to it. Stepien can laugh all he wants, Biden is going to beat Trump in Texas in November.”

 
 
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