旧的竞选信息已失效，新的又充满风险 |弗里斯科和圣安东尼奥|7分钟阅读 美国最大的红州共和党人通常不必陷入防守。但距离选举日不到三周，他们正陷入恐慌。参议院候选人肯·帕克斯顿因丑闻缠身，在民意调查中落后于詹姆斯·塔拉里科。自9月初以来，全国共和党人已向广告投入约2亿美元，试图挽救他的竞选——以及他们在参议院的多数席位。
The old campaign messages aren’t working and the new ones are risky |FRISCO and SAN ANTONIO|7 min read REPUBLICANS IN AMERICA’S biggest red state don’t usually have to play defence. But less than three weeks before election day, they are panicking. Ken Paxton, the scandal-plagued Senate candidate, is trailing James Talarico in the polls. Since early September, national Republicans have poured about $200m into ads in a bid to save his campaign—and their Senate majority.
德克萨斯州三届州长格雷格·阿博特过去曾以双位数优势赢得选举，但今年他被迫抵御民主党挑战者吉娜·希诺霍萨，后者今年夏天的花费是他的六倍。“我们担心德克萨斯州，”唐纳德·特朗普本月初承认。
Greg Abbott, Texas’s three-term governor, has won past elections by double digits, but this year is being forced to fend off a Democratic challenger, Gina Hinojosa, outspending her six-to-one over the summer. “We’re worried about Texas,” Donald Trump admitted early this month.
帕克斯顿是一个独特糟糕的候选人，一直受到刑事调查和婚姻不忠的困扰。但他不是共和党在德克萨斯州的唯一问题。南德克萨斯州的拉美裔选民在2024年转向特朗普，如今似乎又在回流到民主党；达拉斯和休斯顿郊区的足球妈妈们对总统的怨恨感到厌倦。在超过二十年的不间断执政后，德克萨斯州共和党人正努力寻找获胜信息——旧的竞选口号已失效，该党如今试图通过质疑外国人是否属于这里来激发基础选民。即使该党在11月3日仍能保住德克萨斯州的政权，其控制力也在削弱。
Mr Paxton is a uniquely bad candidate, dogged by criminal investigations and marital infidelity. But he is not Republicans’ only problem in Texas. Latinos in South Texas, who swung to Mr Trump in 2024, now appear to be drifting back to Democrats; soccer moms in the suburbs of Dallas and Houston are tired of the president’s rancour. After more than two decades of unbroken rule, Texas Republicans are struggling to find a winning message—old campaign lines aren’t working and the party is now trying to whip up the base by questioning if foreigners belong. Even if the party hangs on to power in Texas on November 3rd, its grip is loosening.
就像其他地方的共和党候选人一样，德克萨斯州的候选人也受到特朗普不受欢迎的拖累。根据《经济学人》的追踪，特朗普在全州的支持率为-18。帕克斯顿在9月告诉捐款人，特朗普在达拉斯的中期党代会导致他的支持率下降，据泄露的录音所示。阿博特在10月7日的圣安东尼奥特朗普集会上明显缺席。他的竞选团队称这是日程冲突；那天他参加了路易斯安那州边境附近一家医院的剪彩仪式。
Like Republican candidates elsewhere, those in Texas are dragged down by Mr Trump’s unpopularity. The president’s statewide approval rating is -18, according to The Economist’s tracker. Mr Paxton told donors in September that Mr Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas sank his numbers, according to a leaked recording. Mr Abbott was conspicuously absent from a Trump rally in San Antonio on October 7th. His campaign cited a scheduling conflict; that day he attended a ribbon-cutting for a hospital near the Louisiana border.
