2026 has been such a shit year already in politics. America is in constant crisis mode, the cost of living is higher than ever before, groceries are through the roof, gas prices are breaking records, and all the while Republicans are stripping away social safety nets, healthcare, and unemployment is on the rise.

While that’s happening, the Earth is trapping more heat than it can release. Carbon Brief estimates that 2026 is likely to be around 1.47°C above preindustrial levels, making it one of the warmest years ever recorded. We’ve reached a new record of roughly 38.1 billion tonnes of fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions in our atmosphere. Oh, and the Atlantic current is on the verge of collapse.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are seemingly split into factions. Moderates and centrists are trying extremely hard to purge the party of all progressives. It’s gotten ugly in some spaces and in some states. Michigan and Maine are the current examples.

And do we even need to talk about that old man in diapers in that big, white house?

Then the Supreme Court gutted Act 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Whether you are Black, white, Hispanic, a woman, a man, non-binary, live in a city, a farm, believe in God, or nothing at all, what SCOTUS did will harm you. It may even kill you.

I am not being hyperbolic.

Ask the 135 people killed on July 4, 2025, in the floods in Central Texas.

Ask the 19 children and two teachers killed in the Uvalde massacre.

Ask the hundreds who died in their homes without heat during Winter Storm Uri.

Ask the hundreds of Black and brown women who have maternal-related deaths each year.

Ask the dozens of inmates who have been cooked inside Texas jails over the last decade.

What if one of those people were you?

What if one of those people were someone you love?

It will get worse. And that’s where we’re at.

Republicans just signaled the flag that they plan to take everything away.

Y’all remember Mitch Little (R-HD65), don’t you? He’s that 5’6” of a man from Denton County that represented the crook, Ken Paxton, during his impeachment, in which rich Republican billionaires bribed the Republican Lt. Governor to let him off the hook.

Doesn’t ring a bell? Maybe this will. He was also the guy who, when asked by CNN why mid-century redistricting, he answered, “Because we can.”

“Because we can.”

Yeah, that guy.

Yesterday, in the Texas Tribune, he and another Republican dipshit (David Spiller) were quoted as saying that they expect to redraw all of the maps in the next Legislative Session.

That means Congressional maps. Texas State Senate maps. Texas State House maps. State Board of Education maps.

Republicans will intentionally hurt Black and brown people when they know they are legally allowed to do it, just as Joan Huffman basically admitted in 2021, during the redistricting hearing. Which was the first time Republicans redrew the maps after Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was cut:

For newer readers, this is far from the first time we’ve talked about this clip.

Joan Huffman will be 70 years old this year. Yeah, I know she looks great for being a racist of that age, but she’s one of the few Republicans actually from Texas. That means that school desegregation probably didn’t even happen in her life until she was a teenager. Of course, that doesn’t mean that all old, white people are bad, but for some reason, in her life, Huffman just never developed empathy or race consciousness. I digress.

This moment in the Legislature has always been crazy to me ⬆️ (it’s less than a minute long).

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act required states like Texas with a history of racial discrimination to get federal approval (“preclearance”) before changing voting laws or maps.

In this exchange between a 70-year-old (then 65-year-old) woman and her Black colleague, she was not going to preserve Black voting power because the law said she didn’t have to.

Joan Huffman understood perfectly well what Senator Miles was asking. But protecting Black voting power is something she never wanted.

Republicans are willing to harm, as long as it’s legal.

That’s what Joan Huffman told us in 2021.

That’s what Mitch Little told us last year.

And Republicans said they plan to do it again next year, after this week’s SCOTUS decision.

When Black voting power is weakened, the rules protecting everyone get weaker.

It doesn’t only matter to Black communities. It won’t stop there. Black Americans have always been the testing ground for how far power can go. How much it can take. How much it can reshape democracy before anyone stops it.

Poll taxes. Literacy tests. Gerrymandering. Voter purges.

Those tactics didn’t disappear. They evolved.

And every time they were used to silence Black voters, they made it easier to silence someone else next.

Poor communities. Young voters. Renters. Immigrants. Anyone who is an inconvenience to the system. It isn’t about race. It’s about whether YOUR vote means anything when it actually matters. Because if some votes don’t matter, no votes matter. And if the government can decide who gets fair representation, it can decide about you, too.

That’s what the moment about Section 5 showed between Huffman and Miles. Republicans are willing to take whatever power the law allows them to have. Black voting power in America is the foundation of whether a democracy works at all. And if the system can decide one group doesn’t deserve full representation, it can decide that about anyone.

Don’t despair.

A message people often send me is how discouraging and frustrating it is to live in a fascist state, watching them chip away at our rights, at our neighbors’ rights, and plan to take everything we have.

I know that’s hard right now. I know it feels like everything is breaking at once. Like, the system is slipping further out of reach every single day.

Be angry.

Because anger means you still care. It means you’re still paying attention. It means you haven’t accepted this as normal.

And in November 2026, that anger will matter. We are going to go scorched Earth.

Because let’s be real about where this is headed. We may be staring down at $6, $ 7-a-gallon gas by then. I just paid $60 to fill up my tank HERE IN TEXAS, the most I’ve ever paid in my life.

And yeah, presidents don’t control everything. But this time? This time, the chaos is coming straight from the top.

And what’s wild is how numb everything has become.

There was another assassination attempt last week. Another one. And it barely even registered. No outrage or wall-to-wall coverage. Just… gone.

That’s what constant crisis does. It wears you down until nothing shocks you anymore.

That’s how they win. So don’t let them.

If you are reading this and you have not voted in your municipal election, what are you doing?

Tomorrow is the last day!! (Stay tuned tomorrow night for election results.)

Local elections decide who runs your schools and your cities. They decide on policing, zoning, funding, and infrastructure. Everything that actually touches your day-to-day life.

And if you’re in SD-04?

You should have already voted. You should have volunteered. You should have dragged ten people with you to the polls.

Because I’m already hearing turnout numbers that should scare the hell out of you. 3% in places like Montgomery County.

Three percent.

That’s how power gets taken.

So if you’re not doing too much?

Do more.

Knock doors. Make calls. Talk to your friends. Post. Share. Show up.

(And if you’re ready to plug in, here’s the Texas Together volunteer form.)

We are going to be okay!

But only if we act as it matters.

Because it does.

Every vote. Every race. Every district.

They told you exactly what they plan to do.

“Because we can.”

So now it’s our turn.

Let’s show them we can too.

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In February 2024, I wrote, “The Case For Expanding The Supreme Court.” This argument is as valid today as it was two years ago, if not more.

Over the last month, there’s been this argument in online spaces and podcasts, where liberals bemuse the ideological leanings of those to the left of them, “Why does the left start at anti-capitalism, and not anti-racism?”

This argument completely misunderstands America at its very core. In this country, capitalism and white supremacy were born together, holding the same bloody ledger.

W. E. B. DuBois understood this in Black Reconstruction. The economic order of the United States was built on enslaved Black labor, then protected after slavery through racial division, voter suppression, convict leasing, terror, and what Du Bois called the “public and psychological wage” of whiteness. White workers were kept from solidarity with Black workers by being offered legal status, social power, political dominance, and the promise that no matter how poor they were, they were still above Black people.

If you don’t like reading, this principle was laid out really well in the Netflix documentary 13th. Well worth the watch, if you haven’t already seen it.

That’s the thing that this entire argument gets wrong. You can’t be anti-capitalist without being anti-racist, because American capitalism was developed through racial hierarchy from the very founding of this nation.

This is not a leftist opinion. This is a historical fact. (For the record, before you send me an angry email, the only economy I’ve ever argued for is a mixed economy.)

The American story includes how chattel slavery was an economic system. So was Indigenous land theft. So was Jim Crow. So was sharecropping. So was convict leasing. So was redlining. So was school segregation. So was mass incarceration. So is voter suppression.

The justice system evolved and grew from this history.

Slave patrols became police departments. Black Codes became vagrancy laws. Vagrancy laws became convict leasing. Convict leasing became prison labor. Jim Crow became “law and order.” Poll taxes and literacy tests became voter ID laws, purges, closed polling places, gerrymanders, and now Supreme Court doctrine dressed up in antiseptic legal language.

Today’s Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais is part of that same lineage.

The Conservative Court narrowed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and struck down Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district. They stripped away another piece of the Voting Rights Act, again.

That is how American racial capitalism works. It takes racial power through property law, labor law, criminal law, election law, and constitutional interpretation.

So no, the left does not begin at some abstract anti-capitalism that treats racism as a side issue. In America, any anti-capitalism that does not begin with anti-racism is really not anti-capitalism at all.

Because here, race has always determined whose labor could be stolen, whose land could be taken, whose neighborhoods could be starved, whose schools could be defunded, whose bodies could be caged, and whose votes could be erased.

Today, SCOTUS proved it again.

The Conservatives on our Supreme Court (and in our federal government) are originalists.

The Federalist Society is the conservative legal network that has spent decades shaping the judiciary by vetting and promoting judges who follow originalism/textualism. They hand-picked all three of Trump’s SCOTUS picks and every federal judge sworn in under his tenure.

“Originalism,” if you’re unfamiliar with the term, is the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted based on its “original public meaning” at the time it was written in the late 1700.

That means, they want to rewind it to when Black and brown people couldn’t vote, women couldn’t vote, and white men who didn’t own property couldn’t vote.

It’s never been a secret that what they wanted, these judges were confirmed by Republicans (and some shitty Democrats) anyway. Of course, that’s what’s at stake with every single presidential and senatorial election.

And this group is deeply intertwined with the Heritage Foundation and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and was spun up in the 1970s from the Moral Majority, right here in Texas.

And if any of this is new information to you, I’m sorry, you’re late to the party. Paul Weyrich and Jerry Falwell Sr. crafted these ideas more than fifty years ago, and an entire army of fascists has been working to implement them ever since.

So where do we go from here?

Anything less than a gigantic blue wave that drowns the entire map in a sea of blue in November is unacceptable.

Yes, absolutely, that starts with you voting. But that isn’t enough.

I hate to be Debbie Downer, but America has fallen to a fascist state, and it’s easy to get caught up in life, but if you don’t start doing more, it will only get worse.

• Sign up to be a precinct chair. Every single County Party needs them.

• Volunteer for a local candidate. Every candidate needs volunteers.

• Donate to or organize with a mutual aid network.

Power isn’t just something that happens in Washington. It’s built block by block, county by county, race by race.

And getting progressives into office is more important now than ever. The status quo laid out the red carpet for what we have now.

That means:

• Expanding the courts, because pretending this Court is legitimate while it dismantles civil rights is political malpractice.

• Passing federal voting protections that don’t rely on a judiciary openly hostile to them. We need the John Lewis Voting Rights Act immediately.

• And yes, confronting the reality that minority rule has been baked into our institutions, and deciding whether YOU are willing to confront how our systems were built in the first place.

Because what happened today was on purpose.

They used the Constitution as a shield to protect power.

And if we keep treating moments like this as isolated decisions rather than the result of a long-term, coordinated project that’s been ongoing for 50+ years, we will keep losing ground.

(I actually have a huge spreadsheet, with years of research on this very topic.)

In this political moment, the question is whether a multiracial democracy can survive in a system that was never designed to allow it.

So no, a blue wave is not the solution.

It is the starting point.

The real question is what we do with power once we finally take it back.

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Today, the Texas Observer published, “What Does the Allred-Johnson Runoff Tell Us About Texas Dems?” It’s riveting. They actually come to almost the same conclusion that I did in my coverage of that race last week. Neither candidate is great, and this is fundamentally a lesser-evil situation.

However, over the weekend, Colin Allred endorsed Talarico in an interview with Politico, shortly before adding that Talarico needs to show contrition. So, at least on its face, Allred is trying harder to win back favor with progressives.

TX33 is far from the only race with this kind of noise. And it got me to thinking.

What do we, as people who participate in the electorate and vote together under the Democratic tent, want?

We’ve talked a lot about ideology and policy here, at Lone Star Left, but I’m not sure that we’ve discussed outcomes too much. I wrote down my ideology on the About Page years ago.

But you would think, no matter which side of the ideological spectrum you’re on, as participants in this Democratic process, who’ve decided to be team members, isn’t there a baseline that most of us can agree on?

• Don’t we want people to eat?

• Don’t we want people to have access to healthcare?

• Shouldn’t workers be paid fairly for their labor?

• Do we want the planet to still exist in fifty years?

• How about getting the government to stop treating brown and Black communities like revenue streams for the detention industrial complex?

None of that is radical. Most of it polls above 60%.

The radicalism is in how hard the establishment fights to prevent any of it from happening.

And that’s the problem. Because the Democratic Party, particularly its corporate wing, has spent the last three decades making a calculated bet that those goals can be endlessly deferred in exchange for electability.

That’s the Third Way project, born out of the Clinton era, the idea that Democrats could win by moving right on economics, softening on corporate regulation, and dressing up incrementalism as pragmatism.

In Texas, that playbook looks like Julie Johnson sitting on the Homeland Security Committee while trading Palantir stock. It looks like Henry Cuellar, who spent years as the most conservative Democrat in the House, taking energy industry money while representing one of the poorest districts on the southern border. The establishment produces these outcomes. It funds them and then asks us to be grateful we didn’t get a Republican.

Then, there is the HD41 situation.

Nowhere is the establishment’s grip in Texas more visible and more damaging than in the RGV. The RGV has some of the lowest voter turnout in the entire country, and in a region where three points is often the margin between a Republican and a Democrat who votes like one anyway. Conservative Democrats have dominated the border for decades, because low turnout is the establishment’s best friend. When working-class, majority-Hispanic communities stay home, the electorate shrinks to the people the machine can mobilize. And the machine has been very, very well funded.

The logic is circular. Establishment Democrats in the Valley tack right to avoid being painted as soft, which suppresses enthusiasm among the base, which tanks turnout, which means the only people showing up are the ones the party apparatus can move. Henry Cuellar, Vicente González, Richard Raymond, Sergio Muñoz, and Bobby Guerra (yes, him too). They help the Republicans comfortably keep their promises, all while representing some of the poorest districts in America. The establishment protected him through primary after primary, pouring money into stopping progressive challengers like Jessica Cisneros, not once but twice. Three points. And the party spent millions to make sure those three points stayed in Cuellar’s column instead of going to someone who might actually fight for the people living under the green palace’s shadow.

Progressives picking up a win in HD41 is imperative to the progressive movement in Texas.

During the three-way primary, both Eric Holguin and Julio Salinas exposed the third candidate, Seby Heddad, for allegedly participating in Republican meetings and activities.

Heddad, the candidate who received the endorsement of retiring Conservative Democrat Bobby Guerra.

Since then, copies of Heddad’s alleged voting record have been posted on the internet, which show him voting in Republican primary elections.

Holguin lost in the primary, and the runoff is between Salinas and Heddad.

Lone Star Left endorsed Salinas.

Julio Salinas is a solid progressive with experience in the Texas Legislature, and after years of living under fascism, we don’t need more of the same.

Democrats need to flip 14 seats, but they also need to make sure their current members are on their side. Many of the Conservative Democrats CAN NOT be trusted. We saw that during the last quorum break in the 89th Legislative Session. I still have the receipts. Is now the time to talk about names?

All of Texas, not just the RGV, needs Julio Salinas to win that seat.

It could mean real pressure for living wages in a region where poverty is structural and generational. It could mean fighting the detention machine instead of funding it. It could mean demanding that the water crisis down there be treated as the public emergency it is, rather than a business opportunity.

• LET ME MAKE THIS PERFECTLY CLEAR. I don’t care what it’s about or who is involved, nor do I want people emailing me, tagging me, or sending me “tea.”

After Holguin lost, I called him an establishment liberal. He was unhappy about that. However, what happened next was almost like foreshadowing. I told you so.

Holguin, after coming out so hard against Heddad during the primary, warning everyone about Heddad’s GOP proclivities, hasn’t fully endorsed Salinas, along with the activists who previously supported him. Not because of a sudden lightbulb moment or policy position. Nope.

Because a bunch of activists and organizers are fighting.

Fucking, seriously.

We had Conservative Democrats from that very region last year who were willing to give Republicans a quorum to pass their racist maps.

So, again, we talk about values and wanting the same thing. What is that?

Because we have to recognize NOW why Texas is a fascist state.

While we’re busy fighting each other over group chat drama, the establishment is busy building a billion-dollar private water plant on South Padre Island that’s going to pump brine discharge into the Laguna Madre.

We’ll have water. Maybe. But we’re going to kill a lot of fish and turtles in the process.

Not a word about why the Rio Grande is dying. Not a word about water rights, agricultural policy, or the upstream diversions that have been bleeding the river for decades. The answer being handed to the Valley is a billion dollars to a private company, one with deep ties to the Israeli government, to own the infrastructure that should belong to the public. At the same time, the brine discharge quietly destroys one of the most ecologically sensitive bodies of water on the Gulf Coast.

This is what the establishment delivers. Monetized problems with a ribbon on top.

And this is exactly why HD41 matters.

Julio Salinas in that seat means someone in Austin who will ask who profits, who pays, and who drowns. The establishment has spent decades making sure the RGV stays manageable. Low turnout. Conservative proxies. Circular logic dressed up as pragmatism.

So the question isn’t whether you agree with every position Julio Salinas has ever taken. The question is whether you want the machine to win again, in a district it has run into the ground for thirty years, while activists fight each other on the internet, and a private Israeli desalination company gets a billion-dollar contract to finish off the Gulf.

Early voting in this race starts on May 18!

You can learn more about Julio Salinas on his website, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

If you’re in this district, consider volunteering.

And if you have it, consider donating.

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This series is called Meet The Candidates. Over the next six months, I’ll spotlight a handful of Democratic races each month, mainly in the Legislature and in Congress. These aren’t endorsements. They’re introductions, a way to understand who’s running, the districts they hope to represent, and what’s at stake for people across Texas.

Who is Tyler Smith?

Tyler Smith is a Houston-area Democrat. He grew up in Houston, and he says that he learned everything he needed to know about politics on a baseball diamond. His stepdad was a Little League coach and drilled into him to play hard, play with honor, and not to quit until the last out. Smith later volunteered as a coach at MLB’s Urban Youth Academy, and also as a cousin in the big leagues.

But it isn’t just baseball. Smith has built a career around things that are hard and things that take honor. As deputy regional director for Everytown for Gun Safety, he got conservative Republicans to vote for gun safety measures.

Smith attended Texas Southern University, earned a degree in Political Science, served as a Presidential Fellow under Biden, and worked as an executive assistant for Senator Jon Ossoff. He recently completed the Obama Foundation’s Leaders Program.

The district.

If anybody tells you that this district is flippable, they would be absolutely right. In fact, the only reason it hasn’t already flipped was the Democrats’ poor performance in 2022 and 2024.

HD138 is majority-minority. Anglo residents make up about 37% of the population. Hispanic residents are the largest single group at around 42%, with Asian residents at roughly 12% and Black residents at about 10%. Nearly half the district speaks a language other than English at home.

The district is also relatively educated and employed, with about 42% of adults holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, well above the state average of 33%. The workforce skews the private sector and blue-collar trades. These are people who work hard and commute long. Over 25% of workers spend 30 minutes or more just getting to the job.

