Constitutional Elections Aren’t The Problem, The Legislature Is

The fight was lost months before the ballot ever arrived

This week, Texas Democrats have been in full meltdown mode online. Think 2022 post-midterms energy. Think group chat cigarettes being lit at 9 AM. Think people calling each other “neoliberal bootlickers” over property tax exemption language. Absolute chaos.

And what set it off?

The constitutional amendments. All seventeen of them. Passed. All of them. As we all know by now.

And suddenly, half of Texas woke up shocked… Shocked?… that every single proposition went through, and now folks are yelling about how there was “no messaging,” “no coordination,” “no voter education,” “no guidance,” and that “Democrats dropped the ball again.”

Let me go ahead and say the quiet part real loud.

This didn’t fall apart on Election Day.

This fell apart during the legislative session.

You CANNOT wait until something is literally on the ballot to start fighting it. By the time voters get ballot language, the deal is already done. The train has left the station, it’s halfway to Abilene, and y’all are standing on the platform arguing about whether we should post a thread.

And listen, I am not saying you had to listen to me specifically. I’m not the Pope of Texas Politics. But I am one of, like, twelve people on the Left in this state who actually cover state government daily when it’s in session. We do not have a bench of a thousand messengers. We have:

• a handful of newsletters

• a few amazing organizers

• some policy nerds

• and your cousin who tweets 30 times a day from a Wendy’s parking lot

So when I (or any of us) say, “Pay attention to the Legislature. Pay attention to committee hearings. Pay attention to House Calendars.” This is why.

And I tried to warn folks. I wrote articles about this while it was happening. I explained the stakes. I pointed to the Democrats who crossed over. I pointed to the Republicans who were playing power chess. I showed where the leverage was and when it evaporated.

But this week, I watched thousands of Democrats lose their minds over outcomes that were baked in back in April.

And that’s the problem.

We (collectively, as a voter base) show up after the house has already burned down, screaming about how nobody told us about the fire.

Meanwhile, some of us have been standing in the yard wearing a megaphone, holding a bucket, and ringing the town bell like a Victorian ghost child.

If you want to stop bad amendments, you have to get involved before they ever reach the ballot.

That means:

• Showing up to primaries

• Supporting candidates who show up at the Capitol to fight

• Becoming a precinct chair

• Sharing local news sources

• Following people who track your city council, school board, commissioner’s court, and state reps

• And not waiting until Fox 26 runs a segment to start paying attention

Don’t just rely on me.

Don’t rely on any one messenger.

Find someone in your county who is tracking your elected officials with the intensity of a hound dog on a scent, and then boost them like your democracy depends on it because it does.

Now, let me prove that none of this was new information.

Let’s get in the Lone Star Left Time Machine.

• April 23, 2025: Day 100: The GOP’s Supermajority Fantasy Meets Reality

April 23. House Republicans strutted in like they had a supermajority. Democrats reminded them they didn’t. The tactic was simple and smart. Withhold votes on constitutional amendments (need 100) until the voucher scam got punted to voters. The Result was the GOP scrambling, yanking their own HJRs, postponing calendars, and chaos ensued.

Meanwhile, the floor revealed the usual GOP priorities, deregulate pipelines, posture about “protecting kids,” and whine about ERCOT while breaking ERCOT. On AI, a bunch of Republicans (and one Dem) voted like Skynet lobbyists, but the guardrails bill still passed.

The takeaway? Democrats finally used the only lever they actually had. It worked. Republicans blinked. The spell broke.

• April 25, 2025: Democrats Show Their Teeth. Republicans Lose Their Minds.

April 25. While Dems held the line on HJRs, the far-right “Brainworm Brigade” threw sand in the gears anywhere they could, performative NOs on basic public-health and childcare fixes, dumb-as-rocks amendments to a teacher scholarship bill (no immigrants, no vaccines, no First Amendment apparently), and tantrums over insider-trading reforms.

Also, a few Dems started freelancing. I did name names; you can see those names in that article. Not because the bill content was sacred, but because leverage discipline matters.

The takeaway? When Democrats moved as one, they were powerful. When a handful chased “bipartisan” vibes, they undercut the only winning strategy on the table.

• April 27, 2025: Republicans Torched Their Own Agenda And Blamed Democrats For It

April 27. Fallout from vouchers + spite over a memorial to Cecile Richards + far-right attention-seeking = Local & Consent Calendar torched. Fifty-three bills yanked, including GOP bills. Why? Because five trolls realized they could object to everything and did.

Then the propaganda machine kicked in. “Democrats are secretly running the House!” (with an 88–62 GOP majority… sure, Jan). The Dunn network did what it does, confuse, inflame, fund the wreckage, and blame the smoke on someone else.

The takeaway? The far right would rather burn down the government than share oxygen. And it proved, again, that Republicans need Democrats to pass HJRs.

• April 28, 2025: 🚨🚨 Time To Put Pressure On The Democrats Folding For Republicans

In this video, you can see the caucus signal on the floor (Gene Wu’s three fingers = present, not voting) and who exactly broke with the plan. Every Dem “yes” on GOP HJRs was a gift to the people trying to crush us.

The assignment to readers was to call them. Make it costly to defect. Keep the leverage intact while it still exists.

The takeaway? This was the high-water mark. If Dems had stayed disciplined, Republicans would have had a problem.

• April 29, 2025: The Nepo Baby Relief Act (Now with Bipartisan Support!)

Twelve hours after the pressure post, the standoff ended. Journals magically filled with “oops, wrong button” statements, only on the HJRs that mattered, never on the easy votes. Some may be real; plenty looked like cover.

On policy, we also got the Nepo Baby Relief Act, an unnecessary constitutional ban on a non-existent estate tax to protect dynastic wealth while regular Texans drown in property and sales taxes. A few Dems helped.

Elsewhere, Republicans proved their priorities again by voting against a sickle-cell registry while waving through billion-dollar gifts to the rich.

The takeaway? The “block the HJRs” strategy ended not because it failed, but because enough Democrats let it end. The GOP agenda went back on rails, and months later, guess what? Those amendments sailed on the ballot.

Who were the worst offenders?

From one of the April articles:

It’s going to be alright.

If this week proved anything, it’s that a whole lot of people are finally awake. You saw how the sausage gets made. You watched leverage appear and disappear. You felt what happens when a few votes shift. That’s painful, yes, but it’s also power. Because now you know where to push.

We live and we learn. From this, I hope more people learned the most important lesson in Texas politics. State power decides your daily life. If you want different outcomes in November, the work starts in committee hearings, caucus rooms, and primary ballots in March.

So take a breath. Save your receipts. Pick your local watchdog and share them. And then get ready, because we’re going to turn all this frustration into precinct chairs, primary wins, and a Legislature that actually fears its voters.

• 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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