State of Texas: Can Texas turn blue? Bernie Sanders is working on it

AUSTIN (Nexstar) - With one month to go before election day, Texas remains a hot spot for campaign activity. While progressives worked to rally young voters in the state, former President Donald Trump made a quick stop in the Lone Star State to raise campaign cash.

Trump's plane flew into Midland on Wednesday, where the former president attended a private fundraising event. Tickets for the event reportedly cost in the thousands of dollars.

He did not hold public events in Midland, but his arrival drew a group of people to the airport, hoping to see the former president.

"I feel very excited you know we actually get to catch a glimpse of Donald Trump," Steven Ramos told a reporter. Ramos wore a red cap embroidered with Trump's name. "He needs to be our president," Ramos said.

Republican congressman August Pfluger met the former president as he exited his plane. Pfluger said Trump's first words as he stepped on the tarmac were "drill baby drill," a reference to his support for the state's oil industry.

Trump's plane was also spotted in Houston earlier Wednesday, where the former president reportedly attended another fundraiser.

Meanwhile, college lecture halls up and down Texas' "Blue Spine" attracted a who's-who of national progressive icons this week -- Senators Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez headlined rallies with Rep. Greg Casar and Beto O'Rourke to drive youth turnout, spreading an unapologetically progressive message from which most Democrats running statewide in Texas have shied away.

Colin Allred and Kamala Harris, for example, campaigned against fracking and for a Medicare-for-All plan when running in Democratic primaries. This year, they are taking a more tempered approach, casting themselves as moderates who pose no threat to Texans' gas or guns.

But Sanders thinks the progressive message is a winning one. He sat down with Nexstar for an interview ahead of his rally in Austin on Wednesday.

"We don't think Texas is quite so red," he said. "We think Texas has huge potential to become a more progressive state. You have a lot of young people, a lot of working-class people, you have a strong trade union movement. And I think people right now want to fight for a nation and a government that works for all and not just the few. That's what I'm seeing here in Texas."

Addressing the East Austin crowd of about 400 after raucous speeches from O'Rourke and Casar, Sanders said, "As goes Texas, so goes the country, so goes the world."

Democrats have been eating away at Republican margins in Texas' presidential elections for more than two decades. In 2012, Mitt Romney won Texas by nearly 16 points. In 2016, Donald Trump won by nine points. In 2020, he won by less than six.

If Harris were to pull out a victory in Texas, of course, that's ballgame. But neither presidential campaign is trying to win Texas this cycle.

The Senate race is the real nail-biter. Dallas Congressman Colin Allred is mounting a formidable challenge against two-term incumbent Ted Cruz, with many polls within the margin of error and most showing a 3-5 point lead for Cruz. Polling aggregators like the Cook Political Report and Inside Elections have shifted the race closer to Allred's corner in recent weeks, from "Likely Republican" to "Lean Republican."

Cruz, for his part, is taking nothing for granted. He's embarking on a bus tour to Republican areas this week, hitting Richmond, Longview, Keller, Allen, Waxahachie, and Huntsville. He's warning his national fanbase of conservatives that he may be in trouble.

"We are being massively outspent," said Cruz on the TV show Hannity after the Tuesday vice presidential debate. "We have had now two polls in the last two weeks that show this as a one-point race, and in fact, we've had two polls that show the Democrat winning because [Senator] Chuck Schumer is spending so much money."

On that note, Sanders says it's time for the national Democratic Party to play harder in Texas.

"In general, and I speak as an independent, the national Democratic Party is not doing enough, in general, to organize at the grassroots level, working-class people and young people who are going to lead the fight against corporate greed and create an economy that works for all of us," he said. "We can do a lot better. We can rally people around that message. We're going to win here in Texas, win all over the country."

Election administrator reminds voters of Monday registration deadline

With the Monday voter registration deadline looming, Williamson County elections administrator Bridgette Escobedo shared tips for those still trying to get registered for the November election.

Escobedo recommends hand delivering registration forms instead of mailing them to ensure they are postmarked by the deadline.

"I don’t recommend that you drop it in the mail at this point," she said.

There will be a curbside voter registration event Monday at the Williamson County elections office, located at 301 Southeast Inner Loop. It will be open until 7 p.m. to assist voters, for registration drop off and to check voters' registration status.

In order to fill out a registration application, eligible voters will need to list basic information including their full name, address and either their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number.

Voter registration forms are available online on the Secretary of State's website. However, Texas does not allow people to register to vote online. Those who use the online forms will need to print them out so that they can be delivered to the county registrar's office.

The state of Texas has seen a sharp increase in the number of registered voters. At the end of September, more than 18.4 million Texans were registered to vote. That's up from just under 17 million in the 2020 presidential election year.

Williamson County has seen increases in registered voters over recent years. In 2020, 376,672 voters were registered, and in 2022, 415,096 voters were registered, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s website.

The county currently has over 440,000 registered voters, according to their website.

"We’ve had a steady increase, and we couldn’t be more happy about it," Escobedo said.

Automation is unresolved issue in ongoing port worker negotiations

A union representing many U.S. dock workers reached a deal Thursday with the United States Maritime Alliance to end a three-day strike. Most operations and ports on the East Coast and Gulf Coast were shut down during the strike, including the port of Houston.