Per capita income sits above the state average at roughly $52,000, and nearly a quarter of households earn over $200K. But almost 40% of renters are spending 35% or more of their income on rent. Home values average over $525,000, compared to $340,000 statewide. Much of the housing stock was built between 1970 and 1989, meaning older infrastructure, more flood risk, and mounting maintenance costs.

In other words, people here are doing okay on paper, but they’re feeling it.

And Republicans held on here in 2024, thanks to the Hispanic vote going toward Trump. But seeing where polling has been, and where it’s headed, we shouldn’t expect that to happen again.

In 2024, Lacey Hull beat the Democrat 57-43. Trump carried the district 53-45 over Harris. Ted Cruz held it 50.5-47.

So what does a Democrat need to do to win?

Turn out the Hispanic vote (obviously). Hispanic residents make up over 41% of the population, but only 37% of the voting-age population, and Spanish-surname voter registration sits at just 21% of total registered voters. That gap is a political opportunity the size of a freight train. If Smith can close even part of that registration and turnout deficit, the math shifts.

Win the persuadable middle. This isn’t a deep-red district demographically. Colin Allred got 47% here in the US Senate race. The district consistently outperforms statewide Democratic averages. Voters here are reachable.

Make it local. Housing costs, flooding, commute times, and prescription drug prices are issues in HD138. This district has real infrastructure age and real housing pressure. If Smith can connect his platform to the lived experience of the 40% of renters getting bled dry every month, that’s a message with teeth.

Don’t cede the education fight. Over a third of households in this district have school-age kids, and the district’s public school enrollment rate is solid. Abbott’s voucher scheme is a direct threat to neighborhood schools in a working-majority-minority community.

Smith is running in a district that’s demographically trending away from Republicans and economically ripe for a message about affordability and accountability. The question is whether he can build the coalition to make the math work on Election Day.

The incumbent.

Lacey Hull.

Ol’ Lacey.

Look, we shouldn’t be slut shaming anyone. Especially regarding actions they took years ago, which were leaked across the press and certain left-leaning blogs. Of course, I will always advise anyone to practice what they preach. If Texas Republicans want to control the private sex lives of the people of Texas, they shouldn’t be surprised when Texans call out the hypocrisy when they step out on their marriages with multiple of their married co-workers.

It’s not really important to reminisce about the past, but I will say this, circa 2020, there were a lot of nice old ladies who found out what the term “pegging” was. And that will always be funny.

Otherwise, Hull’s time in the Legislature has been fairly rank-and-file Republican, other than making it harder for CPS to get involved with children who are being abused. There are rumors that Hull’s very messy and public divorce also involved allegations that led to CPS involvement, and she took that really personally, and wrote these laws out of her emotions, rather than what was best for Texas children.

In Tyler Smith’s own words.

Below are some questions I asked Smith, based on previous reader polls, along with his answers.

Q: Do you support a statewide minimum wage increase to at least $15/hour?

Yes, there’s no reason we live in the 8th largest economy in the world… not the US but the world, and we have people who can’t afford basic needs because of our refusal to pay people a livable wage.

Q: Should Texas end tax subsidies and abatements for large corporations?

Texas should not subsidize large corporations that pay zero dollars in taxes and are ripping the everyday Texan off while at it. I believe in tax subsidies, but only for corporations that take care of their workers.

Q: Do you oppose school vouchers and efforts to privatize public education?

Yes, public schools are the backbone of our communities, and we must do everything to protect them.

Q: Should Texas end tax breaks and regulatory loopholes for oil and gas companies, including exemptions from emissions reporting and waste disposal standards?

Texas should strictly enforce regulations on oil and gas companies to ensure they contribute their fair share of taxes and comply with all federal and state laws to safeguard our environment.

Q: Do you support closing or downsizing state prisons and redirecting that funding to community-based alternatives like mental health care, housing, and youth programs?

Yes, I firmly believe that we should prioritize addressing the root causes of crime in our state. By preventing violence before it occurs, we can create a stronger and more harmonious community. Additionally, providing individuals with the essential support they require, such as employment opportunities, housing, healthcare, and food security, significantly reduces the likelihood of crime within our society.

Q: Bonus Question: What does being a Democrat mean to you in 2026?

Being a Democrat in 2026 means having a backbone and standing for something. As we live in a country where the opposing party’s only policy agenda is how high can I jump for Donald Trump, being a Democrat means actually standing up for everyday people and what is right.

Tyler Smith is running because HD138 is winnable, and he’s built exactly the kind of career that could win it.

He knows how to talk to people who don’t already agree with him. He’s done it professionally. He’s got the coalition-building credentials, the policy chops, and the kind of personal story that actually lands with working families in a majority-minority district that’s tired of being taken for granted.

The district is ready. The demographics say so. The economics say so. The only question left is execution.

You can learn more about Tyler Smith on his website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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Of course, you must be thinking, “Duh, Captain Obvious.”

This week, our unethical Attorney General launched a lawsuit against ActBlue, a desperate act six months before the election, when Republicans lose Texas. And I’ve been thinking, “I’ll be so happy when this mofo is out of our government.” But even though he won’t be our AG anymore, it doesn’t exactly mean he’s out of our hair yet.

As of last week, Paxton was leading Cornyn +8 points in a Republican runoff poll. And early voting for the runoff election is only three weeks away. And of course, this leads to an entire myriad of new issues.

1. The Senate race will be between James Talarico and Ken Paxton. And wow! What a juxposition that will be.

2. What will the new Democratic AG find when they walk into the AG’s office on day 1?

We should all completely expect that before Paxton leaves the AG’s office for the final time in January 2027, large dumpsters full of paperwork will be spotted outside of his office, in a blaze of fire. Because now, on the heels of this election, is as good a time as any to revisit Ken Paxton’s long history of corruption, so we all know what’s at stake.

The securities fraud indictment.

The fact that this case dragged on for so long is probably one of the most in-your-face examples of corruption involving Ken Paxton. While first running for AG in 2014, Paxton was reprimanded by the Texas Securities Board and fined $1,000 for soliciting investment clients without being registered. He admitted wrongdoing but called it an administrative oversight. But it escalated after he was elected.

In 2015, he was indicted on three criminal charges. Two counts of securities fraud and one count of failing to register as an investment adviser.

Paxton was indicted for encouraging other legislators to invest in the McKinney-based company Servergy without disclosing that he would receive a commission, and for allegedly misrepresenting himself as an investor. Servergy was later charged with fraud by the SEC.

The case was moved from Tarrant County to Collin County to Harris County. It was assigned to four different judges. Special prosecutors said they weren’t paid. Each of these events caused delays and prevented the trial from starting.

The case dragged on for a full decade.

In March 2025, prosecutors finally dropped the charges under an agreement requiring Paxton to perform 100 hours of community service, take 15 hours of legal ethics courses, and pay around $271,000 in restitution to those he defrauded. He lucked out.

He killed overtime pay for millions of workers.

In 2016, Paxton sued the Obama administration over a Department of Labor rule that would have made five million additional workers eligible for overtime pay, arguing the regulations would have disastrous consequences for the economy.

He won. Then he did it again. In June 2024, Paxton challenged the Biden administration’s revised version of the same rule, and a federal court vacated it.

The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, because of men like Ken Paxton.

The Texas AFL-CIO said, “In the event the lawsuit succeeds, hundreds of thousands of Texas workers who might work 70-hour weeks with no overtime will have Ken Paxton to thank. Overtime pay is about basic workplace fairness, not Ken Paxton’s political agenda.”

Paxton defended ExxonMobil from climate accountability.

The State of Texas is disproportionately responsible for climate change, more than any other state in America, and much more than many countries.

In 2016, Paxton was one of twelve Republican state attorneys general who sided with ExxonMobil in the company’s suit to block a climate change investigation by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

He blocked accountability for one of the world’s largest polluters while claiming to protect Texans. That was far from his only time participating in earth-killing activities.

He killed the clean power plan, protecting polluters.

Paxton led a successful multistate coalition against the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. His own website says, “Stopping the EPA’s ‘Waters of the United States’ rule preserved Texans’ ability to regulate their own natural resources.” Fucker.

The Clean Power Plan would have required Texas to cut 51 million tons of emissions annually. Paxton directly contradicted EPA studies showing the regulation would reduce carbon pollution by 870 million tons in 2030.

Maybe this is something that should be brought up at the next meeting over the Corpus Christi water crisis or the next memorial for the Kerr County flood victims.

Remember that time he pretended to have a “blind trust?”

It’s funny because Don the Con did the same thing, and the cult followers mindlessly fell for it. After coming under scrutiny, Paxton shifted his investments into a blind trust in 2015 to prevent conflicts of interest.

However, the Wall Street Journal uncovered texts between Paxton and the trustee regarding his 2020 stock trades, which violated the arrangement’s “blind” nature. As it turns out, the “blind trustee” was a close personal friend. Paxton received $2.2 million from his WatchGuard investment when the company was acquired in 2019.

Paxton took $100,000 from a CEO under state investigation.

In 2015, Paxton accepted $100,000 for his criminal defense fund from a CEO who was under investigation by the State of Texas for fraud. This prompted the Kaufman County District Attorney to investigate the gift and whether Paxton had violated state limits on gifts to public officials.

Which wasn’t the same case as…

The Nate Paul bribery scandal.

Of course, this is the scandal that led to his impeachment. In October 2020, seven of Paxton’s top aides published a letter to the office’s director of human resources, accusing Paxton of improper influence, abuse of office, bribery, and other crimes, and said they had provided information to law enforcement. The letter was signed by the first assistant attorney general and the deputy attorneys general overseeing criminal investigations, civil litigation, administration, and policy.

The whistleblowers alleged Paxton used his office to benefit Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, who had donated $25,000 to Paxton’s 2018 campaign and was under FBI investigation. In exchange, Paul employed a woman with whom Paxton was allegedly having an extramarital affair, and arranged or paid for substantial renovations to Paxton’s Austin home.

Paxton also took steps to interfere with the FBI’s investigation of Paul, tried to have his staff investigate the Bureau’s actions, and, when they refused, hired an independent investigator with taxpayer money to protect Paul, and then appears to have lied in official documents about what he was doing and why.

And a whole bunch of shitty Senate Republicans (and Dan Patrick) were bribed and/or threatened not to remove him from office.

He fired the whistleblowers.

This was a whole separate scandal in itself. By the end of October 2020, all seven whistleblowers had left the office. Three resigned, two were fired, and two were placed on leave.

Four of them sued. The firing of the whistleblowers was accompanied by allegations of intimidation and threats against employees who questioned Paxton’s decisions, and by a workplace environment in which loyalty to Paxton personally was valued over adherence to legal and ethical standards.

Paxton tried to make taxpayers pay his hush money.

Partly to shut down the whistleblower lawsuit quickly, and to prevent the plaintiffs from obtaining AG documents through discovery, Paxton settled in February 2023, offering them $3.3 million in taxpayer money. He asked lawmakers to fund the settlement.

The Texas House’s investigation into that request was what triggered the impeachment inquiry.

Impeachment by his own party! 🤯

We all know Texas Republicans are corrupt, but do you know HOW corrupt you have to be to be impeached by a Texas Republican? Like, infinity.

In May 2023, the Texas House investigation committee unveiled 20 articles of impeachment. The House voted 121–33 to impeach Paxton, suspending him from office and marking only the third time in Texas history the legislative body had impeached an official.

Articles of impeachment included allegations that Paxton gave preferential treatment to a political donor who bribed him, misapplied public resources, made false statements against whistleblowers, obstructed justice in the securities fraud trial, and made false statements regarding his financial interests.

And he pulled his wife into his corruption bubble.

Following the election of Paxton’s wife, Angela Paxton, to the Texas Senate, the Lone Star Project obtained emails showing coordination between Senator Angela Paxton’s office and senior AG staff on legislation to change Texas security law, legislation that could have benefited Ken Paxton’s efforts to avoid conviction on his pending felony charges.

Ken Paxton filed the most audacious election lawsuits in modern history.

In December 2020, Paxton filed a lawsuit in the SCOTUS against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, seeking to invalidate millions of certified votes. The suit was filed after over 60 similar lawsuits had already failed. Even his own Solicitor General refused to sign on.

Pennsylvania’s AG called it “a seditious abuse of the judicial process.” Florida’s AG lawyers reportedly called it “batshit insane.” Senator Ben Sasse said it looked like “a fella begging for a pardon filed a PR stunt rather than a lawsuit.”

Let’s not forget, he spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally before January 6th.

Paxton spoke at the rally Trump held on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C., that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He later insinuated on Twitter that antifa, not Trump supporters, was responsible for the insurrection.

Do you think this is a man who will ever put the Constitution above his own ambitions for power?

The Texas State Bar sued him for professional misconduct over that whole trying to commit treason business.

In 2022, the State Bar of Texas sued Paxton in Collin County District Court, seeking to have the court find that Paxton had acted unethically by seeking to subvert the 2020 presidential election. The Bar’s filing said Paxton had made numerous specific “dishonest” representations. Four former presidents of the State Bar co-signed the complaint.

The Bar eventually dropped the case in January 2025 following a Texas Supreme Court ruling on a related case. The all-Republican Supreme Court is an elected body, and each member needs to be voted out.

He falsely claimed immigrants committed 600,000 crimes.

If you pay attention to Republicans long enough, one thing you’ll notice is that corruption and dishonesty often go hand-in-hand.

In 2018, Paxton falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants had committed over 600,000 crimes since 2011 in Texas. This claim was debunked by PolitiFact.

Paxton’s human trafficking unit was a political prop.

Paxton created a human trafficking unit in the AG office in 2015. In 2019, he convinced Texas lawmakers to more than quadruple its annual funding.

However, by 2020, the unit did not secure a single human trafficking conviction. In 2021, it secured only four, two of which resulted in deferred adjudications.

He spent 22,000 staff hours on a voter fraud witch hunt and found almost nothing.

When Democrats finally take control of Texas, one of the first things I want to see is how many BILLIONS (not millions) we’ve wasted on Republicans’ political stunts to entertain their QAnon base over the years.

Paxton’s office spent more than 22,000 hours looking for voter fraud after the 2020 election. They found only 16 cases of false addresses on registration forms out of nearly 17 million registered voters. He’s bragged about “election integrity” as a signature issue his entire tenure. It’s all bullshit.

He stole a $1,000 pen (literally).

A $1,000 Montblanc pen was accidentally left in a metal detector tray at a courthouse by attorney Joe Joplin, who had received it as a gift from his wife. It found its way into the hands of then-state senator Ken Paxton. After Joplin realized it was missing, he asked a sheriff to review the security footage.

Ken Paxton, a liar and a horse pen thief.

Did you know Paxton investigated Media Matters to protect Elon Musk?

The same day that Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against Media Matters for a report showing ads for major brands appearing alongside white supremacist content on Twitter, Paxton launched a consumer protection investigation into the nonprofit.

In this particular case, it’s hard to decipher if Paxton is more on the side of Musk or the white supremacists. But ye of no morals.

He used the consumer protection law to harass nonprofits.

A Texas Tribune/ProPublica investigation found that not a single one of Paxton’s consumer protection investigations against nonprofits was prompted by a consumer complaint. Paxton’s office admitted in a court filing that it did not believe PFLAG (a nonprofit supporting LGBTQ+ families) was actually violating the state’s consumer protection law. Still, it argued it could demand records from anyone, “not just those suspected of a violation.”

Two attorneys representing nonprofits Paxton targeted said they believe he launched the investigations simply to harass their clients and create a chilling effect among organizations doing similar work.

Then, he blocked the methane tax on oil and gas.

Texas produced 663.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), 13.5% of the country’s total. Which makes moves like this particularly evil.

Paxton led a 23-state coalition in suing the EPA over a rule that would have required oil and gas producers to pay fees for excessive methane emissions. Methane emissions are a dozen times more potent than carbon dioxide. Paxton called it a “last-minute effort to harm the energy industry.”

He opposed corporate climate disclosure rules.

Paxton led a multistate letter opposing an SEC rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose climate-related risks to investors. He called the rule “unlawful, unconstitutional, and just plain bad policy” and claimed it was motivated by “a small number of environmental activists.”

What he should have said is that he fought to keep corporations from having to tell their own shareholders how climate change affects their business.

Paxton strategically interfered in environmental lawsuits against Big Oil. 

When Harris County filed suit against ExxonMobil for environmental violations, Paxton filed a nearly identical suit in Travis County, a move environmental advocates warned was an attempt to consolidate the cases under Paxton’s control and away from local jurisdiction.

Critics noted that fines from such cases could be written into the cost of business for Big Oil. Paxton had many opportunities before to take action on pollution, but hadn’t. Want to guess how it turned out?

Aren’t convinced Ken Paxton is a supervillain, yet? Wait until you find out about his attacks on women.

Ken Paxton sued to kill the Pregnant Worker Fairness Act.

Paxton sued the federal government over the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which requires most employers to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant employees.

A federal judge upheld the state’s right not to require Texas employers to comply with that law.

So, you want to know why your choices are either to pump on the job or to quit? Blame Ken Paxton.

He sued Yelp for warning consumers about fake abortion clinics.

In the eyes of a Republican, it’s okay to lie to voters and the people to maintain power, so business must lie to protect them, or so says the Republican Christian Nationalist God… probably.

After Yelp began posting notices on crisis pregnancy center listings informing consumers that these facilities don’t provide abortion services, Paxton launched an investigation and sued Yelp under the state’s consumer protection law. Paxton is the only attorney general in the country who has investigated Yelp or filed a lawsuit over the crisis pregnancy center notices.

He immediately moved to enforce pre-Roe abortion bans.

Within hours of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Paxton issued an advisory stating that abortion providers could face criminal liability “starting today” based on pre-Roe statutes dating back to 1925, statutes courts had previously found to be repealed and unenforceable.

Ken Paxton threatened doctors who tried to save women’s lives.

Even when a Texas court ruled in 2023 that Kate Cox could undergo an abortion despite the state’s bans, Paxton threatened to prosecute “hospitals, doctors, or anyone else” who assisted in providing the procedure with first-degree felonies. She ultimately had to leave the state.

He blocked emergency abortion protections for pregnant patients.

Paxton sued the Biden administration to block a federal rule that would have required Texas hospitals to provide emergency abortions to stabilize patients facing life-threatening pregnancy complications. A federal court issued an injunction blocking those protections, and the Fifth Circuit upheld it.

He sued doctors across state lines for prescribing abortion pills.

In 2024, Paxton filed a civil suit against a New York doctor for allegedly sending abortion pills to a patient in Texas via telehealth. He also sued a Delaware-based abortion pill provider. Legal experts warned a ruling against the New York doctor could have a significant chilling effect on providers in other states. They could extend beyond abortion to telehealth services broadly.

Paxton is responsible for the first criminal prosecution of an abortion provider post-Roe.

Paxton prosecuted midwife Maria Margarita Rojas, believed to be the first healthcare provider criminally charged for abortion care anywhere in America after the fall of Roe. His office’s own investigators never observed any medical practice inside her clinics. He labeled her and eight colleagues a “cabal of abortion-loving radicals” in a press release while the criminal case was still pending. Since 2022, taxpayers have footed at least $400,000 for Paxton’s legal war on abortion rights.

On November 3, 2026, Texans will vote to permanently remove Ken Paxton from office.

