Lone Star Left Endorses Chris Turner For Texas House District 101

Experience in an unstable legislature.

Note: I heard someone say today that early voting starts in five days. I promised I would get all my endorsements out before early voting started, so expect several to come at you rapidly in the next few days. There will not be a Live tomorrow (because I have to do school Valentine's Day parties, sorry).

Y’all know I don’t take endorsements lightly. But this one weighed on me more than most, because this is the district I live in. Both candidates in this race are genuine progressives. Both care about working people. Both would be a clear improvement over what Republicans are doing to this state. I spent the past couple of weeks talking to and calling my friends who are organizers who endorsed one or the other to understand why they came to their conclusion.

I went back and forth more than once, and I understand why thoughtful voters are split. You should see my neighborhood right now. The two candidates have signs seemingly evenly dispersed throughout. It’s likely to be a tight race. You could make a principled case for either candidate.

Which is why I had to slow down and ask who is best positioned to do the specific job this moment requires. Both candidates are running on broadly the same policy goals, and both would be reliable votes for working families.

And when candidates share values, the deciding factor becomes which candidate is best equipped to navigate the responsibilities of this particular office right now.

Part of that responsibility is simply understanding the moment we’re in.

The Legislature is no longer a place where you show up with good ideas and argue them on the merits. Republicans have spent the last several sessions rewriting rules, weaponizing procedure, and fast-tracking bills through committees to avoid scrutiny. The fights are often decided before the public even realizes they’re happening.

So, the experience here is about survival within the process.

You need someone who knows when a hearing is being scheduled to bury a bill. Someone who recognizes a hostile amendment disguised as a friendly one. Someone who understands how deadlines, calendars, points of order, and conference committees can kill bad policy or save good policy. Most Texans never see those battles, but that’s where they’re actually won or lost.

Chris Turner isn’t “old guard.” He’s a legislator who has spent years learning the rulebook well enough to use it and, just as importantly, to stop it from being used against the people he represents.

Another thing I considered was property taxes.

HD101 voters, and Tarrant County voters in general, know how high property taxes have gotten. 63% of this district are homeowners, higher than the state average.

Texas does not have a normal tax system. We replaced a functional revenue structure with a patchwork designed to keep state leaders from ever having to say the word “tax increase,” and the result is a machine very few people fully understand.

Even legislators.

(Like, it’s embarrassing….)

What most voters hear is cut rates, cap appraisals, and send relief. But those pieces interact through formulas that shift the burden rather than remove it. Compression changes school funding. Recapture moves money across districts. Appraisal caps can protect one homeowner while raising costs elsewhere.

That’s why you repeatedly see “tax relief” followed by higher bills the next year. Not always because someone lied, most of the time it’s because Republicans just don’t understand how taxes and government work.

There are about two dozen legislators who actually have a real good handle on property taxes and fully understand their complexity, and Chris Turner happens to be one of them.

Chris Turner brings years of experience inside the committees where tax policy is actually written, negotiated, and amended. He has worked on these formulas, argued over them, and navigated the tradeoffs that don’t make headlines but determine whether relief shows up on a real bill. That kind of experience comes from being in the specific fights that shape outcomes.

I also want to acknowledge something openly. Representation matters. Coalitions grow stronger when new leaders emerge, and voters deserve to see themselves reflected in government.

But representation is also measured in material outcomes, what policies pass, what costs go down, and what protections actually reach people’s lives. Voice and results are both forms of representation.

For those reasons, Lone Star Left is endorsing Chris Turner for HD101.

Chris Turner has spent over a decade in the Legislature, actually doing the work. He currently sits on State Affairs and Ways & Means, serves on the Select Committee on Property Tax Relief, and has chaired both the Higher Education and the Business & Industry committees.

He passed a law strengthening protections for Texans with intellectual and developmental disabilities by requiring federal background checks for caregivers and suspending those who abuse patients. He authored the constitutional amendment giving 100% property-tax relief to surviving spouses of service members killed in the line of duty. He stopped elected officials from double-dipping pensions and salaries. Those are nuts-and-bolts governance issues that rarely go viral but materially change people’s lives.

On schools, he brokered the deal that broke the stalemate on the state’s major school finance overhaul and secured statewide teacher pay raises, then later protected those raises and improved transparency in the accountability system so districts actually know how ratings are calculated. On higher education, he helped fix college credit transfer so students don’t lose years of progress moving between community colleges and universities.

He’s worked on public safety policy, housing fairness, patient protections in health insurance, and even local economic development projects here at home in Arlington, Grand Prairie, and Mansfield. Some of it is big policy, some of it is unglamorous local legislation, which is exactly what a state representative’s job actually is.

He also spent six years chairing the House Democratic Caucus, organizing the opposition to anti-voter and anti-LGBTQ legislation, and coordinating the quorum break that blocked Senate Bill 1. Agree or disagree with tactics that required someone who understood the rules well enough to use them.

None of that makes him perfect. But it does show familiarity with the machinery, and in a Legislature where procedure determines outcomes, familiarity matters.

You can learn more about Chris Turner on his website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

If you’re in the HD101 area and able, consider volunteering.

And if you can spare it, consider donating.

• February 17, 2026: First Day to Early Vote

• March 3, 2026: Primary Election

• 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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