The International Longshoreman’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance now have until Jan. 15, 2025 to negotiate a new contract.

Dock workers keep trade flowing at ports which play a critical role in the economy, said Margaret Kidd, University of Houston associate professor of supply chain and logistics.

According to Kidd, the tentative agreement the groups reached gives workers a 62% pay raise over six years. However, the groups have not yet negotiated the topic of automation.

“The ILA has concerns about this technology replacing workers,” Kidd said. “But if we look at the last 100 years in just about every industry in the U.S., including academia and journalism, technology plays a very, very large role on how we do our everyday work.”

According to a report by the United States Government Accountability Office, foreign ports tend to have more automation than U.S. ports. In the report, the office looked at the 10 largest ports in the U.S. and compared the use of different types of automation to 10 foreign ports’ use.

Automated gate systems were common in both, but automated guided vehicles were in more than double the foreign ports reviewed compared to the U.S. ports. Other types of automation, including remotely operated ship to shore cranes, automated gantry cranes and artificial intelligence and machine learning systems, were also more common in foreign ports than domestic ones.

“U.S. ports are probably two decades behind our counterparts in Europe and in Asia in terms of embracing automation and technology,” Kidd said.

While the short-term strike had no impact on goods, it still prompted panic buying of things such as toilet paper and bottled water.

“There was really no reason to panic; those are two products that are domestically sourced,” Kidd said. “But so much of what we consume, whether it's at the grocery store or at a car dealership or at the mall, does come in a container through a port at some point on its journey from manufacturing to the point of consumption.”

Texas lawmakers urge mercy for autistic man set to be executed in child's death

In less than two weeks, the State of Texas plans to execute Robert Roberson, a 57-year-old autistic man convicted in 2003 of killing his child on evidence of "shaken baby syndrome." However, a bipartisan majority of Texas House lawmakers say "no crime ever occurred."

When Roberson rushed his daughter Nikki to the hospital with high fever and undiagnosed pneumonia, doctors thought he had hurt her. Her condition and Roberson's unfazed demeanor suggested foul play, according to court documents.

He was arrested before his daughter passed, and eventually convicted on a since-discredited "shaken baby syndrome" hypothesis, which is medical diagnosis that posits a baby can sustain serious head injuries if shaken. A majority of the medical community now believes "shaken baby syndrome" is baseless and was improperly used to accuse innocent parents of child abuse, court records state.

Roberson's lawyer said medical evidence found Nikki's severe pneumonia went unchecked by doctors and even exacerbated by improper medications that suppressed her breathing. Roberson's undiagnosed autism would also account for his abnormal demeanor, his lawyer said.

"It's a very disturbing case," Roberson's lawyer Gretchen Sween said. "Every Texan should be alarmed that this is careening forward in our name as somehow the product of justice when, in fact, it's an emblem of how things can go terribly wrong."

In what could possibly be Roberson's final days, a bipartisan majority of the Texas House is pleading with the Court of Criminal Appeals and Gov. Greg Abbott to grant mercy. A bipartisan delegation of lawmakers visited Roberson at TDCJ's Polunsky Unit last week.

"That was really incredible to visit," Rep. Salman Bhojani, D-Euless, said. "He had so much hope inside him that he gave us hope... (execution would) be a very grave injustice, and I wouldn't want it on my watch."

Last month, Roberson filed a petition for clemency containing new medical evidence showing his daughter died of severe illness, an accidental fall, and improper medical care -- not abuse. They further argue that Roberson's trial was ridden with errors and unfairness, citing the new medical consensus that the testimony regarding "shaken baby syndrome" during trial is "junk science."

An updated petition for clemency highlights another case pending before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that Roberson's team argues is strikingly similar to his case. In another challenged conviction, the state conceded that nearly identical testimony on shaken baby syndrome was false. Roberson was convicted on a "debunked theory" from the same child abuse expert.

"It would be an extreme personal tragedy for Mr. Roberson and his loved ones were he to be executed—only to have the law finally recognize, in someone else’s case, that his conviction hinges on discredited science," the new petition states. "It would also cause incalculable harm to the integrity of Texas’s criminal legal system if Mr. Roberson were to be executed in this high-profile case—only to have the CCA rule a few months later that the Shaken Baby hypothesis used to convict him is unsound science.”

Roberson is requesting the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommend commutation of his death sentence to a lesser penalty, or at least a reprieve of execution for 180 days to allow the Board to consider the new evidence. The decision ultimately rests with Gov. Greg Abbott.

"I don't think there's any Texan who believes that executing an innocent person serves any valid purpose in our justice system, and it is our adamant belief that he is not only innocent, but that no crime occurred," Sween said. "We have not been able to get a court to look at this new evidence, and the clock is ticking, and we are down to the wire with really the only recourse of clemency as a means to potentially stop this."

This is Roberson's second time to face an execution date. In 2016, the Court of Criminal Appeals halted his execution one week before he was scheduled to go to the death chamber. The appeals court sent the case back to the trial court in Anderson County for further review.

After a hearing in 2021, the district judge said there was insufficient evidence to grant Roberson a new trial. In 2023, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied the request to overturn Roberson's conviction.

Roberson is now scheduled for execution on Oct. 17.