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A few years back, long-term Lone Star Left readers may remember that we were talking about voting in terms of harm reduction. I said at the time that voting for a dead armadillo was better than voting for a Republican. The particular corporatist Democrat we were framing that conversation around, I said, “Such and so can just be our Dead Blue Armadillo™, we get them in this session, and then worry about replacing them with someone more progressive next go around.”

The Dead Blue Armadillo Problem™ is when the only Democratic options we’re given in a particular race are terrible ones, oil-suckers, corporatists, establishment, right-wing voting Dems. But there aren’t any progressives running, and Republicans are fascists, so it’s the lesser evil.

After my endorsement, progressive hard-liner Zeeshan Hafeez was totally creamed in the Texas Congressional 33 race, I hadn’t planned on talking about this district any more at all. But I still have so much love for this particular district, mostly because it’s where I grew up.

TX33 is 57% Hispanic, 18% Black, and 13% white. The poverty rate is 17%, with over 22% of the children in this district living in poverty. And all of those metrics are really important for this story.

Recently, progressives in Dallas have been reaching out to me to let me know that Colin Allred has turned over a new leaf.

Only last night, someone texted me that Allred was speaking at a union meeting and called for the abolishment of ICE.

And then, this was from Allred’s Instagram:

Well, oh well, it’s a step in the right direction for sure. And if we take everything at face value, it would seem that Allred is certainly leaning further to the left than he did during his previous time in Congress.

And to be perfectly honest with you, even before I learned Allred was willing to come around on some of his positions, I was already favoring him for this race, and I’ll tell you why before this article is over. But there are a few Band-Aids I need to rip off first.

I clocked it in July 2025 and wrote about it. Texas Democrats are much more progressive than the Democrats in Washington DC, and seemingly, Allred figured that out after his 2024 loss, and all of his vocabulary and talking points were different this go around. At the time, I thought it was inauthentic. Since then, he’s moved even further left.

But living under fascism and outside of the DC bubble can radicalize a person. That’s part of the reason Texas Democrats are the most progressive Democrats in America.

So, I take it back. I don’t know if Allred’s move left is authentic or not. I told my progressive friend in Dallas, who is also friends with Allred, and they wanted me to sit down and do a podcast with him. Talk to him about his policy positions.

But I’m not going to. There’s too much baggage, and I don’t want to be pressured into platforming Julie Johnson, too.

Band-Aid #1: But they’re both so nice.

They are. Both of them. Super nice. Last time I saw Colin Allred in person, he took pictures with my kids.

But here are a few things that supersede their niceness:

• Colin Allred voted to advance oil and gas pipeline infrastructure.

• Julie Johnson voted to make it easier to approve LNG export and import facilities and weaken federal oversight of fossil fuel expansion.

• Allred voted for the Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act, a bill that failed to reduce oil dependence.

• Johnson voted to support a Texas corporate incentive program that gave tax breaks to large industrial projects, including oil and gas, while explicitly excluding wind and solar.

Climate change kills an average of 400,000 people every year. They can be the nicest people in the world, have the biggest smiles every time you see them, but they’re both still responsible for votes that have killed people and our planet. Neither has committed to the Green New Deal.

Now, my friend tells me that Allred is coming around on the AIPAC/Israel issue, but right now, all we have are their records.

• In 2024, Allred voted on the Israel Supplemental Appropriations Act.

• In 2026, Johnson voted for Israel-related funding that included a ban on UNRWA funding.

So, when you start looking at these two’s history and the votes that really matter, like the death of Earth and genocide, they really look a lot alike.

Band-Aid #2: Neither one of them lives in the district.

It’s actually not a law or a rule that you have to live in the Congressional district you’re running for. Pete Sessions doesn’t live in his district. Probably, plenty of other Republicans don’t either.

Now, remember the demographic data I cited at the beginning of the article.

Something else I want to bring to your attention.

Julie Johnson is a multi-millionaire. Allred, based on his federal filing statements, is not a multi-millionaire (surprising, considering his illustrious NFL career). Not only that, but Julie Johnson is one of the most active stock traders in Congress. Allred has never traded stocks in Congress.

In fact, in Julie Johnson’s first term in Congress, she netted herself over $4 million in trades, probably from the kind of “legal insider trading” that Congresspeople regularly participate in. For example, not too long ago, Johnson found herself on the front pages for trading Palantir stocks while sitting on the Homeland Security Committee.

Where I grew up in East Dallas, we could see the Bank of America building from our house. It was always lit green back then, and we called it the “green palace.” It might as well have been a different country. If you know that side of town, you know what people were actually dealing with under it. My grandmother owned a shotgun house only a few blocks away, off East Grand, and I spent my summers there, playing with kids whose families were getting by however they could. Many of their parents didn’t speak English, but they were working, surviving, raising families in a system that was never built for them.

And now we have context.

Julie Johnson is a multi-millionaire seeking to represent a district she doesn’t live in, that’s 57% Hispanic, and 22% of the children are living in poverty. While she’s been in Congress, she’s profited from the very company that targets districts like this and rips families apart.

• The Dallas ICE field office arrested more than 12,000 people in 2025, and a Dallas Morning News analysis found 62% had no criminal convictions. Axios summarized that Dallas had the second-highest number of ICE arrests in the country, averaging about 100 arrests per day.

And speaking as someone who came up in East Dallas, who knows the district and these families, Julie Johnson feels deeply wrong for TX33. Deeply wrong.

Band-Aid #3: Campaign promises are one thing.

The day Julie Johnson decided to run for re-election in TX33, she signed on to the Medicare For All bill. She moved left on that one issue because it was what the campaign moment required. And right now, Colin Allred is saying a lot of the right things, but neither Johnson nor Allred can promise away the sins of their past.

But in my opinion, Colin Allred should win this district.

Not because he’s perfect. Not because he’s suddenly become the progressive champion some people want him to be. But because this is a majority-minority district, and representation matters. Because Julie Johnson had financial entanglements with a company like Palantir while sitting in a position of power tied to immigration enforcement. And because, at least based on the record we have, Allred does not have a history of using his government position to enrich himself in the same way.

But let me be very clear about something. This is not an endorsement.

I’m still mad at Colin Allred. I haven’t forgotten the bullshit he pulled with James Talarico in the primary. I haven’t forgotten him throwing transgender kids under the bus during his Senate run. Those weren’t small things. And they still count.

But this race, in TX33, is not a perfect-world scenario. It’s not even a good one.

It’s a pick-your-poison situation.

Or, if we’re being honest about it, it’s a Dead Blue Armadillo™ situation.

And in this case, I think that armadillo is Colin Allred.

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Only yesterday, we were talking about the situation in Abilene, where billionaire mega corporations were given an 85% tax abatement, while the people of Abilene have been left holding the bag. That’s why it was so refreshing when I asked Ron Angeletti, Democratic candidate for Texas Senate District 04, “Should Texas end tax subsidies and abatements for large corporations?” His response:

“Yes... I’m not against economic development, but I am against giving away taxpayer dollars without a clear return for the people of Texas. For too long, large corporations have received generous tax abatements and subsidies with promises of jobs and growth, yet many communities don’t see the long-term benefits they were promised.”

You don’t have to read my latest or live in Abilene to know that this scenario has been happening across Texas for many years. And if you live in parts of SD04, especially somewhere like Jefferson or Gaveston County, you know this really well.

And that’s only one reason why this race is so important.

Democrats just flipped a State Senate seat they were not supposed to win. In Tarrant County. In a special election. In a district that had been written off as safely Republican. And it didn’t happen because of vibes, luck, or some sudden shift in ideology. It happened because people showed up, organized, knocked doors, and treated it like it mattered.

And now there’s another one. Right now. Early voting is already underway. Another district, another special election, another test of whether that win was a one-off… or a sign of what’s possible.

That win in SD09 didn’t come easy.

Taylor Rehmet had a real operation behind him, one that most people never see unless they’re in it. We’re talking about a full-scale ground game, including local elected officials, candidates, and grassroots organizations, all in, coordinating, showing up, and putting in the hours. They knocked on more than 20,000 doors. They treated a special election like it actually mattered.

That’s the part people miss when they call it surprising. That win was infrastructure.

SD04 is harder. There’s no point pretending otherwise. This is a district where Trump pulled about 66.6% of the vote, and Cruz cleared roughly 63.8%. That’s the baseline. That’s what Democrats are walking into.

But that’s not the whole story either. Because when you actually look at the district, it’s not some uniform block of red voters moving in lockstep. It’s about 51.6% Anglo and 48.4% non-Anglo, with a combined Black and Hispanic population around 41%. That’s a lot of different communities, a lot of different interests, and a lot of voters who don’t always get engaged in low-turnout elections like this. So yes, this is a Republican-leaning district. But it’s not a monolith. And it’s not unwinnable under the right conditions.

Right now, I would expect to see the County Democratic Parties of Chambers, Galveston, Harris, Jefferson, and Montgomery all participating in their respective slices to help elect Ron Angeletti. I would expect to see the Young Dems in each county and the Democratic clubs each participating in block walks, phone banking, and busting their humps. The same way we saw the local groups in Tarrant County do.

Here’s the part I’m not going to pretend about. I know exactly what SD09 looked like on the ground because I was close enough to see it. Because I live in Tarrant County, I know the people who were organizing, knocking, coordinating, pushing that thing forward every single day. I know how much work went into that win.

SD04? I don’t have that same visibility. It’s hundreds of miles away, and I’m not plugged into the day-to-day operation the way I was with SD09. I don’t know if there are teams out there knocking on doors at that scale, if local officials and orgs are all in, or if there’s a coordinated push behind this. And that matters. Because the difference between a long-shot loss and a surprise win in a district like this isn’t theory, it’s whether that work is actually happening.

Ron Angeletti is not running some theory-heavy campaign.

He’s running on the kind of material issues people actually bring up at their doors. He hasn’t thrown himself into ideological branding. It’s a pragmatic Democrat running on what actually affects people’s day-to-day lives.

Here are some Q&A’s in his own words.

Q: Do you oppose school vouchers and efforts to privatize public education?

Yes, I oppose school vouchers and efforts that undermine public education.

Public schools are the foundation of our communities. They are required to serve all students, regardless of ability, background, or circumstance. When we divert public dollars into voucher programs that fund private institutions, we weaken that foundation and leave our most vulnerable students with fewer resources.

I’ve seen firsthand how this plays out. Many private schools that accept voucher funds are not held to the same standards. They can limit services, especially for students with disabilities, and are not subject to the same accountability measures as public schools.

Q: Should higher education in Texas be free or debt-free at public institutions?

Yes... I believe every student who is willing to work for it should have a real opportunity to pursue college, trade school, or certification without being buried in debt before they even get started in life.

At the end of the day, this is about investing in people. When we remove financial barriers to education, we don’t just change individual lives, we strengthen our workforce, grow our economy, and build a more prosperous future for Texas.

Q: Should Texas guarantee free school meals to all K–12 students, regardless of income?

Yes... No child should be expected to learn on an empty stomach. If we’re serious about education, then we have to make sure every student has their basic needs met first.

Providing free school meals to all K–12 students removes stigma, simplifies the process for families, and ensures that no child falls through the cracks because of paperwork or income thresholds. It also supports working parents who are already stretching every dollar to provide for their families.

Q: Should Texas end tax breaks and regulatory loopholes for oil and gas companies, including exemptions from emissions reporting and waste disposal standards?

Yes... Energy is a major part of Texas’ identity and economy, and we should respect the role that oil and gas workers play in keeping our state running. But supporting the industry should never come at the expense of public health, environmental responsibility, or fairness to taxpayers.

Right now, there are loopholes and exemptions that allow some companies to avoid full transparency, especially when it comes to emissions and waste. That’s not right. If everyday Texans and small businesses are expected to follow the rules, large corporations should be held to that same standard.

Q: Do you support closing or downsizing state prisons and redirecting that funding to community-based alternatives like mental health care, housing, and youth programs?

Yes... I support shifting our focus from over-incarceration to prevention and rehabilitation, but it has to be done responsibly, with public safety at the center.

For too long, we’ve relied on incarceration as the default response, even in cases where mental health care, substance abuse treatment, or community-based programs would be more effective. That approach is costly, and too often it fails to reduce repeat offenses.

Q: Do you support publicly financed elections to reduce corporate and PAC influence?

Yes... I support public financing options because our elections should be driven by people—not dominated by corporate or PAC money. Right now, too many voices get drowned out because they don’t have access to big-dollar donors. That creates an uneven playing field and erodes trust in the process.

This is about where resources go, who gets heard, and how thin the margins are when real decisions get made in Austin.

Every seat shifts the math. Every seat changes what’s possible, what gets blocked, and what actually reaches the floor. And right now, coming off SD09, this is also about momentum, whether that win was a one-time spark or the beginning of something Democrats can build on.

Republicans are still running the same corporate-state model, tax breaks for the top, subsidies with no accountability, and austerity everywhere else. What Angeletti is running on is the opposite of that. Investment in people, schools, healthcare, wages, and infrastructure. The basics that actually make a community function. That’s the choice in front of voters, whether they frame it that way or not.

So it comes down to the same thing it always comes down to, and the same thing SD09 proved in real time. The question is not whether this district can move. It’s whether anyone is doing the work to move it. Because we already saw what it looks like when that work happens. Tens of thousands of doors were knocked on. Local officials, candidates, and organizations pulling in the same direction. A coordinated effort that actually reaches voters who don’t usually show up in elections like this. That’s how you bend a district, even one that isn’t supposed to bend.

Early voting is happening right now.

Election Day is May 2, and in a special election, turnout is everything. If you live in SD04, make a plan and go vote. Don’t assume anyone else is going to carry that for you. If you’re nearby, plug into a campaign or local group and help knock doors, make calls, or do something that actually moves the needle. And if you’re not in the district, this is still a moment you can impact. Donate if you can, share information, amplify the race, and make sure people in the district know it’s happening. These elections don’t turn on broad attention. They turn on when enough people decide, in a short window, to act.

Democrats just proved these seats can flip. Not in theory, not in some long-term realignment model, but right now, in a special election that wasn’t supposed to go our way. But that only happens when people show up and do the work, when a campaign is actually built to reach voters instead of hoping they appear on their own. That’s the part that matters, and we don’t fully see it in SD04 yet. Now we find out if anyone did.

You can find out more about Ron Angeletti on his website or Facebook.

Or you can sign up to volunteer. Hurry up, time is running out.

Or give him money (if you have it).

Let’s stick it to Republicans one more time!

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• April 27, 2026: Last day to register to vote (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• April 28, 2026: Last day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Election day! (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 15, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 18, 2026: First day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 22, 2026: Last day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 26, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 26, 2026: Election day! (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• Who Will Be On The 2026 State Ballot?

• Who Will Be On The 2026 Federal Ballot?

• Click here to find out what Legislative districts you’re in.

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I spent the better part of this morning watching videos of the City Council in Abilene. Which may seem like a strange thing to do on a Monday, but I’ve been hearing some of the Democratic candidates running for office in Texas increasingly talk about the data center going up in Abilene (thank you, Riley Rodriquez and Diana Luna). It’s called Project Stargate, a massive, multi-billion-dollar AI data center campus developed by Lancium and supported by OpenAI and Oracle. This project is designed as a 1.2 GW+ facility, with construction ongoing. It’s meant to power advanced AI technologies.

But the story on the ground tells us a story of chaos, rising costs, and a city unprepared for the future the tech-lords have planned for us.

The population of Abilene is 130,000, but a sudden, rapid influx has painted the city red with brake lights. A little town like this has limited infrastructure, and its deputies have been dispatched to intersections all over to keep traffic moving because the system can’t handle the surge. Ten-minute dives have turned into forty-minute drives, every day, for people who didn’t sign up for any of this.

Thousands of workers showed up in Abilene almost overnight. RV parks are expanding to house them. Temporary housing is becoming a semi-permanent strain on everything from water lines to grocery stores and emergency services. City officials are approving exceptions and adjustments in real time, trying to stretch infrastructure that was designed for a much smaller, slower-growing community.

Then, there’s the housing.

In DFW, it’s common knowledge that if you want to move to somewhere with cheaper rent, you move out to a smaller city. You move out to places like Abilene. When rent in Abilene is just as high as or higher than in DFW, I don’t know where you go from there. This is from Zillow, today:

Rents are climbing so fast that people who have lived in Abilene for years are being priced out of their own city. Shelters are stretched thin, and housing voucher holders aren’t able to find placements. More and more people are falling through the cracks because the math just stopped working. What used to be affordable isn’t anymore, and what replaces it isn’t built for the people who are already here.

All of a sudden, Abilene has had a sharp spike in its unhoused population.

Talk to residents, and you hear the same thing over and over again. It feels like an invasion. It feels like it happened all at once. It feels like nobody was ready for it.

Chaotic or intentional?

While residents in Abilene are sitting in traffic, watching their rent spike, and trying to figure out how their city got turned upside down overnight, the companies behind this project aren’t exactly sharing in that burden.

They’re getting a discount.

A massive one.

The Stargate-linked development in Abilene is tied to a property tax abatement of up to 85%, approved as part of the deal to bring this project to town. In plain English, that means the same project driving up housing costs, straining infrastructure, and forcing the city to scramble in real time… is not paying anywhere close to its full share into the local tax base that’s supposed to handle those exact problems.

The Texas miracle, a.k.a. Republican corporate policy.

Local officials will tell you this is the cost of doing business. If Abilene hadn’t offered the incentive, the project would have gone elsewhere. That is how you compete. That this is how you “win.”

But it raises a pretty simple question.

If the city has to expand water access, manage traffic, deal with housing shortages, and absorb a sudden population surge… and the companies driving that growth are getting an 85% break on property taxes…

Who exactly is paying for all of this?

Because it’s not the billion-dollar corporations.

It’s the people already living there.

The only entities to benefit from this project are the corporations and the campaigns of the Republican politicians who cleared the way for it. Over and over again, the people of Texas pay for the favors Republicans give to billionaires. To oil billionaires. To petrochemical moguls. And now to tech-lords.

Which tech-lords?

It’s a full-blown corporate stack, and every name on it should tell you exactly what kind of deal this is.

At the center of it is OpenAI, backed by billions in capital and tied directly to some of the most powerful players in tech and finance. You’ve got Oracle in the mix. SoftBank on the funding side. Lancium, the Texas-based infrastructure company that helped land the project. Crusoe, which is handling parts of the buildout and energy side. And now Microsoft is circling the site as part of the broader expansion footprint.

• OpenAI is worth approximately $852 billion.

• Oracle is worth approximately $503 billion.

• Softbank is worth approximately $172 billion.

• Microsoft is worth approximately $3.1 trillion.

But they need corporate tax abatements, so the people of Abilene can pay $3,000 a month to live in an apartment in Abilene, Texas.

This is not “economic development” in the way people like to pretend it is.

This is billionaire-scale infrastructure being dropped into a midsize Texas city, with the full weight of corporate capital behind it, and the full support of public policy clearing the way.

And that matters, because when politicians talk about tax abatements, they love to frame it like they’re helping “bring jobs” or “grow the local economy.” They want you to picture a startup, a regional employer, or something that actually depends on the community it’s entering.

That’s not what this is.

These companies don’t need Abilene.

Abilene was chosen because it was cheap, had space, had a political environment willing to say yes, and because the state of Texas has built an entire economic model around giving corporations whatever they ask for and calling it growth.