德克萨斯州的政治身份长期以来非常稳固，基本上抵御了全国范围内的左倾趋势。如今，共和党人屡试不爽的“孤星州”论点正在失去影响力。多年来，对边境安全的呼声团结了德克萨斯州的共和党人，并赢得了许多独立选民的支持。该党现在可以自豪地宣称，问题已经得到解决——在特朗普时期，边境遇险人数大幅下降，8月份较拜登平均月份下降了94%。但该问题的重要性也在下降。十年来首次，选民将生活成本置于移民之上，将其视为“面临的州最大问题”。
Texas’s political identity has long been so secure that it has largely withstood any national leftward tilt. Now Republicans’ tried-and-true Lone Star arguments are losing force. For years, calls for border security united Texas Republicans and won over many independents. The party can now boast that the problem has been fixed—border encounters have plunged under Mr Trump, down 94% in August from the average month under Joe Biden. But the issue is also less salient. For the first time in a decade, voters rank cost of living above immigration as the “biggest issue facing the state”.
华盛顿的驱逐行动并未起到帮助作用。许多德克萨斯人对移民特工在法庭听证会上抓捕外籍工人、拘留在该国生活数十年的祖母的做法感到反感。“斯蒂芬·米勒和在华盛顿特区掌权的人们已经把移民政策从对德克萨斯州共和党人的净正面影响变成了中性或负面影响，”该州资深共和党游说者比尔·米勒说道。联邦特工在7月于休斯顿杀死一名男子后，帕克斯顿未表示任何慰问。“我所知道的只是，我们需要站在执法部门这边，”他说。
Washington’s deportation crackdown doesn’t help. Many Texans bristle at immigration agents’ habit of picking up foreign-born workers at court hearings and detaining abuelas who have been in the country for decades. “Stephen Miller and the guys calling shots in DC have taken immigration policy from being a net positive for Texas Republicans and made it neutral or negative,” says Bill Miller, a veteran Republican lobbyist in the state. After a federal agent killed a man in Houston in July, Mr Paxton offered no condolences. “All I know is that we need to stand behind our law enforcement,” he said.
当形势艰难时，德克萨斯州共和党人往往会退而求其次，吹嘘“德克萨斯奇迹”——即由低税收和宽松监管释放的经济繁荣。在2025年前的五年里，至少有184家公司搬到了奥斯汀、达拉斯和休斯顿。当谷歌去年11月宣布将投资400亿美元时，阿博特宣称该州是“总部中的总部”，并承诺将其打造成“人工智能发展的中心”。
When the going gets tough, Texas Republicans tend to fall back on bragging about the “Texas miracle”, the economic boom unleashed by low taxes and light regulation. In the five years to 2025, at least 184 companies moved to Austin, Dallas and Houston. When Google announced a $40bn investment last November, Mr Abbott declared the state the “headquarter of headquarters” and promised to make it the “epicentre of AI development”.
那些话如今困扰着他。今年，得克萨斯州民众与美国其他地方的人们一样，对数据中心愤怒不已。政治压力迫使阿博特先生呼吁立法机构废除曾帮助吸引数据中心入州的那些减税政策。他的挑战者何诺萨抓住了这种虚伪。她在阿马里洛和格兰伯里等民主党很少获胜的农村地区竞选，将自己塑造为经济民粹主义者。“格雷格·阿博特正在出卖你们，”一则广告写道。
Those words now haunt him. This year Texans, like Americans elsewhere, turned furiously against data centres. Political pressure forced Mr Abbott to call on the legislature to repeal the very tax breaks that helped lure data centres to the state. Ms Hinojosa, his challenger, pounced on the hypocrisy. Campaigning in rural places such as Amarillo and Granbury where Democrats rarely win, she casts herself as an economic populist. “Greg Abbott is selling you out,” an ad reads.
州长的另一项重大政策优先事项——今年秋季推出的全民学校选择计划——在小城镇的共和党人中也不受欢迎，因为公立学校在那里是主要雇主。
The governor’s other big policy priority, a universal school-choice programme launched this autumn, is also unpopular among Republicans in small towns, where public schools are a top employer.
