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This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics. It's Thursday,

May 24th. I'm Dorothy Wicenden, executive editor of The New Yorker. Today we're inaugurating the first

episode of The Challengers, a monthly segment devoted to the 2018 midterm races across the country.

We'll focus especially on candidates who are new to politics

as a way of discussing upheavals outside Washington and defining issues that are shaping the

futures of the two major parties. We're starting with Texas, which has been controlled by

Republicans for more than two decades. In 2016, Trump carried the state by 10 points.

The GOP holds the governor's office, the state legislature, two-thirds of its House districts,

and both seats in the Senate. It wasn't always this way, however, for over a century, Texas was a solid

blue state, and this year, for the first time since

1992, Democrats are fielding candidates in every congressional race in the state.

Beto O'Rourke has mounted an insurgent campaign against Ted Cruz, and this Tuesday, a wide

...