The money flows toward the corporations.

The benefits flow toward the corporations.

And all the risk flows to the people who live there.

And the lies they sold to the public?

Blah, blah, jobs, blah, blah, growth, blah, blah, the future.

That’s always the pitch, right?

When projects like this get announced, you hear the same talking points over and over again. Thousands of jobs. Economic opportunity. A booming local economy. A chance for a small or mid-sized city to “level up” and compete with the big players.

And to be clear, there are jobs for a while. During construction, these projects bring in thousands of workers. That’s exactly what Abilene is experiencing right now. The surge in housing and traffic, and the strain on everything.

But once the construction is done, the job numbers drop off a cliff.

Data centers don’t employ thousands of permanent workers or sustain entire local economies. They’re designed to run lean. A More Perfect Union reported on these “temporary” jobs and the lies about jobs and growth that are sold to local communities.

Abilene gets the disruption of thousands of temporary workers, the housing spike, the infrastructure strain, the water concerns, the traffic gridlock…

And in return?

A relatively small number of permanent jobs, tied to companies that already got massive tax breaks to be there in the first place.

And it’s not unique to Abilene. This is the data center model everywhere. Big promises on the front end, minimal long-term footprint on the back end, and a whole lot of public cost in between.

This is the blueprint.

On April 11, I published “Texas: The Land Of No Water And Power,” which covered the Texas House Committee on State Affairs interim hearing on data centers. The number of data centers planned for Texas is so great that they would require four times the energy Texas currently produces at its peak. So, over the next five years, what’s happening in Abilene could be happening in every corner of Texas.

This is not some one-off situation. It’s the same model Texas has been running for years, just scaled up and supercharged by AI money.

Republicans give away the tax base. They call it innovation. They promise jobs, growth, and the future. And then they let ordinary people deal with the fallout.

• The poverty rate in Abilene is 16.1%, well above the state average.

• The food insecurity rate in Abilene is 15.5%.

We’ve seen this play out before in different industries across this state. Oil and gas. Petrochemicals. Manufacturing. Private school expansion. Corporate subsidies dressed up as “economic development,” with the public left holding the bag when the numbers don’t add up.

Data centers are just the next version of the same story.

The state rolls out the red carpet. Local officials are told this is their shot, that they have to say yes, that if they don’t, someone else will. The deals get signed. The abatements get approved. The headlines talk about billions of dollars in investment.

And then the real-world impacts show up later.

And the companies?

They move capital. They expand. They build the next site somewhere else.

Because they can.

Meanwhile, the people who actually live in these communities are left trying to make sense of a system that was never designed with them in mind in the first place.

That’s the model.

And Abilene is just the latest place where it’s being tested in real time.

So, who is this actually for?

Because if Abilene residents are paying higher rent, sitting in worse traffic, worrying about water, and watching their city scramble to keep up, then no one should pretend an 85% tax abatement for a billionaire-backed data center is “economic development.”

It’s a transfer of risk downward and a transfer of wealth upward.

That’s the truth of it.

The truth is that the people of Abilene were never the primary stakeholders in this project. They’re the ones expected to take the hit now in exchange for benefits that may never reach them later.

And once you see that, you can’t unsee it.

Because this isn’t just about one city in West Texas, it’s about a system that keeps asking the same people to give up more, pay more, and endure more, so that the world’s most powerful corporations can pay less.

Abilene makes it impossible to ignore who Republican economic policy is really built for.

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• April 27, 2026: Last day to register to vote (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• April 28, 2026: Last day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Election day! (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 15, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 18, 2026: First day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 22, 2026: Last day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 26, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 26, 2026: Election day! (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• Who Will Be On The 2026 State Ballot?

• Who Will Be On The 2026 Federal Ballot?

• Click here to find out what Legislative districts you’re in.

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This series is called Meet The Candidates. Over the next seven months, I’ll spotlight a handful of Democratic races each month, mainly in the Legislature and in Congress. These aren’t endorsements. They’re introductions, a way to understand who’s running, the districts they hope to represent, and what’s at stake for people across Texas.

Who is Diana Loya?

Diana Loya is coming in from lived experience, and that distinction matters in a district like this. She immigrated to the United States as a child and learned English while figuring out where she belonged. That’s a throughline in her campaign around making sure people who are usually sidelined actually have a voice, and it’s rooted in that early experience of navigating systems that weren’t built for her.

She’s also part of a military family. Her husband deployed to Iraq shortly after they met, and while he was overseas, she raised their daughter, worked, and continued her education. That’s the kind of unglamorous labor that informs how she talks about service, as something that happens every day without recognition.

Professionally, Loya has spent about two decades in public education. Classrooms, campuses, working with teachers, students, and families. She later earned a master’s in Educational Leadership and took positions where she could actually push for change inside the system.

That perspective carries into how she defines leadership. Listening, showing up, and being accountable to the people who live with the consequences of policy decisions. She consistently centers educators, veterans, working families, farmers, and small-town communities.

The district.

If Democrats want to flip HD87, they have to start by being honest about what this district is and what it is not.

This is not some secretly blue seat waiting to be discovered by a better mailer. It is a hard-red Panhandle district that Donald Trump carried with 78.7% in 2024, while the Democratic House nominee took just 20.7%. Republicans won the state House race here by more than 31,000 votes. That is not a narrow loss.

At the same time, this is not a district Democrats should write off forever.

HD87 is more complicated than the topline suggests. The district is 54.3% non-Anglo overall, though the voting-age population is basically split down the middle, 50.1% Anglo to 49.9% non-Anglo. Hispanics make up about 40% of the total population. Potter County, which includes much of Amarillo in the district, is by far the biggest population center, and several communities in Moore, Ochiltree, Hansford, Sherman, and Lipscomb counties have very large Latino populations.

Most of these areas didn’t even hit 55% turnout in 2024, in a presidential election year.

So what would it actually take?

First, Democrats would have to stop treating this as a generic rural district and start treating it as a working-class, heavily Latino, partly Amarillo-based Panhandle district with real economic pain. The district has a poverty rate of 17.7%, per capita income well below the state average, lower rates of bachelor’s attainment, and a workforce concentrated in manufacturing, agriculture, construction, retail, and education and health services. This is exactly the kind of place where a strong Democrat should be talking nonstop about public schools, hospital closures, property taxes, wages, water, housing strain, and who gets left behind when Austin governs for donors and culture-war addicts instead of actual communities.

Second, Democrats would need a serious turnout project in the Latino communities that are already there (and not a last-minute parachute operation). Democrats are not flipping this district by shaving a point off the GOP in Bushland. They are flipping it, if they ever do, by building durable turnout and trust in Amarillo’s district share, Dumas, Cactus, Perryton, Spearman, Booker, Stratford, and other places where the electorate does not currently look like the full district population.

Third, they would need a candidate who fits the district culturally without sounding like a Republican in softer packaging. That means somebody who can talk naturally about schools, veterans, rural hospitals, and farm economics, but also connect those issues to state policy choices. Diana Loya’s biography gives Democrats a better opening on that front than the party often has in seats like this. English learner, educator, military family, working mom, Panhandle-rooted. That is the kind of profile that can at least get a hearing from voters who would tune out a more conventional Democrat on sight.

Fourth, Democrats would have to improve their standing with both Latino and Anglo working-class voters. And 2026 might just be the year for that. Because the VAP is still slightly Anglo-majority, and a district that voted nearly 80 percent Republican is not moving left through demography alone. Any real path would require running up the score more in Latino communities while also cutting into the GOP margin among white voters who are being hammered by the same school underfunding, hospital instability, farm pressure, and property-tax squeeze as everyone else.

HD87 is flippable only in the long term, and only if Democrats stop approaching Panhandle districts like abstractions. The ingredients are there for a better Democratic performance than the party is currently getting. A diverse population. Heavy working-class economics. Underfunded public institutions. Large Latino communities. A candidate profile that makes sense for the region. But none of that matters without an organization strong enough to turn demographic possibilities into actual votes.

For now, the district is still deeply red. But it is not politically simple. And that is where a serious Democratic strategy would have to begin.

The incumbent.

If Diana Loya’s campaign is built around lived experience, the incumbent Caroline Fairly’s (R) is built around inherited privilege.

Fairly did not come up through local organizing, public service, or even the kind of slow, grinding community work that usually defines rural politics. She came in with a last name and a financial network. The 27-year-old daughter of billionaire Alex Fairly, she entered this race with the kind of built-in advantage most candidates in districts like this could never dream of. Her daddy bought her this seat, and she’s been granting the billionaire class government favors ever since.

Because what you see in Austin is not an independent, grounded voice for the Panhandle. You see a legislator whose alignment is consistent with corporate interests and oil money. The same donor class that already has a firm grip on Texas politics is tightening its grip further.

Meanwhile, the actual needs of the district, underfunded schools, strained rural hospitals, property tax pressure, working families trying to stay afloat, keep getting pushed to the side or actively made worse.

And that’s the disconnect. HD87 is a working-class, rural district facing real economic strain, but its representation looks as if it were assembled in a boardroom. Fairly works strictly for the billionaire class, while harming the people who elected her into office in the first place.

Fairly’s record reflects that her priorities are consolidating power, pushing ideological agendas, and protecting the interests of people who will never have to worry about losing their homes, their healthcare, or their livelihoods.

That’s the real contrast in this race. Not just Democrat versus Republican, but representation rooted in lived reality versus representation shaped by wealth, access, and insulation from the consequences of policy.

In Diana Loya’s own words.

Below are some questions I asked Loya, based on previous reader polls, along with her answers.

Q: Should Texas end tax subsidies and abatements for large corporations?

I don’t think we should blindly give tax breaks. We should be strategic. We should support businesses that truly invest in our communities, but stop deals that don’t deliver real value. We should also invest in our small businesses, especially here in HD 87.

Q: Do you oppose school vouchers and efforts to privatize public education?

I’m strongly opposed to school vouchers because I’ve spent over 20 years inside our public schools, and I’ve seen what our students need to succeed. Taking funding away from public schools doesn’t solve problems; it creates more of them, especially for our rural communities and our most vulnerable students.

Q: Should Texas guarantee free school meals to all K–12 students, regardless of income?

Most families who can afford it will continue to send lunches with their children; that’s already happening. However, the current system only reaches a small number of students and leaves many others in between without consistent access to meals. When kids are in school, they should focus on learning, not being hungry. We need to guarantee no child is left hungry.

Q: Do you support automatic voter registration and same-day registration in Texas?

I absolutely support automatic voter registration and same-day registration in Texas because voting should be accessible for every eligible citizen.

Q: Do you support publicly financed elections to reduce corporate and PAC influence?

I wholeheartedly support this. When campaigns rely heavily on large donors or PACs, it raises real concerns about influence and accountability. Public financing helps ensure that elected officials are working for the people, not for whoever funded their campaigns.

Bonus Question: What does being a Democrat mean to you in 2026?

To me, being a Democrat today means standing with working-class families and bringing hope back to our communities. It means choosing unity over division and people over politics. It’s not about extremes. It’s about humanity. It’s about fighting for our students, our families, and the communities we call home.

That’s the choice in HD87.

One path continues what the district already has. A politics shaped by wealth, insulated from consequence, aligned with donors and power brokers who will never live with the outcomes of the policies they push. The other is an attempt, still early, still uphill, to root representation in the people who actually make up the district and keep it running.

And to be clear, this is not an easy flip. It’s not even a likely one in the short term. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a meaningful race. Because races like this are where parties either build something real or continue to coast on assumptions that haven’t held up in years.

If Democrats are serious about competing in places like the Panhandle, this is what it looks like. A candidate who fits the district. A message grounded in material conditions, not abstractions. A long-term commitment to voters who have been written off, ignored, or talked at instead of talked with.

Whether that’s enough in 2026 is an open question.

But the more important question is whether anyone is willing to do the work required to make districts like HD87 competitive at all.

You can learn more about Diana Loya on her website and Facebook.

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• April 20, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 20, 2026: First day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 27, 2026: Last day to register to vote (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• April 28, 2026: Last day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Election day! (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 15, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 18, 2026: First day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 22, 2026: Last day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 26, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 26, 2026: Election day! (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• Who Will Be On The 2026 State Ballot?

• Who Will Be On The 2026 Federal Ballot?

• Click here to find out what Legislative districts you’re in.

LoneStarLeft is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Follow me on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

These are recommendations, not endorsements.

Municipal races in Texas are technically nonpartisan, but anyone who’s been paying attention knows that doesn’t mean they’re apolitical. Party infrastructure, donor networks, and ideological alignment still shape who runs, who gets support, and how they govern once they’re in office. The difference is that voters are expected to figure that out on their own, often with very little information.

So that’s what I set out to do.

Over the past few weeks, I put out calls, dug through local coverage, cross-checked endorsements, looked at donation patterns where available, and leaned on input from activists and organizers on the ground. I did not cover every race across the state, and there are plenty I looked at where I could not confidently rule out Republican alignment. In some areas, that’s because information is scarce. In others, it’s because Republican networks are deeply embedded at the local level and candidates simply aren’t transparent about it.

That doesn’t mean skip those races. You should absolutely still vote all the way down your ballot, and vote in every single non-partisan race.

What this list represents is something more specific. Candidates I’ve been able to verify are not part of the MAGA ecosystem. In a few cases, more centrist candidates may be included, often at the recommendation of activists, because the alternative was significantly worse. That’s the reality of local politics right now. But overall, this is the strongest group of community-focused candidates I could identify across these municipal races.

I also didn’t include many ISD races unless they were specifically sent to me. School board elections are increasingly ground zero for far-right organizing, but they’re also highly localized, and I wanted to make sure anything I included was vetted.

And yes, this matters.

City councils, mayors, and local boards make decisions that shape everyday life far more directly than most statewide officials. This includes housing policy, policing, public health, infrastructure, and local economic development. These are the arenas where Republican governance models of deregulation for business, austerity for residents, and culture war distractions get implemented.

If we want different outcomes, we have to start at this level.

Each election cycle is an opportunity to push these local governments in a different direction. That happens when voters show up informed and intentional.

This list is meant to help with that.

Dallas County

• Irving

  • City Council District 3: Kejal Patel

  • City Council District 6: Fahad Ahmed

  • ISD Place 1: Kelly Snapp

  • ISD Place 2: Mary Lewallen

• Grand Prairie

  • City Council Place 3: Amber Timberlake

  • Place 7 At Large: Marketta Nimo

• Carrollton

  • Mayor: Zul Mohamed

  • Place 4: Mike Song

• Cedar Hill

  • City Council Place 2: Ty Coleman

  • City Council Place 6: Maranda Auzenne

• DeSoto

  • City Council Place 2: Pierette Parker

  • City Council Place 4: David “DaWud” Edgerson

• Carrollton/Farmers Branch ISD

  • Cynthia Noda

Tarrant County

• Arlington

  • District 4: Rojo Meixueiro

  • District 5: Brittney Garcia-Dumas

  • District 8: Jason Shelton

• North Richland Hills

  • Place 4: John Schleeter

  • Place 6: Laura Jenkins

• Bedford

  • Place 4: Shelly Lemman

• Kennedale

  • Place 4: Melissa Barrows

Collin County

• Celina

  • Mayor: Erica Cornelius

• Fairview

  • Seat 6: Lakia Works

• Princeton

  • Place 4: Jaisen Rutledge

• Murphy

  • Place 3: Andrew Chase

  • Place 5: Laura Deel

• Parker

  • Mayor: Marcos Arias

• Sachse

  • Place 4: Gurvinder Singh

Denton County

• Denton

  • Mayor: Angela Brewer

  • Place 1: Jordan E. Villarreal

  • Place 2: Nick Stevens

  • Place 5: George Ferrie

  • ISD: Vicki Byrd

• Frisco

  • ISD Place 4: Dynette Davis

  • ISD Place 5: Sree Mouli Majji

• Lewisville

  • Place 1: Erum Ali

  • ISD: Dr. Staci Barker

• Flower Mound

  • Place 5: Clare Harris

Hidalgo County

• McAllen

  • District 5: Felida Villarreal

• Mercedes

  • Mayor: Velda J. Garcia

  • Commissioner Place 3: Joe Martinez

Fort Bend County

• Katy

  • Ward A: J.R. Richardson

  • Candidate at Large: AJ Bailey

• Stafford

  • Stafford MSD Position 6: Jocelyn Bennett

Williamson County

• Round Rock

  • Place 4: Frank Ortega

• Cedar Park

  • Mayor: Jim Penniman-Morin

  • Place 4: Kevin O’Bryan

  • Place 6: Shweta Padmanabha

• Hutto

  • Place 1: Sarosh Jafri

  • Place 4: Corina Zepeda

Brazoria County

• Pearland

  • Mayor: Quentin Wiltz

  • Councilmember Position No. 3: Toshila McLean

  Hillcrest Village

  • Alderman: Ramiro Mondragon

Bell County

• Killeen

  • City Council At-Large: Sue “Neesy” Croft

Galveston County

• Galveston

  • Mayor At-Large: William Boike

  • District 1: Sharon Lewis

  • District 3: Bob Brown

  • District 4: Alex Porretto

  • District 5: Michael Niebuhr

  • District 6: George R. Guajardo

Gregg County

• Longview

  • District 3: Marlena Cooper

Harrison County

• Marshall

  • District 6: Shereka Shantel Newson

  • District 7: LaQuinthia Wilbert

Comal County

• New Braunfels

  • Mayor: Neal Linnartz

  • District 6: April Ryans

Taylor County

• Abilene

  • Place 4: Rich Lyles

Local elections don’t get the attention they deserve. That’s by design.

It’s easier to reshape a state from the ground up when nobody’s watching city council meetings, when school boards fly under the radar, and when voters assume these races “aren’t political.” Meanwhile, the same ideology driving state and national policy shows up in zoning decisions, policing budgets, book bans, and who gets prioritized in economic development deals.

That’s how the pipeline works.

And it’s also where it can be interrupted.

You’re not going to fix everything in one election cycle. Some of these races are uphill fights. Some cities are still years away from real ideological shifts. But none of that changes the fact that every seat matters, and every time a non-MAGA candidate wins one of these positions, it changes the trajectory of that city, even if only a little at first.

That’s how this builds.

So use this list as a guide, not a limit. Check your ballot. Look into the races I didn’t cover. Talk to local organizers if you can. And most importantly, vote all the way down.

Because this is where it starts. Early voting starts on Monday.

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• April 20, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 20, 2026: First day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 27, 2026: Last day to register to vote (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• April 28, 2026: Last day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Election day! (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 15, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 18, 2026: First day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 22, 2026: Last day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 26, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 26, 2026: Election day! (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• Who Will Be On The 2026 State Ballot?

• Who Will Be On The 2026 Federal Ballot?

• Click here to find out what Legislative districts you’re in.

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Politics (noun) pol·​i·​tics: the art or science of government, such as
a: the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy
b: the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government

If you don’t know who Hasan Piker is, consider yourself lucky. You just missed months of ideological warfare happening in mainstream media, brought to you by ExxonMobil, CVS Health, Bill Gates, and Reid Hoffman.

Let me rewind a bit.

Last summer, I wrote about the punditry coming from Washington DC, talking about the Democratic Civil War, and perhaps I naively said, “We’re all good in Texas.” But, I should have added, “For now.” Because last summer, things in Texas were looking like bluebonnets and sweet tea for Democrats, but things have changed.