“经典论点已失去动力，新秩序尚未诞生，”奥斯汀民调员詹姆斯·亨森说。为了填补这一真空，一些共和党人正在尝试一种新信息，希望它能在11月及以后产生共鸣：“让得克萨斯州保持得克萨斯州”。这个口号的含义近来变得格外清晰，因为政客们正在对他们声称从内部威胁得克萨斯州的外国影响发动战争。
“The classic arguments have run out of steam and a new order hasn’t been born yet,” says James Henson, an Austin pollster. To fill the void, some Republicans are testing a new message that they hope will resonate in November and beyond: “keeping Texas, Texas”. The meaning of that slogan has recently come sharply into focus, as politicians wage war on foreign influences they say threaten Texas from within.
本土之子 首先是穆斯林。去年，阿布特先生试图阻止普拉诺的一座清真寺建设他称之为“沙里亚城”的总体规划社区，并将美国最大的穆斯林民权组织列为恐怖组织。帕克斯顿先生试图，但未能成功，禁止穆斯林学校获得学校代金券。基本盘对此反应热烈。在共和党初选中，帕克斯顿先生在特朗普总统的背书以及一条新攻击路线的帮助下击败了现任参议员约翰·科宁，广告指责科宁对“激进伊斯兰教”有“特殊的情感”。
Native son First it was Muslims. Last year Mr Abbott tried to block a mosque in Plano from building a master-planned community he dubbed “Sharia city” and designated America’s biggest Muslim civil-rights group a terrorist organisation. Mr Paxton tried, unsuccessfully, to bar Muslim schools from school vouchers. The base ate it up. In the Republican primary Mr Paxton beat John Cornyn, the incumbent senator, with the help of an endorsement of Mr Trump and a new line of attack, with ads accusing Mr Cornyn of having a “special place in his heart for radical Islam”.
然后是合法移民。一月份，阿博特冻结了州政府机构和大学的H-1B签证申请。四个月后，帕克斯顿对30家公司展开调查，他指控这些公司利用“鬼办公室”让“外国人入侵得克萨斯”。九月份，正在竞选铁路委员会委员（该职位实际上涉及监管石油和天然气）的共和党人博·弗朗奇在X上发布了一张学生们庆祝得克萨斯大学橄榄球胜利的照片——几乎所有学生都是棕色皮肤。
Then it was legal immigrants. In January, Mr Abbott froze H-1B visa applications at state agencies and universities. Four months later Mr Paxton opened investigations into 30 firms he accused of using “ghost offices” to allow “foreign nationals to invade Texas”. In September Bo French, a Republican running for railroad commissioner (a job that actually involves regulating oil and gas), posted a photo of students celebrating a University of Texas football victory on X—nearly all of whom had brown skin.
他写道：“问题现在显然比任何人想象的都要严重得多。”该党曾经排斥的老派共和党人，包括卡尔·罗夫和科宁，称该帖子具有种族主义。得克萨斯州的最高层没有予以谴责。
“The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,” he wrote. Old-guard Republicans whom the party has ostracised, including Karl Rove and Mr Cornyn, called the post racist. Texas’s top brass didn’t condemn it.
谁属于得克萨斯的争论在郊区最为激烈。那里令人眼花缭乱的增长将共和党的铁杆地区转变为决定全州选举的政治战场。2020年至2025年期间，达拉斯都会区的增长速度快于美国任何其他地区。穆斯林人口随之增长，建起了沃尔玛般规模的文化中心，自认是印度教徒的人口比例大约增加了三倍。在富裕的北郊弗里斯科，如今四分之一的居民是亚洲人，市议会会议变成了政治戏剧。
The fight over who belongs in Texas is most heated in the suburbs. There, dizzying growth has transformed Republican strongholds into political battlegrounds that decide statewide elections. Between 2020 and 2025, the Dallas metro area grew faster than any other in America. The Muslim population grew with it, building cultural centres the size of Walmarts, and the share of people who identify as Hindu roughly tripled. In Frisco, a wealthy northern suburb where a quarter of residents are now Asian, city council meetings turned into political theatre.
