GRAPEVINE, Texas — If you asked the 400 or so people inside the ballroom at the Embassy Suites hotel in Grapevine, they'd say Tarrant County has officially turned blue.
But one glance outside at the 20 or so President Donald Trump supporters wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and carrying “Don’t California My Texas” signs served as a reminder that Texas remains rather red.
“This is Trump country,” yelled one of the Trump supporters as passing vehicles honked and drivers and passengers waved.
Moments after Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris took the stage, she addressed the biggest news of the day.
“That report needs to be made public,” she said of the special counsel report from Robert Mueller, which was submitted to U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Friday.
“The American people have a right and a need to know. The underlying evidence that supports that report should be made public. The Attorney General Barr should be called to testify under oath to Congress. And the White House should not be allowed to interfere in any way in interpreting and presenting the information to the American people. Full stop.”
The crowd loudly cheered.
Democrat Beto O’Rourke won Tarrant County in the 2018 U.S. Senate race, marking a historic, but not necessarily permanent flip. But it was still enough to capture the attention of Democrats across the country, including Harris, a U.S. Senator from California.
“I’ve been hearing about it and wanted to come see it for myself,” she said. “You’re making it look easy and I know it’s not.”
“Everything you are doing matters, and it’s about our nation," she said. "What you’re doing is about Tarrant County, but it is also about the future of our country."
Harris’s stop in Grapevine was sandwiched in between a fundraiser in Dallas and a rally in Houston on Saturday. She became the first 2020 presidential candidate to visit the county, even though two Texas natives – O’Rourke and Julian Castro – are also running.
“Texas has the second largest pool of democratic delegates to the national convention of any state,” said Jim Riddlesperger, TCU political science professor, explaining why the state is attractive. “So even if it’s not competitive in the general election, it will be in the primary.”
He said Tarrant County is especially attractive because, while it is “the largest urban county in the United States that still has trended Republican,” what happened in the senate race has Democrats excited.
In addition, the Dallas-Fort Worth area has some wealthy Democratic donors who might finally be excited about a field of candidates that feels it has a shot in Texas, Riddlesperger explained.
The question and answer session with Harris focused mostly on policy. She addressed her desire to increase the minimum wage, find relief for families struggling to find affordable housing, and her support for Medicare for all. But she didn’t discuss how she’d pay for those things.
She also called the president’s border wall proposal a “vanity project” and praised John McCain for his vote against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, calling him, “the late great John McCain” and praising him for putting “country over party.”
“The vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us,” she said. “We need a president of the United States who not only knows that but says that.”
When asked what makes her the best candidate for the nomination, “I know and will now and do know how to prosecute the case against Donald Trump,” she said. And she received another loud round of applause.