Texas Democrats, specifically Texas progressives, have spent years in coalition, working hard at the state, candidate, and county levels to wrestle the ideals of the “left-leaning party” away from the old Dixiecrat holdovers of the past. Or so we thought. But 2026 has been a strange year, and maybe it’s the crumbling of America or the daily outrages of our fascist government, but it seems to be pushing ideological splits within our two major political parties (both of them), and it’s getting too hard to keep ignoring.

A split or a return?

I’ve concluded that the Republicans’ denial of the Southern Strategy is simply a continuation of the Lost Cause myth. Think about it. The Lost Cause was about control over national memory. It took a system built on racial hierarchy and recast it as honor, heritage, and states’ rights. And when Republicans deny that the Southern Strategy happened, it requires the same kind of historical sleight of hand.

The shift of white Southern voters into the Republican Party was a deliberate strategy. But history doesn’t because it’s inconvenient. The Southern Strategy was documented, debated, and, at times, openly admitted.

One part of the Southern Strategy discussion that gets overlooked is that, during the WWII era, while there were two major parties, both had ideological splits. Dixiecrat Richard Russell (D-GA) founded the Conservative Coalition in 1937, which was later led by Mr. Republican himself, Robert A. Taft (R-OH).

During that same era, some of my favorite “liberals” include Wayne Morse (R-OR), who fought for labor rights and equal access to education, and Claude Pepper (D-FL), who was one of the leading New Dealers in Congress and built his career around anti-poll tax and labor protections. Morse later switched parties.

The point is that 90 years ago, in America, we didn’t have a conservative party and a liberal party. We had the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, and within both, a range of ideologies. Could it be that we’re returning to something simialar?

Or could it be we’re moving to something new altogether?

What does that have to do with Hasan Pike, Texas Democrats, and you?

Everything.

The Third Way Democrats’ attack on Hasan Piker and progressive Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is a fight that’s been building for a while. The fight over what the Democratic Party is supposed to be, who it’s supposed to represent, and who gets to define its limits.

While it wasn’t immediately clear when the 2026 primaries kicked off, it’s absolutely clear now that the same ideological battles are happening in Texas. The ideological range of Texas Democrats, or perhaps Democrats altogether, has grown substantially over the last several years, and pieces of our coalition are finding themselves at odds over policy, messaging, and whose interests actually come first.

And with the Texas Democratic Party Convention coming up and a huge election around the corner, after that, these ideological battles could mean the difference between access to healthcare and genocide in a foreign nation.

The questions that every Democratic voter should be asking right now:

• How did we get here?

• Where do I fall in the ideological spectrum?

• Why are these attacks on the left happening right now?

• Who is attacking the left, and what outcome do they want?

Does the left start at anti-capitalism?

I made this handy-dandy chart for anyone trying to understand the left’s ideological buckets, because there are several.

You may have heard people say online (or in person), “the left begins at anti-capitalism,” which is really an inference that the Democratic Party, specifically establishment Democrats, are simialar to Republicans in their goals to uphold capitalism.

For the record, Lone Star Left is a progressive newsletter, and while I could say I’m DSA-adjacent, meaning that I agree with many of their policy positions, I do not belong to the DSA. However, almost all of the Congresspeople whom I hold deep respect for and agree with on almost everything are either current or former members of the DSA. For example:

• Greg Casar

• AOC

• Rashida Tlaib

• Summer Lee

“Anti-capitalism” is a scary term for a lot of people in America, as we’ve all been propagandized since birth to believe that’s the only way to achieve happiness/greatness in this country. And capitalism, in theory, sounds great. But what few people ever talk about is how American capitalism too often is simply about corporate power and public harm. Here are some examples:

• ProPublica reported in April 2026 that Prospect Medical, a for-profit hospital chain, promised to self-insure malpractice claims but never reserved the funds needed to cover defense costs for injured patients and doctors. They cut costs, pocket the upside, and leave patients and physicians stranded when the bill comes due.

• Reuters reported that prison-health company YesCare won approval for a bankruptcy deal after its predecessor faced around 200 lawsuits over allegedly deficient care, including personal injury and wrongful-death claims. Reuters also reported on Wellpath’s bankruptcy settlement after the company faced debt and litigation pressure. Privatized prison medicine produces injury claims, and then the corporate structure helps contain the fallout.

• ProPublica reported in 2026 that the FAA warned airlines that rocket launches could “significantly reduce safety” and that catastrophic failures could create dangerous debris, after Starship explosions disrupted air traffic and forced pilots to scramble. ProPublica also reported the FAA killed a rule aimed at regulating space junk even as commercial launches increased. SpaceX, a giant, politically connected company, has room to grow, while public risk trails behind it.

This is American capitalism as it actually functions. Private equity buys the hospital, the nursing home, or the prison health contract, strips it for parts, socializes the harm, and when people die, get sick, or lose everything, there’s always a bankruptcy court, a regulatory loophole, or a consultant ready to explain why none of it is anybody’s fault.

So, when leftists, like Hasan Piker or random internet-bros, are talking about “anti-capitalism,” they are looking at capitalism through the lens of the harm it causes everyday working people in America, not through the lens of “if I work hard enough, I can have the American dream.”

This part about capitalism/anti-capitalism is important to understand when answering the question:

Who is attacking the left, and what outcome do they want?

And I don’t mean Republicans. We all know the GOP never shuts up and doesn’t even know the difference between communism and fascism. Who is left of center and attacking the left?

It’s centrist Democratic institutions, donor-friendly operatives, media gatekeepers, and pro-Israel power centers inside or adjacent to the Democratic Party who see the growing anti-war, anti-corporate, and anti-establishment left as a threat to their control. In the most obvious recent example, Third Way published a letter calling on Abdul El-Sayed to say whether he aligns with Hasan Piker’s views, while recent reporting out of Michigan describes Third Way, the ADL, pro-Israel figures, and establishment Democrats going on the offensive after Piker aligned with El-Sayed.

And the outcome they want is not complicated. They want to police the boundaries of what is considered acceptable Democratic politics. They want a party that stays safely inside capitalism, safely inside donor comfort, safely inside the old foreign-policy consensus, and safely away from anything that sounds too redistributive, too anti-war, too pro-Palestinian, too anti-corporate, or too willing to name oligarchy as the problem. Third Way’s own 2026 polling project makes that clear by framing the electorate around “pragmatism,” “electability,” and “capitalism with guardrails,” rather than systemic transformation.

And if they get their way, we’ll never have universal healthcare, or universal childcare, or a living wage, or affordable housing, or student debt relief, or paid family leave, or strong labor protections, or a serious climate response, or an end to mass incarceration, or any real check on corporate power.

But THESE ⬆️ are the things that Democratic voters actually want.

Don’t believe me? Read the Texas Democratic Party platform. Better yet, check out these polls:

• Data for Progress found 78% of Democrats support Medicare for All.

• The First Five Years Fund reported that 94% of Democrats say federal child care funding would help lower costs for working families.

• Data for Progress found that more than 80% of Democrats say the current federal minimum wage is not enough for a decent quality of life, and 85% support raising it to $17 an hour.

• A Bipartisan Policy Center / National Housing Conference / Morning Consult poll found 83% of Democrats say the lack of affordable homes is a significant problem in the United States.

• YouGov found that 92% of Democrats support canceling some or all of the debt for lower-income Americans, and 90% support relief for people who have been repaying loans for at least 20 years.

• Pew found 80% of Democrats favor requiring employers to provide paid family leave.

• Gallup found 90% of Democrats approve of labor unions. That is not a poll on a specific labor bill, but it is a very strong indicator that Democratic voters support pro-labor policy and worker protections.

• Yale’s Climate Change in the American Mind found that 96% of liberal Democrats and 94% of moderate/conservative Democrats support federal funding to help farmers adopt soil practices that reduce carbon pollution, and that registered voters across the spectrum support many climate-friendly policies.

• FWD.us reported polling showing 85% of Democrats support criminal justice reform, and 84% of Democrats say it is important to reduce the jail and prison population in the United States.

• Data for Progress found 93% of Democrats say it is important that lobbyists from Big Pharma, Big Tech, Wall Street, and other corporate interests not influence the next DNC chair, and 89% say party leadership should listen to working- and middle-class voters rather than corporate and wealthy executives.

Politics (noun) pol·​i·​tics: the art or science of government.

And right now, the “art” part is doing a lot of work.

These attacks are happening at the exact moment more progressives are running for office than we’ve seen in decades. Not just in New York or California, but here in Texas too. People like me. People like you. People who are not waiting for permission from party leadership or donors to talk about healthcare, housing, wages, and corporate power in plain terms.

And when that happens, when new people start stepping into power, the lines get drawn.

If you look at that chart I made, the fault line is pretty clear. It’s between liberals and progressives. That space where one side wants to manage the system, while the other side starts to question whether it is working at all.

In Texas, that divide became very real during the primary.

The term “identity politics,” something that’s been used in political analysis for decades, was being treated as if it were inherently offensive. People were being sorted, labeled, and dismissed faster than anyone was actually listening. And that’s where things started to shift.

Because instead of debating policy, strategy, or how to build the biggest possible coalition, the conversation started to turn into something else. Who gets to speak? Who is allowed to represent what? Who is “problematic.” Who needs to be disqualified?

And yes, there are bad actors in every space. There always have been. But what I saw, and what a lot of people saw, was something broader than that.

People like Hasan Piker are getting labeled in ways that go far beyond critique. People like James Talarico are facing attacks that have less to do with policy and more to do with framing. And people like me, and plenty of others, catch labels just for existing in a space that calls itself “left.”

I watched people with large platforms and comfortable positions spend entire days trying to discredit candidates, not over what they believed about healthcare or wages or housing, but over whether they were the “right kind” of Democrat. They made videos from their multi-million dollar kitchens and on their lunch breaks from their six-figure law careers.

I watched class-based arguments get reframed as exclusionary. I watched serious policy conversations get reduced to optics.

And maybe that’s the breakdown.

Maybe what we’re actually seeing is not just a disagreement over tactics, but a disagreement over what politics is supposed to prioritize in the first place. Class or identity. Systems or symptoms. Coalition or control.

I don’t claim to have a perfect answer.

But I do know this.

When the conversation shifts away from what people need to survive and toward who is allowed to say what, something has gone off track.

Blue state/online leftists are the biggest drivers of this divide.

Of course, it’s worth noting that Hasan Piker is based in Los Angeles. This is a discussion that a lot of “red state leftists” have had online for years, and something I’ve not only observed but also written about in the past.

The material conditions are different.

In blue states, you’re often operating inside systems that, while imperfect, are at least somewhat responsive. There are protections. There are safety nets. There are elected officials who, at a minimum, acknowledge the problems being raised. The stakes are still high, but they’re not always immediate in the same way.

In red states like Texas, the stakes are immediate.

Healthcare isn’t theoretical. It’s access or no access. Voting rights are actively restricted. Public education, labor protections, reproductive rights, even local governance, these are not policy debates here. They are ongoing fights against a state government that is openly hostile to large portions of its own population.

And that changes how you approach coalition.

Because when you are living under that kind of pressure, you don’t have the luxury of ideological purity. You don’t get to sit out elections. You don’t get to disengage from the Democratic Party entirely, even if you’re frustrated with it, because it is often the only available vehicle to slow down or block harm.

So what you see is a difference in strategy.

A lot of leftists in blue states are more willing to operate outside the party, to reject it outright, to treat it as just another institution to dismantle. And in some contexts, that makes sense. But in red states, that approach can feel disconnected from reality.

And then there’s coalition.

Texas Democrats are not just one group. They are multiracial, working-class, urban, rural, immigrant, union, non-union, religious, secular. Building anything here requires constant negotiation, constant compromise, and constant awareness of who is most at risk if things go wrong.

So when conversations flatten into accusations, when people start labeling entire groups instead of engaging with ideas, when class-based arguments get dismissed outright instead of debated, it feels counterproductive.

Because the goal, at least for those of us doing this work on the ground, has never been to win an argument online.

The goal is to build something that can actually win here.

And that requires a different kind of politics.

Is it racism?

Hasan Piker livestreams 70 hours a week, and within the last decade of doing that, there have been a few clips that have been taken out of context to depict him as racist. All of those clips he has responded to and answered for. If Centrist Democrats want to crucify him as a racist, whatever. To my understanding, this attack on him has made him more popular than ever.

However, this new trend, undoubtedly planted by the likes of Third Way Democrats, to paint progressive and leftist ideology as anti-Black is not only absurd but, in itself, racist, as it erases prominent Black leftist voices in history and in our current political spaces.

Black, anti-capitalist politics have always existed. For example, Martin Luther King JR explicitly wrote that capitalism had “outlived its usefulness” and had “failed to meet the needs of the masses.” Other well-known Black leftists include Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Fred Hampton, and Cornel West.

Last year, I heard someone use the term “political entertainment” in a sentence. I was floored. But this is what our political space has become for too many, entertainment, WWE cage matches, while lacking the understanding of ideology and policy. And the outcome is in 2026, a ton of liberals online are calling the political beliefs once held by Martin Luther King JR, “anti-black,” because some Twitch streamer said something stupid and it was clipped out of context. It hurts my brain.

My only advice, IF you’re a liberal or a progressive and you want to understand leftist policy, don’t start with Marx or Lenin. Start with Cedric Robinson, Angela Davis, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Start with the Black radical tradition. It makes more sense in a country where race and capitalism have never been separate.

At the end of the day, this was never really about Hasan Piker.

I don’t watch Twitch. I’m not in that demographic. But I’ve seen Hasan Piker plenty on YouTube, and when there’s nothing on C-SPAN, I’ll throw on a clip in the background while I’m writing or researching. I don’t always agree with him politically, just like I’m sure readers of Lone Star Left don’t always agree with me. That’s not the point. The point is that he is engaged, informed, and part of a broader conversation about policy, power, and what this country is doing both at home and abroad.

And to be clear, if someone has concerns about things he’s said, they are free to make that case. People can watch the full context, review his responses, and draw their own conclusions. That’s how this is supposed to work. But reducing an entire set of ideas, or an entire wing of the left, to a label based on clips, framing, or secondhand narratives is not analysis.

It’s about where the Democratic Party draws its boundaries, and who gets to draw them. It’s about whether voters can push for bigger changes without being written off before the conversation even starts.

And here in Texas, we don’t have the luxury of getting this wrong.

The consequences show up in whether people can see a doctor, whether schools stay funded, and whether workers have any leverage at all. That is the context in which these arguments are happening.

You don’t have to agree with every position on the left. You don’t have to like every messenger. But if the response to new ideas is to label them out of bounds rather than engage with them, then the outcome is already decided before voters get a say.

That’s control.

And in a state like this, control without results doesn’t hold for long.

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• April 20, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 20, 2026: First day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 27, 2026: Last day to register to vote (Democratic primary runoff elections)

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Until we get money out of politics, the kind of corruption Monica De La Cruz has been involved in is perfectly legal. You know, like the last Congressional session, when a bunch of Congresspeople took payoffs from Meta to ban TikTok. This is the kind of corruption that Citizens United has normalized in our government. The kind where a member of Congress is put in charge of overseeing an industry, taking tens of thousands of dollars from that same industry, even as that industry crushes the American people.

And nowhere is that more obvious than in South Texas.

In McAllen, nearly 41.5% of homes are uninsured. The highest rate of any major metro area in the United States.

And the person sitting in one of the most powerful oversight positions related to that crisis?

Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz (R-TX15).

Over the past three years, while home insurance costs have surged and coverage has evaporated across Texas, the subcommittee she helps lead held just two hearings on the issue. Not one insurance company CEO was called to testify. At the same time, she’s backed legislation that makes it harder for homeowners to fight denied claims, opposed efforts to collect data on climate-driven insurance costs, and voted to cut federal disaster funding.

Oh, and she’s taken nearly $50,000 from the property insurance industry along the way. Today, Unlocking America’s Future, an advocacy group, released a damning report outlining the details.

Almost half of homeowners in McAllen are effectively gambling that nothing will go wrong in one of Texas' most disaster-prone regions.

It’s because they can’t afford insurance anymore. Premiums have jumped more than 55% since 2019 in Texas, one of the fastest increases in the country, while insurers are pulling back, tightening coverage, or leaving certain areas altogether. What’s left is a shrinking market with higher prices and fewer options. So families are making impossible choices. Pay the mortgage or pay the insurance. Keep coverage or keep groceries on the table.

The result is predictable. When the next flood hits, when the next hurricane rolls through, when the next “once-in-a-lifetime” storm shows up for the third time in five years, thousands of families are going to find out what uninsured actually means.

And here’s the part that makes all of this even more serious. We’re heading straight into what climate scientists call “Danger Season.” That’s the stretch from May through October when extreme weather ramps up across the country.

It happens every year, and it’s getting worse due to climate change. South Texas sits right in the middle of it.

The insurance crisis in the Rio Grande Valley is not some distant, hypothetical risk. The conditions are already there. And we already know what happens when they hit communities where nearly half the homes aren’t insured. It’s a “when” scenario, and the system is failing in a way that’s completely predictable, completely preventable, and completely ignored by the people who are supposed to be paying attention.

Monica De La Cruz serves as Vice Chair of the House Housing and Insurance Subcommittee.

That role is supposed to be oversight and accountability. It’s where lawmakers are supposed to haul in industry executives, ask hard questions, dig into why premiums are rising, why claims are being denied, why coverage is disappearing, and what needs to change. It’s where the public is supposed to get answers.

But while her own constituents are dealing with the worst home insurance crisis in the country, the oversight has been minimal, the accountability nonexistent, and the transparency nowhere to be found.

Over the course of three years, the subcommittee she helps lead held just two hearings on the home insurance crisis. Two total. And in those hearings, not a single insurance company CEO was called in to answer for rising premiums, denied claims, or shrinking coverage.

Then there’s the policy side. She’s backed legislation that makes it harder for homeowners to challenge wrongful claim denials, raising the barrier for people who are already struggling to get what they’re owed. She’s also supported efforts to block federal regulators from collecting data on how climate-driven disasters are affecting insurance costs.

And she voted for cuts to FEMA’s budget and supported funding decisions that left the agency stretched thin heading into storm season. Fewer resources for recovery and weaker preparedness when the next disaster hits. The crisis is growing, and the response from someone in a position to do something about it has been actively making it harder for people to protect themselves.

And then there’s the money, because there’s always money.

Monica De La Cruz has taken nearly $50,000 from the property insurance industry. And yes, this is technically legal. It’s standard practice in Washington. But that’s exactly the problem. When the system is built so that the people writing the rules are funded by the industries they regulate, you don’t need a backroom deal to understand how things end up tilted.

It gets even more glaring when you remember that De La Cruz is a former insurance agent, now sitting in a position of power over insurance policy at the federal level. You’ve got a lawmaker with industry ties, in an oversight role, taking industry money, while advancing policies that benefit that industry and failing to meaningfully challenge it.

It looks like the system is working exactly as designed. When nearly half of your constituents can’t afford insurance, and the person in charge of oversight is financially and politically aligned with the industry driving that crisis, what else are you supposed to call it?

And the people paying the price for all of this are the families in places like the Rio Grande Valley.

