For the first time in 18 years, Democrats are seriously challenging Republicans’ political monopoly over Texas. A Democratic win in Texas would set off shock waves in the political world — the party hasn’t won a presidential race in the state since 1976, a U.S. Senate race since 1988 or a gubernatorial race since 1990 — and without Texas, Republicans don’t have a pathway to the presidency.

Republicans seized monopoly control of Texas in 2002, culminating a four-decade rise to power that capitalized on deep fissures in the Democratic Party and newfound appeal in burgeoning suburbs as a result of rising activism. This history highlights how Democrats are actually emerging from a relatively short time in the political wilderness. It also reveals why Texas is likely to remain competitive in the coming years for only the second period in its modern history.

Reconstruction discredited the Republican Party in the conservative world of Texas politics, tarring it as the party of African Americans and reviled carpetbaggers — those from out of state who had gained political power during that period. With White voters unwilling to consider Republicans, and with the threat of violence compromising their ability to organize, the party infrastructure languished in most counties.

Democrats regained power in 1874, and Republicans would be an afterthought for most of the next century. In seven of the 11 presidential elections between 1908 and 1948, the GOP presidential candidate received less than 20 percent of the vote in Texas, with no GOP nominee exceeding 24.6 percent. Amazingly, it took almost a century — until 1969 — before the number of Republicans in the state legislature again reached double digits; between 1931 and 1961, only one Republican total was elected to the legislature (and he served one term).

In short, Texas was a one-party state, with the political drama happening between the conservative wing of the Democratic Party and the liberal and moderate wing.

Things began to change in the middle of the 20th century. Conservative Texas Democrats disliked Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and the growing liberalism of the national Democratic Party. Channeling this discontent as well as business anger about the Truman administration’s claim of federal control of submerged, oil-rich land in the Gulf of Mexico (known as the Tidelands controversy), conservative Gov. Allen Shivers endorsed Republican Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.