After a red wave last November, Texas Democrats are as marginalized as they’re ever been at the state level.

Now thanks to newly redrawn congressional maps for 2026, they’re also poised to lose power at the federal level — where they currently control just a third of the state’s 38 congressional seats.

Nevertheless, national Democrats are once again gearing up to put big money and resources into an expensive state with limited opportunity to gain ground anytime soon.

Last week, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin completed his third swing through Texas — a state he says could make or break the party’s chances at controlling the White House in the not-so-distant future.

The country’s 435 congressional seats will be redistributed based on the results of the 2030 census, which also determines how many Electoral College votes each state receives.

“Six of the 10 fastest-growing states in the whole country are all in the U.S. south … so all of the power is going to shift,” Martin told the San Antonio Report, pointing to a December 2024 Brennan Center report on population changes.

“If we’re not doing better here by 2032 as a Democratic Party, we’re going to be on the wrong side of potentially winning the presidency and winning majorities in Congress for at least a decade,” Martin said.

The Minnesotan took over chairing the party in the wake of brutal electoral losses last February, inheriting a national Democratic Party that is still very much divided on its path forward.

The battleground states Democrats bet on in 2024 didn’t deliver the presidency, but some believe the party should be rebooting its candidates and messaging before trying to expand into new territory.

Martin is undeterred. Last week he was campaigning in bright-red Boerne as part of his plan to help Democrats build party infrastructure in places they’ve had no hope — but which could become important when districts are redrawn in 2032.

It’s a concept the pro-Democrat Texas Majority PAC has also noted, suggesting in a recent analysis of the new congressional maps that urban sprawl from majority blue San Antonio could have a big impact on what’s competitive in the next several election cycles.

“As [professional hockey legend] Wayne Gretzky says, you have to skate to where the puck will be, not where the puck is,” Martin said. “What I’ve seen over the last 20 years is the Democratic Party keeps focusing on just one election cycle, one candidate or one campaign, oftentimes at the detriment of building long-term, durable infrastructure.”

While in San Antonio, Martin sat down with some local politicians, including former mayor Ron Nirenberg and Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, who are both on his list of up-and-coming talent for the national party.

In a state where gerrymandered districts have left few candidates competing for the political middle, he said the party needs to do more to build its bench through local, nonpartisan races — as it did by pitching in to help Jones in San Antonio’s most recent mayoral race.

“Where does the future bench come from? Local offices,” Martin said. “When we start winning more local offices, we’re creating future candidates who can run.”

The San Antonio Report sat down with Martin to talk about his case for Texas, Democrats’ prospects here in the 2026 midterms and future elections, plus San Antonio’s efforts to court the Democratic National Convention.

The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

San Antonio Report: Of all of the political battlegrounds you could be spending your time in, what brought you to the San Antonio area?

Ken Martin: We have to win the moment, which is 2026 — if we as a Democratic Party don’t win one chamber of Congress back, we’re screwed. But we also have to win the future. We have to be prepared to win when the map shifts underneath us.

The five fastest-growing states in the country right now are Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Texas, followed by Florida. What that means is, during the next reapportionment [of congressional seats] in 2032 … states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island and California will all lose power — congressional power, electoral votes — to the U.S. south.

Texas alone is going to gain at least five additional congressional seats after the next census. We have to be in a position to compete here, but also to help draw those lines, … which means we have to focus on state legislative races. Then we’ve also got to focus on local races to help us build this party from the grassroots.

So that’s why I’m here. This is a very, very important part of our country for us right now.

SAR: There’s a lot of debate among Texas and national Democrats about whether to put limited resources into areas that aren’t currently winnable, particularly when the U.S. House majority is on the line. But it sounds like that’s what you’re saying needs to happen.

KM: In 2000 I ran Vice President Gerald Ford’s campaign in Minnesota and we had 20 battleground states that year. In 2004 I ran Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign in Minnesota and we had 16 battleground states.

Now [we’re] down to seven battleground states and the Democratic Party spent $10 billion last year, almost all of it in those seven states. We have to be much more strategic about how we build this party for the long-term, or otherwise, we’re going to be in the minority forever.