In lower-income communities, this is the difference between stability and starting over from nothing. Homeownership is supposed to be how people build wealth, how families pass something down to the next generation. But that only works if the home is actually protected.

And even for the families who are still holding onto coverage, it’s not much better. People are forced to carry policies they can barely afford, cutting back on everything else just to avoid defaulting on their mortgage. Others are dropping coverage entirely because the math just doesn’t work anymore. And maybe the most telling piece of all is this is that people are afraid to even file claims. They’re worried their premiums will spike, or their coverage will get dropped.

And to be clear, this isn’t just about Monica De La Cruz. Republican governance in Texas has spent years aligning itself with corporate interests first and working backward from there, and the results are showing up everywhere you look. Deregulate the industry. Remove guardrails. Cut oversight. Then turn around and offer subsidies, tax breaks, and incentives to attract more business, all while telling residents there’s no money for the basics, like public schools or a working electric grid.

You can see it in the way the state is run and in the way it’s sold. Greg Abbott is out here pitching Texas as a low-tax, low-regulation paradise for global investors. Meanwhile, the people already living here are dealing with rising costs, shrinking protections, and systems that don’t work unless you’ve got money to absorb the risk.

That’s the model. Make it easy for corporations to profit, and let everyone else suffer. Monica De La Cruz isn’t one bad actor. It’s the entire Republican governing philosophy. And it’s working exactly the way it was designed to.

In 2026, this is exactly what’s on the ballot.

Are we going to keep sending people to office who treat oversight like a suggestion while siding with the industries driving the crisis? Or are voters going to demand basic accountability, transparency, and a government that at least tries to protect the people footing the bill?

This is what voters are choosing between. A system that keeps rewarding the same behavior, or one that finally starts pushing back on it. And if nearly half of a region can’t afford to insure their homes, if families are one storm away from losing everything they’ve ever worked for, if the people in charge are still operating as if none of that matters, then accountability is long overdue.

It’s Tuesday. Another corruption story. It’s all right there, out in the open, operating exactly the way it’s supposed to. A system where the people in charge of oversight take money from the industry they oversee, where crises grow while accountability disappears, where families are left to absorb the risk while corporations collect the profit. This is what the system looks like when it’s working exactly as designed.

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• April 20, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 20, 2026: First day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 27, 2026: Last day to register to vote (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• April 28, 2026: Last day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Election day! (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 15, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 18, 2026: First day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 22, 2026: Last day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

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• May 26, 2026: Election day! (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• Who Will Be On The 2026 State Ballot?

• Who Will Be On The 2026 Federal Ballot?

• Click here to find out what Legislative districts you’re in.

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This series is called Meet The Candidates. Over the next seven months, I’ll spotlight a handful of Democratic races each month, mainly in the Legislature and in Congress. These aren’t endorsements. They’re introductions, a way to understand who’s running, the districts they hope to represent, and what’s at stake for people across Texas.

Who is Roxanne Lathan?

Roxanne Lathan is a longtime East Texan, born in Houston, raised in the region she now wants to represent, who built her life around family, faith, and public education. After marrying a Texas state trooper in the late ’80s, she spent decades raising her daughters before stepping into the classroom in 2004, eventually retiring as an elementary school principal.

Lathan is running on lived experience. Schools that lack sufficient resources. Families stretched thin trying to cover groceries, healthcare, and housing. Communities that keep getting told to wait their turn while the Legislature finds money for everything else.

Her campaign leans into that frustration. Lathan frames herself as someone who’s finally in a position to give back, and she’s zeroing in on bread-and-butter issues, like wages, jobs, education, and cost of living.

The district.

This district is so far in East Texas, it kisses Louisiana. On paper, HD11 is not one of those districts Democrats circle first when they’re building a flip map. This is still a deep-red East Texas seat.

In the 2024 presidential results, Trump took 77.8% here, to Harris’s 21.5%, and Cruz took 76.2%, to Allred’s 22.3%. That is a structurally Republican district.

And yet, there are still a few things worth understanding about it.

Nacogdoches is the population anchor, but the district also includes a mix of older rural communities, working-class families, retirees, and a sizable Black and Hispanic population spread across multiple counties. The district is about 63.2% Anglo overall, with a combined Black and Hispanic population of 33.2%. Nacogdoches, Rusk, and Shelby are the places where the nonwhite share is notably higher and where any Democratic path would have to start.

Economically, this is the kind of district Democrats should be able to talk to better than they usually do. Poverty is high at 18.5%, well above the state rate. Per capita income trails the state significantly. A large share of households are under $50,000 a year. The district has many people working in education, health care, retail, manufacturing, and other sectors that are directly affected by wage stagnation, school underfunding, hospital strain, and rural disinvestment. That is fertile ground for a real economic populist message.

So the ins and outs of HD11 are basically culturally conservative, heavily Republican, but not necessarily ideologically unreachable on economics. It is older than the state overall, more working class than the state overall, more rural, and more economically stressed. The problem for Democrats is not that there is no pain here. The problem is that Republicans have long owned the district's identity layer.

That means flipping it in a wave year would require more than just “better turnout.”

First, Democrats would need to run up the margins in Nacogdoches and cut the GOP advantage in places like Rusk and Shelby. In a district this red, shaving margins matters almost as much as expanding your base.

Second, the campaign would have to be relentlessly local and relentlessly economic. Cost of living. hospital access. school funding. water. wages. jobs. small-town survival. Not a generic state party script. Not a cable-news Democrat script. A district like this has to hear, over and over, that the people in power have had years to improve daily life and have not done it.

Third, a wave election would have to be real enough to scramble the usual partisan gravity. In a normal year, HD11 is not flippable. In a strong Democratic wave, it could become more competitive than people expect only if there is major anti-Republican energy, a turnout surge among Black voters and younger voters, meaningful persuasion among economically frustrated white voters, and a candidate who feels rooted in the district rather than imported into it.

That is the case for Roxanne Lathan. She reads like a community candidate. Teacher. principal. Grandmother. East Texas. Kitchen-table message. That profile makes more sense for HD11 than a nationalized Democrat ever would.

Still, to be blunt, this is an uphill climb. A wave could narrow it. A strong candidate could overperform. Democrats could make Republicans spend money here that they did not want to spend. All of that matters. But “flip” and “truly in play” are not the same thing. HD11 is the kind of seat where a good Democrat in a wave year can test whether East Texas populism has any room left to grow. If the margin tightens meaningfully, that tells us something important even if the district does not fall this cycle.

The incumbent.

Joanne Shofner’s race in 2024 was one of the many races across Texas that I found in paticularly amuzing. The long-time incumbent before her, Travis Clardy (R), refused to vote for school vouchers as they would hurt his district. But then came in Greg Abbott with $450,000 and Texas Lawsuit Reform with $725,000 to buy that race and make sure they had another vote for vouchers. Yes, she voted for vouchers. It wound up being a $1.3 million House race.

Poor Schofner. I’m not sure if she still smokes, but when she speaks, she has one of those gristly voices that you can tell she was a heavy smoker for probably many decades.

Schofner is a far-right extremist who spent her first session in office voting against the interests of her district. She has voted to harm public schools, cut rural health, and target the civil liberties of her neighbors. Another rank-and-file Republican.

In Roxanne Lathan’s own words.

Below are some questions I asked Lathan, based on previous reader polls, along with her answers.

Q: Do you support a statewide minimum wage increase to at least $15/hour?

Yes, I support raising the statewide minimum wage to at least $15 per hour. No one working full-time should struggle to afford basic necessities like housing, food, healthcare, and transportation. The current minimum wage has not kept pace with the rising cost of living, especially in communities across Texas where working families are feeling the strain of inflation and stagnant wages. Raising the minimum wage is a practical step toward restoring dignity to work and ensuring that hard work is fairly compensated. Even in states led by conservatives, leaders have recognized the need to act. Voters in Florida approved a pathway to a $15 minimum wage under their Alligator Alcatraz governor. If Florida can take that step, then Texas—now the eighth-largest economy in the world—has both the capacity and the responsibility to do the same. This is about fairness, economic strength, and ensuring Texas works for everyone—not just those at the top.

Q: Should Texas end tax subsidies and abatements for large corporations?

Yes, I believe Texas should end excessive tax subsidies and abatements for large corporations. While strategic, limited incentives can sometimes play a role in economic development, too often these subsidies shift the tax burden onto working families and small businesses while large, profitable corporations receive generous breaks. That is not a level playing field, and it undermines public trust when everyday Texans are asked to do more while corporations do less. Texas is one of the largest economies in the world, and we should be investing our resources in priorities that benefit everyone—strong public schools, infrastructure, healthcare access, and support for small businesses that are the backbone of our communities. When corporations benefit from our workforce, roads, and public services, they should contribute their fair share. Ending unnecessary subsidies is about accountability, fairness, and making sure taxpayer dollars are used to strengthen communities—not pad corporate profits.

Q: Do you oppose school vouchers and efforts to privatize public education?

Yes, I oppose school vouchers and efforts to privatize public education. Public schools are the foundation of our communities, especially in rural and small-town Texas, where they often serve as the heart of the community. Being a retired principal in public education, I am against the voucher scam. Voucher programs divert critical public funding away from neighborhood schools and send it to private institutions that are not held to the same standards of accountability, transparency, or accessibility. That weakens the very system that the vast majority of Texas children rely on. Instead of siphoning resources away, we should be fully funding public education—investing in teachers, improving facilities, expanding career and technical programs, and ensuring every student has access to a high-quality education regardless of where they live. Strong public schools create opportunity, support local economies, and prepare the next generation for success. Protecting and strengthening public education is essential to the future of Texas.

Q: Should Texas guarantee free school meals to all K–12 students, regardless of income?

Yes, I support guaranteeing free school meals to all K–12 students in Texas, regardless of income. No child should have to worry about where their next meal is coming from while trying to learn. Hunger directly impacts a student’s ability to focus, perform academically, and fully participate in school. Providing universal free meals ensures that every child starts the day ready to learn, without stigma or barriers tied to family income. This is also a smart investment in our future. When students are well-nourished, attendance improves, behavior stabilizes, and academic outcomes rise. Universal school meals reduce administrative burdens for schools, support working families, and strengthen communities. In a state as large and economically powerful as Texas, we have the resources to make sure every child is fed, supported, and set up for success.

Q: Do you support automatic voter registration and same-day registration in Texas?

Yes, I strongly support automatic voter registration and same-day registration in Texas. Voting is a fundamental right, and our system should make it easier—not harder—for eligible citizens to participate. Automatic registration helps ensure that more Texans are included in the democratic process, while same-day registration provides flexibility for people who may miss deadlines due to work, family responsibilities, or other barriers. Expanding access to voter registration strengthens our democracy by increasing participation and making sure every voice can be heard. When more people are engaged, our government becomes more representative and accountable. Texas should be leading the way in protecting and expanding voting rights, not putting up obstacles to them.

Bonus Question: Who are your political role models, living or dead?

My greatest political role model is my father, the late Rev. Eligha Walker, Jr. In the early 1990s, he served as president of the local NAACP and led a courageous effort to remove the Confederate flag from police uniforms and patrol car decals in Nacogdoches. It was a deeply difficult and divisive time—there were Ku Klux Klan marches in support of keeping the flag, and even local leadership initially refused to make a change. But my father never backed down. He stood firm in his convictions, spoke out against injustice, and remained committed to doing what was right, even when it was unpopular and came with personal risk. Because of that persistence and moral clarity, the city council ultimately voted to remove the Confederate flag. They recognized that continuing to display it was harmful—not only to the community’s values, but also to Nacogdoches’ future, including its tourism and the reputation of Stephen F. Austin State University. My father taught me that leadership means standing up for dignity, fairness, and truth—no matter the opposition. His example continues to guide me, and it is the standard I strive to live up to in public service.

If Democrats are serious about building a durable majority in Texas, it has to include places like this.

Places where people are working just as hard, struggling just as much, and getting just as little out of the people who have represented them for decades.

Roxanne Lathan is running the kind of campaign that tests whether Democrats still know how to talk to working-class voters outside the metro bubble. Schools. wages. healthcare. Food on the table.

Will that be enough to flip HD11 this November? It’s a tall order.

But if she can cut into the margin, force Republicans to defend a seat they take for granted, and prove that this message can land in East Texas, that matters. A lot more than people think.

Because every seat like this that gets closer is one step toward a map where Republicans can’t just write off half the state, and where Democrats don’t either.

And if there is a wave coming, the first sign won’t be in the places we expect.

It’ll be in districts like this.

You can find out more about Roxanne Lathan on her website, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.

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On Thursday, the Texas House Committee on State Affairs met for an interim hearing on our power grid and data centers. The hearing lasted about five hours, and of course, I watched it so you don’t have to. And my biggest takeaway is that Republicans, who are terrible at governance and even worse with money, have spent years ignoring long-term planning and are now trying to figure out, in real time, how to keep the lights on without sticking Texans with the bill.

Honestly, I don’t see how they can pull it off.

You may have seen the Texas Tribune’s recent article about how our government is giving data centers more than $1 billion in tax breaks each year.

• Even though 22.5% of the children living in our state are impacted by hunger, and only last year Abbott vetoed a summer lunch program for low-income children because the cost was $60 million.

But that’s not even the most infuriating revelation about data centers this week.

The speaker in this clip is Pablo Vegas, President and CEO of ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas).

It’s a bunch of jargon, and he sounds really calm and collected while he’s talking about it, but what he’s saying is that Texas has WAY more companies asking for electricity than the grid can realistically handle, and almost all of them are data centers. The main points about load forecasting you need to know:

• Companies are asking for about 4–5 TIMES as much electricity as Texas currently uses at its peak. Specifically, they need 410,000 megawatts.

• 87% of that demand is coming from data centers.

• The entire Texas grid at peak usage is roughly 85,0000.

Yes, this one single industry is flooding our electric grid. Which may be ironic considering they’re also sucking our water dry.

Another thing that Vegas said was that many of the projects weren’t real, or wouldn’t even happen at all. Companies are asking for the power in advance to get in line, essentially, and some of the requests could be speculative. ERCOT is in massive planning phases right now because they have no way to serve everyone.

Queue chaos.

These data centers are causing issues within ERCOT, which is messing with their “queue.” The way they currently do it is that each project is approved individually, with a proposed large electricity user asking to connect to the grid at a specific location and time. ERCOT studies whether that project can connect safely and reliably in that area. If ERCOT says yes, the company gets a green light to build.

But these data centers are popping up left and right, and they are being built much faster than other large electricity users. Now, ERCOT is being bombarded with dozens and dozens of projects every month.

What that has caused for ERCOT is a situation like this:

• Project A gets studied and approved.

• Then Project B and Project C show up right next to it.

• What looked workable for Project A alone may not work once B and C are added. So ERCOT has to go back and restudy.

So, ERCOT is telling these companies, “Yes, looks good,” then halfway through building, the answer turned into “Actually, hold on, the situation changed.”

And according to ERCOT, this is creating delays, uncertainty, and a bad environment for companies investing billions in projects.

Spoiler: ERCOT’s true purpose is to create profit, not generate electricity. Interfering with profit could upset the billionaire overlords, whether we have power or not.

Vegas did talk about changing how they do “load forecasting” to fix that. Instead of reviewing them one by one, ERCOT wants to take a large group of projects at once and study them together. Then it can say, “This site can get this much power in 2027, this much in 2028, this much in 2029, and so on. But that would create other risks. Mainly, they will have to build the transmission at the same time the companies are building their locations, and that’s kind of like building a plane while you’re flying it.

Money, money, money.

There are multiple financial aspects of what’s happening here. Before we get into that, I wanted to point to this article published this week from Axiom, which mapped America’s highest electricity bills.

I recently said on social media that I frequently have $400 electric bills. Many people’s ghasts were flabbered. In Tarrant County, the average electricity bill is $225. I happen to have an older house and a bigger family, so it tracks.

• The highest average is in Terrell County at $252 per month.

• The lowest average is El Paso County at $92 per month.

  • El Paso County isn’t connected to ERCOT.

Texas runs on what they call a “4 Coincident Peak” (4CP) model, which means ERCOT determines how much electricity each big customer is using during four peak times. Then, their share of usage would equal their bill.

This is a problem for data centers, since they use massive, constant power 24/7. They might not spike specifically during those 4 peak moments. In turn, data centers will avoid paying their true share, even though they require huge new infrastructure. If that happens, you can expect electric bills across Texas (where they are connected to ERCOT) to skyrocket.

Either the Legislature changes the way these formulas work, or it lets massive data centers underpay for the grid they’re forcing Texas to build.

Then there is the $15-$30 million deposit that ERCOT wants to request. They want data center companies to put this money UP FRONT to secure access to power.

ERCOT’s CEO believes that, because everyone is rushing in their “queue,” asking for this money up front will filter out speculative projects vs. real ones.

Then where does that money go? Presumably into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy ruling class, but the actual answer wasn’t totally clear. It would be basically a mostly non-refundable deposit to reserve a spot. And they want to ask companies for this deposit without even knowing if they’ll get power, how much they’ll get, or when they’ll get it. This sets the stage for a possible high rate of refunds. Maybe it’s a good option if it cuts back on/eliminates/chases away data centers in Texas.

It boils down to this, if ERCOT doesn’t charge enough, then taxpayers/ratepayers get screwed. If they charge too much, companies leave Texas or stall projects.

And what happens in an emergency?

After what happened in Winter Storm Uri, we know one bad storm can cipple our state. They’re continuing to happen. Wildfires in the panhandle. Derechos in Houston. Every time the wind blows sideways.

If we let all these data centers plug in, are regular people going to get screwed when things go bad?

This came up in the hearing. ERCOT assured that residential customers will be prioritized and that, in an emergency, data centers must stop drawing power from the grid or switch to their own generators. Which sounds fine in practice, but will it actually work in an emergency?

Most people think Texas’ electric grid is a fixed size, but it’s more complicated than that. Our grid is fluid and unpredictable. Whether it’s working as intended depends on the weather, whether plants are running or offline, and whether the power we have can reach where it’s needed when it’s needed.

ERCOT stated that they might be able to handle ~140–150 GW by ~2031. And that only works if transmission gets built and the new generation actually comes online. That 150 GW number is a best-case scenario, and Texas Republicans are betting its future on infrastructure that doesn’t exist yet.

Another point raised during the hearing was that Representative Ken King (R) asked about Virginia, the data center capital of the US. Virginia already has hundreds of data centers, but it can handle them because it has built its electric infrastructure over decades. Texas, however, is in rapid growth mode. Yet, companies want to come here because we have more land, fewer regulatory hurdles, and room to expand. We don’t have the infrastructure for it.

Then, there’s the water.

The answer we got about the water was basically, “We don’t actually know enough yet.”

The PUC is surveying data centers to understand their water use and report it back to the Legislature and the Texas Water Development Board. He said the survey asks not only about water use at the data center itself, but also about total water use if the company is bringing its own generation, meaning the whole facility ecosystem.

But the problem is that the survey is voluntary. If they do not get the information they need, they will have to find another way to obtain it. Texas opened the door to a giant wave of data centers before it had a firm handle on their water footprint.

One later industry witness argued that data centers are often misunderstood on this issue, saying water “withdrawal” is not the same as water “consumption,” emphasized newer cooling technologies, recycled wastewater, direct-to-chip cooling, immersion cooling, and seasonal or ambient-air strategies, and argued that water numbers are often presented without enough context.

