Lone Star Left Endorses Clayton Tucker For Texas Agriculture Commissioner

Because Texas deserves a Commissioner who works for the people, not the corporations.

I first met Clayton Tucker about five years ago, when I was still writing under the name Living Blue in TX. Someone sent me his number and said, “You two need to talk. Y’all are fighting the same fight.” We hopped on a Zoom call. I don’t remember if we had a topic or an agenda, but we spent a good 45 minutes talking about Texas politics, and I learned we saw eye to eye on almost everything.

And over the years, I’ve learned this is just who he is, someone who cares deeply and personally about Texas, the people who work in it, and the communities that depend on it. He doesn’t just show up when it’s politically convenient. He stays. He is the real deal, a rancher, a worker, and a fighter for the working class. That hasn’t changed once in the five years I’ve known him.

Who is Clayton Tucker?

Clayton Tucker is a fifth-generation Texan rancher, a working-class organizer, and one of the fiercest anti-corporate populists in Texas politics today. He manages his family’s ranch in Lampasas, cattle, goats, donkeys, chickens, and even a herd of miniature cattle he’s raising to help small-acreage farmers stay viable. He’s the guy hauling hay at 6 AM and fixing fences at midnight.

Tucker grew up in a split political household, part Republican, part Democrat, and didn’t choose a side until he started studying the Great Depression and the New Deal. He realized the GI Bill, rural electrification, public works, and Social Security literally created the pathway out of poverty for his family and millions of others. His grandparents picked cotton and hunted squirrels to survive winter. These are not metaphorical working people… they are actual working people.

Tucker left rural Texas to study International Relations and Mandarin, worked abroad, and learned firsthand how multinational corporations rig global trade to crush workers and farmers. When he came home, he went back to the ranch because the family said, “You’re the oldest child of the oldest child. It’s your turn.”

So Tucker ranches. And he organizes.

He served as:

• Secretary of the Texas Farmers Union (the farmer- & rancher-led alternative to Farm Bureau)

• Founder & President of the Texas Progressive Caucus

• Co-Founder of the Texas Grassroots Alliance

• Member of the State Democratic Executive Committee

• Fair Trade Policy Advocate working to expose and undo corporate-rigged trade policies that gut rural economies

And because 80% of Texas farmers need a second job to afford to keep farming, Tucker does too. His off-farm work focuses on rebuilding fair supply chains so Texas can feed Texas again.

He is running for Agriculture Commissioner because:

• Our food is too expensive

• Our farmers and ranchers can’t stay on their land

• Rural hospitals are closing

• Our water is being stolen

• Corporations are getting rich off Texas families’ hunger

Tucker is not running to manage an agency.

He’s running to rebuild the Texas food system so that working families can afford groceries, school cafeteria meals nourish children instead of slowly poisoning them, ranchers don’t have to sell their land to a developer to survive, rural communities don’t dry up and die, and Texas never has to depend on foreign-owned meatpacking giants again.

He says it bluntly:

“I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I was born with a steel wrench in my hand.”

And he means it.

The anti-monopoly fight. (Clayton Tucker’s core message.)

Tucker believes Texas is living through a Second Gilded Age.

Today, four companies control the vast majority of beef processing in America (roughly the mid-80% range for the top four), with similarly high concentration in pork and significant concentration in poultry. Bayer and Corteva account for 70% of corn and soybean sales. Globally, a small club of ‘ABCD’ commodity traders (ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Louis-Dreyfus) dominate grain trading and related processing and shipping.

This is not a free market. This is what a monopoly market looks like. And monopolies raise prices on purpose.

The Texas Agriculture Commissioner can break these monopolies without waiting for Congress by requiring Texas schools to buy Texas-grown food, processed in Texas, through Texas supply chains, phased in over 3–5 years. This would rebuild small farms, create rural jobs, lower prices over time, and weaken the corporate chokehold.

