CONROE, Texas _ It's a steamy Friday night and, this being Texas, that means high school football _ the glaring lights, the band and cheerleaders pumping up the crowd.
Parents in the stands aren't talking politics. But if you can get them to take their eyes off the game, it doesn't take long to figure out that this is Trump country.
"Trump 2020!" declared Alicia Elliott, 40, who owns an electrical business with her husband. "If he wasn't doing a good job, that would be one thing."
Republicans can't win the White House without carrying Texas. And the firewall within the firewall state runs through places like Montgomery County, just north of Houston. For Republicans to survive 2020, they'll need pockets of suburbia where loyalties run deep _ so deep that voters shrug at the threat of impeachment and allegations that President Donald Trump pressured Ukraine for dirt on a rival and covered up his effort.
But there are other sorts of suburbs in Texas, like parts of Collin and Denton counties where spectacular growth has overturned the old order. Many have already slipped from the GOP's grasp _ once reliable deposits of white conservative votes now transformed by demographic shifts and other forces.
Donald Trump's 9% spread over Hillary Clinton in Texas was the worst showing in decades for a GOP presidential nominee. Sen. Ted Cruz survived in 2018 with less than 51% of the vote, the closest call for any statewide Republican candidate in a quarter century.
Democrats showed surprising strength in Dallas suburbs, for instance, toppling a congressman and two state lawmakers.
"People, Democrat or Republican, they think this is a solidly red area. The demographics are changing. ... I look at my high school pictures, and it was very white here. That's definitely changed," said one of the freshman Democrats, state Rep. Michelle Beckley of Carrollton.
The 2020 elections will hinge on the battle between the old and new, the traditional suburbs and those in transition.
"Oh they're dying to get this state," said Rex Johnson, 50, sharing nachos with his son at halftime at the game in Conroe, where he makes a living splicing and testing fiber optic cable.
"The Democrats, I don't agree with any of them at all," he said. "There's no such thing as free. Someone has to pay for it."
As for the Trump era, Johnson said, "More people seem to be employed. Most of the people I talk to, they're happy."