But, as you know, the cigarette industry once said they were safe. So we shouldn’t trust the words of industry witnesses. The Legislature needs to do its own study.

Texas didn’t plan for this.

And now, instead of slowing down and doing it right, Republicans are trying to retrofit an entire system around a boom that’s already happening, hoping they can keep the economy humming, keep billionaires happy, and keep voters from noticing the cracks.

Either data centers pay what it actually costs to build the infrastructure they need, or Texans do. Either the grid holds under pressure, or it doesn’t. Either we have enough water to support this kind of growth, or we find out the hard way that we don’t.

And right now, the people in charge don’t have clear answers to any of those questions.

What they do have is a best-case scenario, a bunch of assumptions, and a timeline that depends on everything going exactly right. Transmission gets built on time. Power plants come online. Companies follow the rules in a crisis. The market behaves. The weather cooperates.

That’s a gamble.

And it’s not the tech barons or the corporate power players who will feel it first if that gamble fails. It’s the rest of us.

Texas wants to be the center of the AI boom. Fine.

But if we’re going to build the future here, we should probably make sure we can keep the lights on first.

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HD97 is one of the few real pickup opportunities Democrats have in Texas this year. The kind of district that, if Democrats are serious about flipping the Texas House, actually has to be on the board in November.

On paper, it leans Republican. In 2024, Trump carried it with 54.6%. Cruz hit 51.7%. The Republican state rep won it with 58.1%. But look a little closer, and the margins start to tell a different story. Harris still pulled 44.1% here. Allred hit 46%. This is not a district where Democrats are getting buried.

That’s the difference between deep red and competitive. It’s a suburban Tarrant County seat, and it behaves like one. Educated. Middle to upper-middle income. Nearly 44% non-Anglo, with growing Hispanic, Black, and Asian communities. Over 40% of residents hold a bachelor’s degree or higher. Poverty sits below the state average. This is exactly the kind of place where elections move.

And when districts move, they flip when the conditions line up. A favorable environment. A candidate who fits the district. A campaign that understands turnout and persuasion, not just one or the other.

Which is why this runoff matters more than most.

Who are the candidates?

Beth Llewellyn McLaughlin comes into this runoff with a long background in public education. She spent more than three decades as a teacher in Fort Worth, the bulk of that time at Southwest High School. Her campaign is focused on fully funding public schools, opposing vouchers, and strengthening local control over education. She also centers healthcare access, reproductive freedom, and broader economic priorities like affordable housing and wages, framing them as issues of basic stability for working families. Her messaging leans into lived experience and ties that into a broader argument about public investment and accountability in state government.

Diane Symons, by contrast, is running on a more unconventional and less traditionally Democratic platform. Her campaign emphasizes economic development, particularly in smaller communities, with a signature proposal to legalize casino gaming to generate revenue, jobs, and funding for schools and infrastructure. She also focuses on property tax relief, especially for seniors, disabled residents, and educators, including a proposal to eliminate property taxes for certain groups. Her messaging leans heavily on economic strain, fixed-income challenges, and the need for structural relief.

The incumbent.

John McQueeney is the Republican incumbent in HD97, and he is exactly the kind of Republican this district does not need more of. He represents a suburban Tarrant County seat, but his politics are straight out of the Greg Abbott culture-war assembly line.

On his own campaign website, McQueeney pitched himself as a conservative Republican focused on border security, property tax cuts, and passing “school choice.”

And that matters, because those priorities do not fit this district. McQueeney publicly backed school vouchers during his campaign, and in the Legislature, he attached himself to some of the session’s ugliest right-wing projects. He was a sponsor of SB17, the foreign land ownership bill, and as a joint author on HB2391, a bill imposing civil liability on anyone who “causes or contributes to the social transitioning of a minor.”

So when Democrats talk about flipping HD97, this is the bigger point. It is not just about swapping one name for another. It is about whether this district wants to keep sending a Republican to Austin whose political instincts line up with Abbott, voucher politics, and the state’s endless obsession with policing other people’s private parts.

So, what happened in the primary?

The first round of this race didn’t settle anything. Diane Simons finished first with 41.5%. Beth Llewellyn McLaughlin followed with 30.3%. Ryan Ray came in close behind at 28.1%.

And that’s the story.

It’s also important to understand that runoffs are not a continuation of the primary. They’re a reset. The question shifts from who had the strongest base to who can build the broadest coalition. What matters now is where the rest of the vote goes, and who can bring it together.

That’s the race we’re in now.

Why this runoff matters.

Because this is the moment where coalitions either form or fall apart.

The question now is who can consolidate the rest of the field. Who can bring together voters who were looking for something different the first time around? Who can win this district in November?

Because that’s how Texas flips. It happens in places like this. Suburban districts. Educated districts. Districts where margins are already within reach.

And when those opportunities come around, they flip when Democrats put forward candidates who can run disciplined campaigns, speak to the district they’re in, and execute both sides of the equation. Turnout and persuasion.

That’s what this runoff is about.

Why I’m backing Llewellyn-McLaughlin in the runoff.

In the primary, I supported Diane Symons. Since then, I’ve had the chance to spend more time engaging with this race, including seeing both candidates in different settings in Tarrant County and hearing more directly from voters in the district.

And with that fuller picture, I’m making a different call in the runoff. That’s why, for this runoff, Lone Star Left is endorsing Beth Llewellyn-McLaughlin.

You can find out more about Beth Llewellyn-McLaughlin on her website and Facebook.

HD97 is winnable. That’s the bottom line.

But winnable does not mean guaranteed. It means Democrats have a real shot, if they take it seriously and make the right choices when it counts.

This runoff is one of those choices.

Because in a district like this, everything matters. The candidate. The message. The campaign. The ability to connect with voters who are not already locked in. The discipline to stay focused on what actually wins in November.

And if Democrats meet it here, HD97 is exactly the kind of seat that can flip. This year.

That’s what’s on the table.

Now it’s just a matter of whether we take it.

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Yesterday, the Texas Public Policy’s annual forum kicked off. Honestly, you have to be a huge political nerd to watch this stuff, because not only is it hours of “boring” talks about policy, it’s coming from the far-right and far-right politicians, like ole’ Danny. But don’t worry, I watched it so you didn’t have to. Dan Patrick gave the keynote. And the one clear thing is he really believes he’s going to lose Texas.

Check it out (and bubbles):

Mr. Maryland gave one delicious speech (if you’re on the left), because if you’re on the right, you’re probably thinking, “wtf?”

Texas Republicans, standing at the top of a thirty-year Republican stronghold, should be confident, right? Texas is booming (lol), Conservatives are in power, and they got all their policy wishes. But when you listen to Lt. Governor Patrick’s speech, he didn’t sound very confident.

His speech was entertaining. One of the best ones yet. He came out on stage with props. Bubbles. He talked about all of the “good bubbles.” (Paraphrasing):

• Republicans passed laws to allow guns to be used to murder children in school.

• How he changed the rules for Republicans to strongarm Democrats.

• Their tax funnel to the wealthy under the guise of “school choice.”

• Letting women die of sepsis and ectopic pregnancies in emergency rooms.

• He bragged about codifying bigotry against transgender individuals into law.

“Good” is subjective. Those were Dan Patrick’s “good bubbles.” But he was building toward something else. Popping the bubbles! All good bubbles must be popped.

When he finally said it, it was like music. Like birds tweeting from up above. He said:

“There is a path for Democrats to win.”

Damn straight, there is. Of course, there are a few people in Texas who will tell you THIS is the year, but Lone Star Left has been saying that 2026 will finally be the year we turn blue. And ole’ Danny must be an avid reader, because he seems to agree.

He warned the crowd of wealthy, plugged-in, far-right folks that everything they built, all of their “good bubbles,” was in danger of being popped by those pesky Dems.

And by far, that was the best part of the speech. Mr. Maryland, shaking in his $500 cowboy boots, talked about Taylor Rehmet’s win, talked about a Talarico future, how Democrats are mad, and how we’re going to take the Texas House in November, maybe even the Senate, and by golly, even Lt. Dan isn’t safe.

And we’re going to do all of that.

That was the best part of his speech, but there was so much more.

Republicans’ favorite talking points: property taxes.

Every year since Dan Patrick became Lieutenant Governor, and certainly since Greg Abbott became Governor, property taxes in Texas have gone up. Did you know that Texas has the 7th highest property tax rate in America?

Yes, absolutely. Texas, being a “low tax” state, only applies to billionaires and corporations.

Before the GOP spies reading this get their panties all twisted up about “tax burden,” Texas also has the ninth-highest tax burden in America. That’s all the taxes overall, and what the actual tax burden is on working people. Republicans like to say that “Texas has a low tax burden,” when you bring up the astronomical property tax rates. But we don’t. We have high property taxes and a high tax burden.

Patrick went on about how he ran for Lt. Governor in 2017 with the campaign promise to lower taxes, and the only reason they’ve gone up every single year he’s been in office is, “everyone else’s fault.”

He said flat out, “He cannot eliminate all property taxes.” Not without blowing up the entire tax structure.

Instead of eliminating property taxes, he proposes raising the homestead exemption high enough that some homeowners wouldn’t pay school property taxes on a portion of their home value.

That’s his plan.

It’s all bullshit. Even Dan Patrick’s own plan is only about reducing school taxes on homesteads, not ending property taxes altogether. Texans would still pay other local property taxes, and the state would still be shoveling billions into a tax system every biennial that isn’t actually fixed.

Plus, it doesn’t stop appraisal growth, and it sure as hell doesn’t solve affordability.

The real message.

Republicans are afraid. Dan Patrick is afraid. His speech didn’t just cover how Democrats were going to whoop their butts in November, he also talked about why. He called out the John Cornyn vs Ken Paxton dynamic directly, warning that if even 10–15% of voters on either side stay home, Republicans could lose the seat.

He said that in all his years, it was the first election in which the argument wasn’t about policy but about personalities. If you haven’t seen the Cornyn vs. Paxton commercial, they are glorious.

Cornyn: “Paxton is a crook who cheats on his wife.”
Paxton: “Cornyn has never done anything in all his years in office.”

Texas Republicans are fragile. The things that Patrick said, you don’t say if you’re feeling secure in your position. And while he never addressed it, the demographic change, suburban realignment, and the math is tightening around Republicans in Texas.

And that shift has been building for years.

A party that only wins if everyone falls in line is a party that knows it can’t afford slippage. He ended his message with “unity” for the right. All the boomers and Nazis must hug, make up, and vote for the other (R) after the runoff is over.

The Lt. Governor framed every conservative win as a “success story” for “their side.” But for too many Texans, those same policies are producing backlash.

• Texas leads the nation in active shooter incidents.

• We have the highest maternal mortality in the developed world.

• We’re going to spend another $10 billion on their voucher program in the next five years.

• Our state keeps setting records for hate crimes against LGBTQ+ individuals.

But he doesn’t say those things in his “good bubbles.”

For years, the Republican message has been about control.

But Dan Patrick warned his own side about turnout. He lectured his party about unity.
And he stood in a room full of allies, talking about how they could lose.

They can feel the pressure.

They can see the numbers tightening.

And they’re trying to hold it together before anyone else fully realizes it.

But they’re way too late for that. 😁

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• April 20, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 20, 2026: First day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

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• April 28, 2026: Last day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

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• May 15, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

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• May 22, 2026: Last day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

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There are so many elections happening across Texas, it’s hard to keep track of them all. There’s the US Senate election, the Governor election, the Lt. Governor election, the AG election, and so on… But I’m going to tell you a secret. Taking back Texas doesn’t start in Washington DC, or even in Austin. It starts in your own backyard.

At this very moment, Republicans are actively trying to control your city and your county. Because 30 years ago, they didn’t stop at statewide dominance. They simply pivoted downward.

All that empty land has them fooled.

Did you know that Texas was an urban state? Yes. Technically, Texas is the 15th most urban state in America, with approximately 83.7% of its population living in urban areas, according to 2020 Census data. Even further, Texas has the second-largest urban population in the US, at over 24.4 million, trailing only California.

That means that most of our population lives in cities.

My favorite map:

But when you look at our cities, they are more diverse, younger, more likely to be college-educated, and they concentrate where the people, jobs, and institutions are. Cities also cluster knowledge-economy jobs and large professional sectors, jobs at universities, hospitals, media, tech, nonprofits, government, and other service industries. Brookings Researchers have argued that these metro economies tend to produce different social and political coalitions than rural or exurban economies do.

Because of the nature of cities, they tend to produce politics built more around coexistence, public investment, labor protections, transit, housing, and civil rights (except Arlington). That means most cities are blue.

In Texas, we have two problems:

1. Not enough voters are making it to the polls to ensure they’re blue/stay blue.

2. Republicans in the state government.

Which cities? In which counties?

I scoured the internet, digging through research to find out whether there was prior research stating that after a city hits X population, it should be blue. It doesn’t exist. But let’s look at some of our biggest cities.

Did you know there are only 44 cities in Texas with a population over 100,000? And only four that have a population over 1,000,000? But that doesn’t guarantee that they’re blue.

Houston is Texas’ largest city, with an estimated 2.39 million residents. Yet Houston elected John Whitmire, a more centrist, law-and-order Democrat, in a low-turnout 2023 runoff. Official canvass results show the December 2023 runoff had a 17.0% turnout. Seventeen!

Dallas voted for Kamala Harris by roughly +22 points in 2024. But Dallas’ mayor, Eric Johnson, switched to the Republican Party in 2023. And he was reelected in 2023 with just 46,255 total votes cast in the mayoral race. That is a tiny share of a city this large, and it is a perfect example of how a very blue urban electorate can still end up with leadership to its right when municipal turnout collapses.

D Magazine separately noted that only about 6% of Dallas residents voted in the May 2024 bond election, underscoring how weak local turnout can be there. By the way, bonds raise taxes.

Fort Worth passed 1 million residents in 2024, making it one of the nation’s largest cities, yet Republican mayor Mattie Parker leads it. Official city election history shows Parker won reelection in 2025 with 26,565 votes, and all mayoral candidates together drew only about 39,886 votes.

Arlington is one of the best examples of a large, diverse city that progressives under-contest locally. The Census estimates Arlington’s population at 403,672 in 2024. In the 2023 mayor’s race, incumbent Jim Ross won reelection by only 646 votes, with 9,059 votes to 8,413. That means the mayor of one of Texas’ biggest cities was effectively decided by fewer than 18,000 votes total.

Plano’s Mayor John Muns is affiliated with the Republican Party. On top of that, the Texas GOP’s 2025 local endorsement page backed multiple Plano City Council candidates, which shows Republicans see Plano municipal government as active turf worth organizing around.

In Frisco, the Texas GOP endorsed Frisco City Council candidates Burt Thakur and Jared Elad in 2025, and its runoff endorsements also included races for the Frisco City Council.

You get the point. What’s most obvious here (besides the fact that I know way too much about the cities in North Texas) is that “nonpartisan” is one of the great scams of Texas local politics. The ballot may not print an R or a D, but the Republicans make no secret about their coalitions, endorsements, and donor networks. And the outcomes impact your everyday life more than any Senate race, any legislative race, or any other race in Texas.

What the hell does a city government do, anyway?

Your city government decides what your life looks like when you walk out your front door.

It decides whether the road you take to work floods every time it rains, or drains like it’s supposed to. Whether the pothole on your street gets fixed this month or sits there for a year. Whether your water is clean or your pipes hold.

It decides what kind of police force your city has. How much of your tax dollars go into policing, who gets hired, how they’re trained, how they respond, and what happens when they don’t.

It decides whether your rent keeps climbing or whether your city actually tries to build housing people can afford. Whether developers can do whatever they want, or whether there are guardrails. Whether tenants have any protections at all, or none.

It decides how your city grows. Roads, sidewalks, public transit, drainage systems, and flood control. In some Texas cities, the lack of flood controls costs people their lives.

It decides whether clinics are funded. Whether there’s a real response when something goes wrong. We all just lived through COVID. You saw exactly what happened when local governments tried to act, and the state tried to override them.

It decides which corporations get tax breaks. Which small businesses get support. Where jobs are created and who gets left out. And who gets to build a chemical plant in your backyard.

And then there are elections.

Your city decides how many polling places there are. Whether early voting is accessible or a hassle. Whether elections run smoothly or turn into chaos. Who staffs them. How easy it is for your neighbors to participate.

Yet, every year we watch city election results trickle in. 15%. 10%. 7%. Your everyday life. The people who sit in your City Hall control much more of your day-to-day life than any “presidential tweet,” any Senate filibuster, and any corporate payoff Abbott has taken that day.

And that’s exactly why it matters who is sitting in those seats.

While you’re going about your day, the state is actively working to strip those same city governments of the power to act on your behalf.

Once Republicans locked down the state, they moved down the ladder, tightening control over the places they couldn’t win outright. They did this by limiting what blue cities are even allowed to do.

Take HB 2127, the “Death Star” bill. That law was designed to stop cities and counties from passing rules that go beyond state law across huge areas of everyday life. Labor protections. Environmental rules. Business regulations. Entire categories of local governance are wiped clean if they don’t align with the state.

Cities like Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio tried to pass paid sick leave so people wouldn’t have to choose between a paycheck and their health. Struck down.

Austin tried to deal with plastic waste through a bag ban. Overruled.

Denton tried to ban fracking. Blocked.

Again and again, local governments tried to respond to the real conditions people were living in, and again and again, the state stepped in and said no.

And look at Houston. The state took over its school district. Removed locally elected leadership. Installed its own. Now, they’re doing the same to South San Antonio and Fort Worth, all while cranking up the school-to-prison pipeline.

They’ve built out local committees to recruit and back candidates for school boards, city councils, and other “nonpartisan” offices. They’re contesting races that used to fly under the radar. They’re showing up where turnout is lowest and influence is easiest to grab.

School boards. City councils. Election offices.

They understand something that too many people still don’t.

You don’t have to win everything. You just have to control enough of the system.

And if the state is going to keep pushing down, then the people sitting at the city and county level cannot be passive. They have to be fighters.

Because right now, local government is the front line.

It is the last layer of government between you and a state that has made it very clear it is willing to override, remove, or dismantle anything that gets in its way.

Republicans already took the top. Now they’re coming for everything underneath it.

Your city. Your child’s school. Your polling place.

And the only reason they’ve gotten this far is that too many people still think those elections don’t matter.

But in Texas, they might matter the most.

Because this is where it all comes together. In the elections that barely crack double digits in turnout. In the races decided by a few thousand votes. In the seats that shape your daily life.

That’s the gap they’ve been exploiting.

I’m putting together a full list of recommendations. I’ve been working on it for the last two weeks, coordinating with local Democratic clubs and groups across the state.

Because if we’re going to take this seriously, we need to treat these elections like they matter. We need to know who’s running. We need to know what they stand for. And we need to show up.

So stay tuned. I’ll have the May 2026 local voting recommendation list ready before early voting starts. (Sorry, I’m not quicker, mail voters.)

All you have to do is one thing.

Vote.

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• April 2, 2026: Last day to register to vote (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

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• April 27, 2026: Last day to register to vote (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• April 28, 2026: Last day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Election day! (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 15, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

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• May 22, 2026: Last day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

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• Who Will Be On The 2026 State Ballot?

