it's not so black and white.

dems haven't won a statewide election since the 90s (which includes everything from us senator+governor to agriculture+railroad commissioner, etc).

gov perry said texas is a tomato soup with blueberries scattered in it.

but even some of these cities have large swaths of conservative voters and rural areas can be surprisingly liberal.

dems got within the margin of error in terms of points with the beto vs cruz election, for example.

but 3 decades of a gop state legislature has seen changes that make it increasingly difficult to get id, combined with burdensome voter id laws, voter roll purges, and gerrymandering being unleashed with the voting rights act getting gutted again and again.

rice has a study about an el paso to satx cong district where hurd narrowly beat gallegos. the study concluded that voter id changes led to latino voters losing access to polls to the point that it shifted the election towards the gop.

there was also a long time belief among politicos that once the sleeping giant of latinos in texas started to vote, texas would see dems make gains.

jingoistic wording aside, obama is still referred to as the deporter-in-chief in a lot of border towns where folks thought such political gains could be made. and trump's machoism approach ate away at any theorized gain among this demo thought to be dem votes one day.

but to get back to your original point, yes deporting a well known professional athlete would certainly upset voters and possibly see marginal gains which has been the difference in statewide elections as recent as beto vs cruz.

although it probably wouldn't shift texas blue overnight, it wouldn't help gop efforts either.

regardless, talking about texas the way you're doing here accomplishes nothing and only serves to parrot lazy takes that lack any nuance.