今年春天的公众评论期间，来自得州以外的发言人和网红将一座拟建清真寺比作纳粹招募中心，并称印度人是“抢走工作的人”。
During public comment sessions this spring, speakers and influencers from outside Texas likened a proposed mosque to a Nazi recruitment centre and called Indians “job stealers”.
最终，这一策略在弗里斯科居民中碰壁。六月，一名以本土主义信息竞选市长的候选人以16个百分点之差落败。前市议员比尔·伍德回忆说，随着候选人的言辞越来越激烈，前院里的竞选标语开始消失。“弗里斯科的问题是人为制造的，很多其他地方也是如此，”他说。他认为，恐吓宣传与人们对邻居的正面体验格格不入。
Ultimately it fell flat with Frisco residents. When a mayoral candidate ran on the nativist message in June, he lost by 16 points. Bill Woodard, a former city councillor, recalls campaign signs disappearing from front yards as the candidate’s rhetoric grew hotter. “The problems are manufactured in Frisco, and in a lot of other places too,” he says. The fearmongering, he argues, jars with people’s positive experience of their neighbours.
市议会第一位印度裔美国成员、曾是特朗普热心支持者的伯特·塔库尔也表示同意。“这是顾问阶层擅长做的事，”他争辩道，“就是在选举期间制造分裂，想方设法动员选民。”德克萨斯大学的民调显示，当汽油价格高企时，社会问题并不能引起共鸣。
Burt Thakur, the council’s first Indian-American member and once an enthusiastic Trump voter, agrees. “It’s the consultant class doing what they do best,” he argues, “which is cleave on during election times and try to figure out how to get out the vote.”Polling from the University of Texas shows that social issues don’t resonate when petrol prices are high.
阿博特仍预计将连任，帕克斯顿也可能艰难获胜——他正在重用一种此前对共和党有效的策略，称塔拉里科曾说“上帝是非二元性别”，主张“他们/她们，而非你”。但是，当全国共和党人寻找特朗普之后的方向时，德克萨斯州激烈的竞选活动敲响了警钟。“德克萨斯州是该党未来的设计车间，”达拉斯的共和党策略师罗斯·亨特说。
Mr Abbott is still expected to be re-elected and Mr Paxton may eke out a win, too—he is reviving a tactic that has worked for Republicans before, saying Mr Talarico, who once said “God is non-binary”, is for “they/them, not you”. But, as national Republicans search for a post-Trump direction, the bitterly fought campaigns in Texas offer a warning. “Texas is the design shop for the future of the party,” says Ross Hunt, a Republican strategist in Dallas.
一些德克萨斯州共和党人似乎乐于接受特朗普擅长的分裂热情，但他们未能说服选民——除了初选中投票的7%——他们关心选民及其问题。“如果这种态度受到一点惩罚，”亨特说，“我想没人会流泪。”■ 探索更多 《平衡与制衡》通讯：政治羞耻感是否正在卷土重来？
我们的美国版编辑夏洛特·霍华德回顾了本周白宫发生的种种尴尬事件。阅读需4分钟。
Some Texas Republicans seem to relish the divisive zeal that is Mr Trump’s speciality, but they haven’t convinced voters—beyond the 7% who vote in their primary—that they care about them and their problems. “If we can see that attitude get punished a little bit,” Mr Hunt says, “I don’t think anyone will shed a tear.” ■ Explore more Checks and Balance newsletter: Is political shame making a comeback?
共和党人应当吸取民主党人在2022年所付出的惨痛教训。即便他们在中期选举中表现超出预期，其领袖人物仍会成为党派未来的绊脚石。
唐纳德·特朗普试图向弗拉基米尔·普京求助以缓解国内油价上涨压力，但俄罗斯的柴油恐怕无法解决总统所面临的政治难题。
Charlotte Howard, our US editor, reflects on a week of embarrassments at the White House 4 min read Republicans need to learn the Democrats’ bitter lesson of 2022 Even if they beat expectations in the midterms, their standard-bearer is an obstacle to their future Donald Trump turns to Vladimir Putin for relief at the pump But Russian diesel is unlikely to solve the president’s political problems