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I asked Jasmine Henderson who her political role models are, and this is how she answered, “Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer, Stacey Abrams, Kamala Harris, Cori Bush, and Jasmine Crockett are a few, but the list is long. Watching and reading about women willing to take a stand and stand where no one has before has always encouraged me to stand as well.”

It’s one thing to admire women who stood their ground.

It’s another to watch someone do it in real time.

The first time I saw men in tactical gear standing across from unarmed protesters in a small Texas town, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. Not at first.

This was a courthouse square in Gainesville, Texas, in 2020. Middle of the day. Summer heat sitting on everything. And across the street, lined up like they were waiting for something to start, were men in camo, and rifles slung across their chests.

On the other side were activists. Mostly local. Unarmed. Holding signs and trying to make a point about a Confederate monument sitting on taxpayer-funded land.

And somewhere in between all of that, the police. Standing around. Just… there.

This was a version of Texas I hadn’t seen before, but it had been there the whole time. And once you see it, you don’t unsee it.

That’s when I met Jasmine Henderson and two of her sisters.

They were out there in Gainesville, week after week. Her older sister was one of the lead organizers. And they were showing up in a town that was making it very clear they weren’t welcome to do what they were doing, standing their ground on that same courthouse lawn.

You know how there are some families you don’t have to wonder about? You see how they move, how they treat people, how they show up for their community, and you just know. The Henderson sisters were that. They cared about others and were pillars of that movement even when things got hard.

And things did get hard.

Armed groups started coming in from outside. Oath Keepers. Three Percenters. There were threats. Slurs were spray-painted on the road in front of their apartment. The kind of pressure meant to wear people down. To make them stop. They didn’t.

At the time, Jasmine was the younger sister. Watching, learning, and standing her ground alongside her family while all of that was happening around them.

And now, years later, she’s the one on the ballot.

To me, this matters more than any resume ever could. Because I’ve seen where she comes from. I’ve seen what she’s willing to stand through. I’ve seen what it costs to take a position in a place like that and not back down.

So when I see her now, running for office, talking about fixing rural healthcare, investing in communities, and making this state work for people again, I don’t hear a politician trying to say the right things.

I see someone who decided that standing on the outside wasn’t enough anymore.

And that, to me, is everything.

A reality check about HD68.

Yep, that’s its actual shape. Let’s be honest about what this is. Texas House District 68 is not a swing district. It’s not even close.

In 2024, Donald Trump took nearly 86% of the vote here, while Democrats barely reached 13%. That’s not a gap you close with a good speech or a strong ground game. That’s decades of political alignment, culture, and infrastructure baked into the soil.

This district stretches across a wide swath of rural North and Central Texas. Cooke, Montague, Young, Brown, Comanche, Eastland. Places where people drive long distances for work, where hospitals are closing or hanging on by a thread, where schools double as community centers, and where state politics often feels far away until it shows up in the form of cuts, closures, or mandates.

Demographically, it’s older, whiter, and more rural than the state as a whole. About 73% Anglo, with smaller Hispanic and Black populations spread across counties rather than concentrated in one place. That matters, not just politically, but in how campaigns are built, how messages travel, and who gets reached.

And structurally, Democrats haven’t just been losing here. They’ve been absent. No sustained investment. No long-term organizing. So no, this is not a district that flips overnight. It probably doesn’t flip in two cycles. Maybe not three.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

Because the only way districts like this ever change is if someone is willing to run when it’s hard. When the margin is brutal. When the outcome feels predetermined. Not because they think they’re guaranteed to win, but because they understand that margins move before maps do.

You don’t go from 13% to 51% in one election. You go from 13 to 20. Then 20 to 28. Then maybe, over time, you build something that didn’t exist before.

You build recognition. You build trust. You give people who have never had a Democrat to vote for a reason to start paying attention.

That’s the work. And most people won’t sign up for it. Jasmine Henderson did.

In Jasmine Henderson’s own words.

Below are some questions I asked Henderson, based on previous reader polls, along with her answers.

Q: Do you oppose school vouchers and efforts to privatize public education?

Yes, I oppose school vouchers and privatizing public education. Public education in many parts of our state goes beyond just educating. The schools are a place where students go for comfort, food security, and access to a safe environment. It is crucial we keep this space not only open for our students, but thriving.

Q: Should Texas guarantee free school meals to all K–12 students, regardless of income?

Yes. Absolutely. There is a large portion of our state that is not food secure. Children must have access to food and nutrition to learn and develop. We are doing a massive disservice to the children in this state by charging for school meals. A student's only focus should be on learning material and progressing to the next grade level, never on whether or not they can afford lunch.

Q: Should Texas end tax breaks and regulatory loopholes for oil and gas companies, including exemptions from emissions reporting and waste disposal standards?

Yes. Large oil and gas companies are already making a ton of money. While the job is a necessity, Texans are the ones who get harmed in this equation. This industry is hard on the land we live on, and it’s hard on the water we consume. I think taxes can always be higher for the rich, and transparent reporting and standards are a must.

Q: Do you support closing or downsizing state prisons and redirecting that funding to community-based alternatives like mental health care, housing, and youth programs?

Yes. My background is in advocacy and activism. We have known for a long time that Texas uses the prison system as a massive network of free labor with no regard for the people housed there. We hear nightmare story after nightmare story. A majority of Texans have been affected or know someone who has been affected by a state prison sentence. Funding community-based programs focusing on mental health, housing, and the youth will change lives. The programs will save lives and help Texans give back to our state through employment, education, and community.

Q: Do you support automatic voter registration and same-day registration in Texas?

Yes. Voting is a right many have fought and died for. There is no reason voting is as difficult as it is in Texas. It is crucial that we fight back against the voter suppression being applied by those in office currently.

Bonus Question: What does being a Democrat mean to you in 2026?

I believe in democracy. I believe it can work in this country. But it only works when it works for all of us. I have never labeled myself a democrat in the traditional sense; I think I lean too far to the left for that. But in a world where the opposite side of the aisle, Republican, has come to be synonymous with all the “-isms” as I call them. Racism, sexism, etc. I am a democrat because I believe everyone has the right to exist how they see fit, and this party has the ability and belief to protect that right. I am a democrat because it is of utmost importance that everyone in this country is fed, clothed, and housed. No questions asked.

Why Lone Star Left is endorsing Jasmine Henderson for HD68.

I think about the first answer she gave and women she named. The idea of standing where no one has before. And I think about Gainesville.

I think about that courthouse square. The men across the street. The pressure meant to make people stop. And the people who didn’t.

That’s where Jasmine Henderson comes from.

From showing up when it would have been easier not to. From standing in a place that didn’t want her there and deciding she wasn’t going anywhere anyway.

And now she’s running for office in one of the hardest districts in the state.

Not because it’s easy. Not because it’s winnable on paper. But because she believes it matters.

That matters to me.

Because if we’re serious about changing this state, it’s not just about the districts we can flip this year. It’s about the ones we’ve written off for decades. It’s about who is willing to step into those spaces and start the work anyway.

That’s how anything changes.

And more importantly, it’s the kind of race that reminds people what it means to stand for something. I’ve seen Jasmine Henderson do that before.

That’s why Lone Star Left is endorsing her for HD68.

You can learn more about Jasmine Henderson on her website or Facebook.

If you’re in this district, consider volunteering.

And if you have it, consider donating.

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• April 2, 2026: Last day to register to vote (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

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• April 20, 2026: First day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 27, 2026: Last day to register to vote (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• April 28, 2026: Last day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

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Today’s episode of Lone Star Left is going to be super inside baseball, but it covers some of the most important yet least understood power centers in Texas Democratic politics today. That’s right, I’m talking about the SDEC, or the State Democratic Executive Committee, which is the governing board of the Texas Democratic Party (TDP).

Why are we talking about the SDEC?

Applications to file for office as an SDEC member have officially opened and will remain open until June 22.

Who is the SDEC, and what do they do?

The SDEC are the people chosen through the party structure to handle business. Officially, the party says the SDEC carries on party activity across Texas and conducts party business in committees. That means governance, committee work, internal votes, rules fights, officer elections, oversight, and all the unglamorous choices that shape whether the party is open, responsive, stagnant, controlled, grassroots, or consultant-driven.

The official TDP structure also ties the SDEC to committees, public documents, and party officers, which suggests this is where much of the real organizational life happens.

These members meet quarterly in different locations across the state and at the state convention. They also take care of their own travel, hotel costs, gas, food, missed work, family juggling, and entire weekends handed over to party business. The party’s public-facing language emphasizes volunteering and involvement, so it’s a completely unpaid position.

It’s important to point out that this is a volunteer/unpaid position that requires quarterly travel, plus travel for the convention, all on the member’s own dime.

Why is it important to have progressives in the SDEC?

Texas is turning blue. Maybe this year, maybe 2028, maybe 2030, but eventually Texas will be blue. All the data points us there. Over the last few decades, while Texas Democrats have struggled on their own, battling fascists, the National Democrats mostly ignored us. But more importantly, the establishment ignored us.

As Texas inches closer toward blue, the vulture establishment is circling. Progressive SDEC members can push for a party that is more transparent, less insider-controlled, and more responsive to grassroots activists rather than just big donors, consultants, and whoever already knows how to work the machinery.

The Texas Democratic Party is already one of the most progressive Democratic Parties in America, and we want it to stay that way. The party does not drift left, right, or grassroots by accident. It gets pulled there by the people who show up, serve, organize, vote, and stay in the room for the tedious parts. If you want a state party that is serious about labor, reproductive freedom, public schools, democracy reform, rural investment, and year-round organizing, then you need people in these seats who actually believe in those things.

As someone who has had a moderate SDEC member and worked with them before, they seem softer in their demands, less transparent, and more willing to preserve existing power arrangements. That’s what happens when you have someone more interested in keeping the peace than pushing the party forward.

Yes, I will be making endorsements in the SDEC races this year.

Decisions the SDEC has been responsible for recently.

Decentralizing the Texas Democratic Party. This one was controversial, depending on who you ask. To my understanding, it wasn’t a clean majority, but honestly, right now, everyone should be happy with how Democrats have performed in Texas since, and that’s all that really matters.

They added ballot initiatives this year. I actually don’t think we talked about them since the election. Unsurprisingly, they all showed overwhelming support from Democratic voters.

In early 2025, the SDEC elected our new(ish) chair, Kendall Scudder.

And who can forget the time they threatened to censure Richard Raymond? Haha, good times. It was entirely within their power to do so, but they never did.

This was all in the last year, and there was plenty of other stuff that we didn’t hear about, that we didn’t know about, and they were responsible for in making sure the Texas Democratic Party was running and functioning.

Why should you consider running for the SDEC?

And when I say you, I don’t mean just anybody.

This is insider baseball. There are fewer than 100 of these seats in the entire state. They last two years. They require quarterly travel across Texas, plus convention travel, all on your own dime. No paycheck. No stipend. No glory.

It is long meetings. It is committee fights. It is reading documents most people will never see. It is navigating process, rules, personalities, and sometimes outright dysfunction. It is giving up weekends, time with your family, and, in some cases, income.

And if you do it well, most people will never know your name.

But the impact is real. Because this is where the party actually functions, decisions are shaped before they ever reach the broader base. This is where direction gets set when no one is paying attention.

So no, this is not for everyone. This is for people who are already plugged in. People who understand the stakes. People who are not afraid of doing unglamorous work in small rooms that have outsized consequences.

There are still moderates on the SDEC. There are more running this year. And they are not going to sit this out. They understand the process. They know how to win these seats.

So if progressives don’t step up, those seats don’t stay empty. They get filled.

It’s convention season. Which means this is one of the few moments where the internal direction of the Texas Democratic Party is actually up for grabs.

Which means it’s time to push the party left again.

The SDEC is where the work is.

If progressives want a Texas Democratic Party that fights, organizes, and actually delivers for working people, we cannot sit this out. These seats matter too much.

I’ll be making endorsements in June.

Because small rooms, small votes, and the people in them decide what kind of party we’re going to have.

File to become an SDEC member here.

You’ll have to be at the Convention on June 25-27 in Corpus Christi, don’t forget to RSVP.

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• April 2, 2026: Last day to register to vote (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 20, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 20, 2026: First day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• April 27, 2026: Last day to register to vote (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• April 28, 2026: Last day of early voting (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 2, 2026: Election day! (City elections/SD04 Special Election)

• May 15, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 18, 2026: First day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 22, 2026: Last day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 26, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 26, 2026: Election day! (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• Who Will Be On The 2026 State Ballot?

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One position that I’ve always really agreed with James Talarico on, even before he launched his Senate bid, was the need for universal early childhood education and childcare. If you don’t have children in childcare, or haven’t for many years, infant care (for ONE baby) can cost as much as $1,500 per month.

If you’re new here, hyperlinks lead to sources.

When you look at how families with children are increasingly living in poverty and stagnant wages, it’s no wonder that the birthrate in America is plummeting. America is no longer having enough children to replace itself. We’ve halted immigration. And now that Trump has ruined our standing on the world stage, it may be a decade or more before immigration levels return to normal. America is facing its first population decline in history.

Of course, this raises many other questions about our future.

• If fewer people are born, who will replace the workforce?

• What happens to Social Security and Medicare when fewer workers are supporting more retirees?

• Does a shrinking population slow economic growth, or force us to rethink what “growth” even means?

While Republicans’ answer to the plummeting birth rate has been to abolish abortion, many states continue to see declining birth rates. Nobody can afford to have children. About the abortion ban, in the very near future, we should expect Democrats to take control and for that not to be an issue anymore (fingers crossed).

If we want to move toward a society where people can afford to have children and participate fully in the workforce, then we need universal childcare, and we need to start treating it like the economic infrastructure it is.

It’s already happening in other parts of the country.

In New Mexico, lawmakers just made universal childcare permanent, guaranteeing access regardless of income and backing it with long-term public funding. They didn’t treat childcare like a temporary program or a budget afterthought. They treated it like roads, like schools, like something a functioning economy depends on.

In New York City, leaders are taking a phased approach, expanding free childcare for two- and three-year-olds and steadily building toward universal access. It’s not fully there yet, but the direction is clear. Build the system, expand capacity, and meet families where they are.

That’s the difference. Other places are asking how to make this work. Texas isn’t even asking whether it should exist at all.

It should exist.

High-quality early childhood education consistently leads to better long-term outcomes for kids.

A 2017 meta-analysis of 22 rigorous studies found that children who attend early education programs are less likely to be placed in special education, less likely to repeat a grade, and more likely to graduate from high school.

And it doesn’t stop there. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reviewed decades of research and reached the same conclusion. When early care and education is high quality, it is strongly linked to better educational outcomes, higher earnings, improved health, and greater long-term stability.

This is one of the most important points in the entire debate.

The benefits don’t always show up immediately in standardized test scores, which is often what critics latch onto. But they show up later, in graduating, finding stable work, staying healthy, and avoiding systems that are far more expensive for society in the long run.

In other words, early childhood education changes the trajectory of children's lives.

Universal childcare also helps parents stay attached to the workforce and earn more.

One recent study comes out of New Haven’s extended-day universal pre-K program. Researchers found that when a child enrolled, parents’ earnings rose by 21.7% during the pre-K years, or about $5,461 a year on average. Parents also worked 12.8 more hours per week in the following year, and the earnings gains persisted beyond the child’s initial enrollment period.

A separate 2025 NBER paper found that when universal pre-K was implemented, public pre-K enrollment rose by about 10% over five years; total pre-K enrollment increased by 6.6%; labor-force participation rose by 0.8%; and employment rose by 0.9%. The researchers also found reduced unemployment, suggesting that expanded childcare makes it easier for caregivers to find and accept jobs.

So when people talk about universal childcare as if it is just another social program, they are missing the bigger picture. It is a labor-market policy. It is a family economic policy. And it functions as a stimulus, because when parents can work, earn, and remain in the labor force, the whole economy benefits.

There is also a strong economic case for high-quality early childhood investment itself.

James Heckman and his coauthors found that the HighScope Perry Preschool program generated estimated annual social returns in the 7-10% range. Heckman’s broader birth-to-five framework has reported returns around 13% for high-quality early childhood investments, driven by long-term gains in education, health, earnings, and social outcomes.

RAND’s summaries of the evidence point in the same direction. Their reviews find that well-designed early childhood programs can increase later earnings and educational attainment while reducing crime, delinquency, special-education use, welfare reliance, and other downstream public costs.

In other words, this is not just spending. It is an investment, and one that pays society back over time.

One important caveat (and it actually strengthens the argument).

Universal childcare is not magic if it is poorly implemented.

The experience in Quebec is often cited as a warning. When the province rapidly expanded subsidized childcare, it increased maternal labor force participation. More parents were able to work. But some studies also found negative effects on children’s noncognitive outcomes and later-life behavior, largely tied to the speed of the rollout and uneven quality across providers.

The takeaway is not “don’t do universal childcare.” The takeaway is, don’t do it badly.

Because the goal is not cheap warehousing for children, the goal is high-quality care. Stable staffing. Well-paid workers. Enough capacity so families can actually access it without long waitlists or inconsistent care.

New Mexico’s model reflects that lesson. Instead of rushing a bare-bones expansion, the state tied universal childcare to ongoing funding, provider reimbursement systems, workforce development, and transparency measures. In other words, they are not just expanding access. They are building a system designed to sustain quality over time.

Because if you are going to do this, you have to do it right. That includes both quality and access for all communities, including rural.

But how do we pay for it?

Especially when we’re already struggling to fund public schools adequately, which is a whole separate article, but it’s also the wrong place to start this conversation.

Because we’re already paying for the absence of childcare.

We pay for it when parents (especially mothers) are forced out of the workforce or into lower-paying, more flexible jobs. We pay for it in lost productivity, in slower economic growth, and in businesses that can’t find or keep workers.

We pay for it when children enter school behind and need additional support. We pay for it in higher special education costs, in strained classrooms, and in systems trying to catch up on gaps that never should have existed in the first place.

We pay for it later in life, too. In lower earnings. In higher reliance on public assistance. In increased costs tied to healthcare, the justice system, and social services.

The question isn’t whether universal childcare costs money.

The question is whether we want to keep paying for failure or invest in something that actually works.

Because right now, we have a system where families absorb the cost individually, often at the breaking point, while the broader economic consequences ripple outward anyway.

Universal childcare doesn’t create a new expense out of thin air. It restructures costs we are already carrying into something more efficient, more stable, and more equitable. Then the question becomes for lawmakers, should it be handled at the state or federal level? The Roosevelt Institute thinks it should be handled at the federal level and modeled after New Mexico, but there’s no reason Texas couldn’t also make it work on a state level.

We know what works. We know the long-term outcomes for children.

We know the economic impact on families. We know what happens when childcare is accessible, and we know what happens when it isn’t.

The only real question left is whether we’re willing to act on that knowledge.

Because this is about what kind of country we are trying to build.

A country where having children is financially out of reach for working families is not sustainable. A country that forces parents to choose between earning a living and raising their children is not functioning. And a country that understands these problems but refuses to solve them is making a choice.

Plenty of other countries have already made theirs.

They’ve decided that childcare is not a private burden to be carried alone, but a shared investment in the future. They’ve decided that families deserve stability, that children deserve opportunity, and that an economy works best when people can fully participate in it.

The question now is whether we’re willing to make the same decision.

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