This is the playbook Jim Hightower used when Texas invented the organic market and led the nation in anti-monopoly agriculture.

Tucker is literally reviving the Texas Populist tradition that began in the 1880s, five miles from his family’s ranch. When farmers formed the Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party, they later became the New Deal coalition that transformed American life.

This is Texas political history reclaiming itself.

What does the Agriculture Commissioner actually do? And why it matters.

Most people hear “Agriculture Commissioner” and think this job is just for farmers and ranchers. But the truth is, if you eat food in Texas, this office affects your life every single day.

The Texas Agriculture Commissioner oversees:

• School meals for more than 5 million Texas students

• Food safety standards and inspection oversight

• Pesticide regulation and environmental protection

• Organic certification and labeling

• Water conservation and rural water access

• Rural economic development and broadband

• The State Office of Rural Health, which helps keep rural hospitals from closing

This is your grocery bill, your tap water, your kids’ lunch trays, or whether rural Texas towns live or die.

When the Agriculture Commissioner does the job well, food becomes more affordable, family farms survive rather than being bought out, water is protected rather than sold off, kids are fed healthy meals rather than processed slop, rural hospitals stay open, and small towns have a future.

When the Agriculture Commissioner fails or sides with corporate monopolies, we get precisely what we have now, which is sky-high grocery prices, family farmers pushed off their land, rural hospitals closing, PFAS “forever chemicals” in Texas soil and water, and corporations controlling every step of the food chain.

This office has power. And Texas families are paying the price for the wrong person having that power.

Which brings us to why this race matters and why Tucker is the one.

Why Tucker. And why now?

Clayton Tucker is the only person in this race who actually understands the food system from the ground up as someone who works the land and organizes the people who work it.

He is running to rebuild the Texas food system so it works for working families, family farmers and ranchers, rural communities fighting to stay alive, and every Texan who buys groceries

His plan is simple and powerful:

1. Make Food Affordable Again

Food is expensive on purpose. Corporations have turned grocery shopping into a monopoly. Tucker’s plan to break their grip is to require school food purchases from Texas growers and processors, rebuild local supply chains, and undercut the price-fixing middlemen.

2. Save Family Farms

Family farms are disappearing because corporate giants and hedge funds are buying land and dictating prices. Tucker will fight price-gouging, restore fair markets, and help keep Texas land in Texas hands.

3. Protect Water and Soil

Tucker will take on the billionaires draining aquifers and stop the spread of PFAS chemicals poisoning pastures, cattle, and people.

4. End Childhood Hunger in Texas

One in five Texas kids goes hungry. Tucker will fully fund and expand school nutrition programs because feeding children should not be a debate.

5. Keep Rural Hospitals Open

The State Office of Rural Health is under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Commissioner. Tucker is the only candidate talking about the fact that:

• Texas leads the nation in rural hospital closures

• And the current Ag Commissioner has done nothing to stop it

Tucker will fight for rural healthcare as if lives depend on it because they do.

Clayton Tucker is running because Texas is at a breaking point.

He understands the land because he works the land. He understands farmers because he is one. He understands rural Texas because he never left it behind. And he understands how monopolies took over our food system because he’s been fighting them his entire adult life.

Food should be affordable. Water should belong to communities, not billionaires.
Family farms should survive. Rural hospitals should stay open. No child in Texas should go hungry.

These aren’t radical ideas. They’re the bare minimum for a society that claims to care about its people.

Clayton Tucker is offering a plan rooted in Texas history, Texas values, and Texas self-reliance. Break the monopolies. Rebuild local supply chains. Feed our kids. Protect our land. Keep rural Texas alive.

For all of these reasons, Lone Star Left is proud to endorse Clayton Tucker for Texas Agriculture Commissioner.

If you can afford it, even $10 makes a difference. Clayton Tucker is building a people-powered campaign. Click here to donate now.

Help Clayton Tucker cut through the noise by sharing his message. You can follow him on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.

You can also learn more by visiting his website.

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