Former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg (second from left), state Rep. James Talarico (D-Round Rock), U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio) and Beto O’Rourke are all considered potential statewide contenders for Texas Democrats in 2026. Credit: Brenda Bazán / San Antonio Report

Collectively, the Democratic ecosystem needs to recognize that, yes, Texas is a big and expensive state, but how do you eat an elephant? One small bite at a time.

You’re not going to change Texas overnight by just dumping a ton of money in for one election cycle. The challenge we’ve had [here] is we’ve focused primarily on the big statewide races and we’ve ignored those downballot races.

That’s not to suggest we’re going to ignore the 2026 Senate race here, which is a real opportunity for us. We’ve got great candidates. But can we — through the investment we will make in that race — also help those downballot races? Can we target resources in spaces that will help us chip away at that Texas House majority?

SAR: Where does that put San Antonio in the list of priorities? It’s a solidly blue city with few opportunities for Democrats to expand their power, but San Antonio and other large cities didn’t turn out voters like Democrats hoped during the 2024 election.

KM: As you think about Texas overall, if we’re going to win statewide, we need to focus on red areas and rebuild them in those rural counties, but we also can’t keep ignoring big cities that should be vote engines for the Democratic Party.

I see us keep making that mistake. We make assumptions about what we’re going to get out of certain areas like San Antonio, and we have elected officials here who know they don’t need to increase turnout at all for them to win because it’s such a safely Democratic area.

Local Democrats are shown phone banking for 2024 election, where Texas’ big metro areas didn’t turn out as party leaders’ hoped. Credit: Bria Woods / San Antonio Report

The only way you’re going to win in a state like Texas is making sure you’re juicing the turnout in the biggest cities, decreasing the margins in the rural areas and putting yourself [in a] position to win in the suburbs.

SAR: Republicans think they can pick up five congressional seats in Texas after their unusual mid-cycle redistricting. What do you think is a reasonable outcome for Democrats under these new maps?

KM: It’s hard to say right now, the courts are still involved in this. … We don’t know which maps we’re going to be running on. Assuming that the courts rule in favor of the Texas maps, I think one of the challenges that Republicans made in the state
is they drew those lines on the 2024 results, not on the 2020 results.

They’re making a giant assumption that they’re going to continue to benefit from some increased voter support from the Latino community — we’ve already seen that evaporate. [Republicans probably pick up] two at the most, and the other three will probably be very competitive.

SAR: The last big year for Texas Democrats was 2018, the first midterm of President Donald Trump’s first administration. How do you see 2026 shaping up by comparison?

KM: First I’ll tell you what’s similar. What 2005, 2017 and now 2025 all have in common is that they were precursor years to big midterm wave elections from the Democratic Party.

In 2005, George Bush attacked Social Security. A very popular president up to that point, but his numbers went into the toilet. In 2017, Donald Trump comes in and attacks the [Affordable Care Act]. Same phenomenon, huge backlash.

In 2025, Trump attacks Medicaid, SNAP and Social Security. The backlash has been swift and very severe, Trump has dropped very precipitously in the polls. His approval rating is now sitting in the mid-30s in most of the polling.

Democrats need three seats to win back the U.S. House, and the average swing in a midterm congressional election for the party out of power is 26 seats. That number increases to 38 seats when you have a president sitting under 50% [approval]. So we have the wind at our back.

What is different, I think, is that people are very nervous and anxious about what’s happening in this country, which is unnerving. When you see Charlie Kirk assassinated … we are just seeing so many norms of societies completely evaporating. Both parties are responsible for this.

Things are very different from 2018 in that the mood of this country, the violence, the rhetoric, the tone, the tenor, the just decay of our values as humans, all of it is just different.

SAR: The Republicans are holding their national convention in Houston ahead of the 2028 presidential election. San Antonio has applied to host the Democratic National Convention. Do you think this city is a true contender?

KM: San Antonio is a beautiful city and it’s got so much to offer, I’m glad that Mayor Jones put forward a bid.

We’re right in the beginning phase of this process. We sent out letters to 50 of the biggest cities in America to ask them if they wanted to bid to host the convention. We’ll have a whole process that will ensue.

San Antonio certainly, because they’ve hosted so many national events, they’re certainly equipped to do it. Once we get past the technical sort of review piece, then we go into winnowing down the list into sort of some of the more intangible pieces, and then we’ll start doing site selections, probably to a handful of cities, starting next spring and summer.