Manifesto of a Texas Progressive
On power, pluralism, and a stolen democracy.
Much of the national commentary around our US Senate race gets Texas wrong. It misunderstands who Texans are, and it badly misunderstands who Texas Democrats have always been. They don’t know our history, and their narratives erase the long, progressive, multiracial tradition that has always defined us. This manifesto sets the record straight.
Texas was never theirs.
Texas has been treated as the private property of oil executives, hedge fund managers, megachurch power brokers, and political dynasties, and we are done pretending that theft is tradition. It is sustained by the people who labor here, who raise families here, who patch roads, staff hospitals, teach kids, harvest crops, and keep communities alive in places the powerful never visit.
Texas was not born conservative. Conservatism was imposed here because democracy threatened those who held power. It functions as propaganda. It flattens complexity, erases history, and disguises how much force was required to concentrate power where it sits today.
Texas was built by overlapping peoples long before today’s parties tried to erase them. Indigenous nations governed land and trade networks. Spanish and Mexican communities built towns and legal systems. Enslaved and free Black Texans created culture, wealth, and political movements under constant threat. Tejanos, immigrant laborers, and poor white farmers worked the land, organized together, and resisted economic domination in ways that frightened elites across generations. None of this was accidental, and none of it was uncontested.
What is denied is who was deliberately blocked from ruling.
Texas did not drift into conservatism. It was beaten into place. Power was taken, defended, and reinforced through violence, voter suppression, land theft, segregation, and the criminalization of labor and dissent. Again and again, democratic movements rose in response. Sometimes winning, sometimes being crushed, but never disappearing.
That history is why Texas Democrats are not interchangeable with national party brands. Their roots are not found in donor salons or think-tank white papers. They come from tenant unions, poll tax fights, school integration battles, farmworker organizing, mutual aid networks, border communities, and churches that doubled as organizing hubs when no other space was safe.
Calling Texas a “culture war state” is a deliberate misdirection. The conflicts here have always been material. Who owns the land. Who controls labor. Who votes. Who gets protected by the law, and who gets punished by it. Culture has been the distraction. Power has always been the prize.
Race, religion, and geography were weaponized to fracture coalitions that frightened those at the top. The fault line underneath has always been economic and political. Concentrated wealth versus a multiracial public demanding a voice. Texas progressivism was forged there, rooted in pluralism because survival demanded solidarity across difference.
A democratic future in Texas does not require the invention of new values. It requires acknowledging the ones that have been fought for all along and finishing work that was never meant to succeed.
This movement belongs to the many.
This movement belongs to working people, whether you punch a clock, freelance, farm, teach, care for others, or clean the spaces everyone else depends on.
It is for Texans of every race, religion, gender, sexuality, and immigration status who are told they belong everywhere except the rooms where decisions get made.
It is for rural towns stripped of jobs and investment by corporate consolidation, and for cities hollowed out by speculation, displacement, and neglect.
It is for parents trying to raise kids without going broke, for elders forced to choose between dignity and survival, for disabled Texans denied independence, and for young people who deserve a future in the place they call home.
This movement does not ask people to shed their identities to belong. It recognizes that race, class, gender, labor, and power have always been entangled in Texas (by design), and that any honest democracy has to reckon with that reality rather than deny it.
Texas Government enforces power.
Texas government is not small. It is precise about who it protects and who it punishes.
It withdraws when corporations pollute, price-gouge, or consolidate power, then shows up sparsely when working people need housing, healthcare, education, or relief. It leaves billionaires alone while regulating the lives of everyone else down to the most intimate details, including who you love and what activities you practice in your own bedroom.
The state has built an enforcement apparatus that targets poverty instead of corruption. It punishes people for being poor, sick, undocumented, disabled, or nonconforming, while writing subsidies, tax abatements, and liability shields for those already at the top. Wealth is protected. Vulnerability is policed.
“Freedom” in Texas has become a cover story for control. It is freedom for school boards to censor history, for politicians to interfere in classrooms, for the state to intrude into private medical decisions, and for lawmakers to decide which families are legitimate and which are disposable. The language of liberty has been hollowed out and repurposed to justify control.
Rather than competing for voters, those in power choose to narrow the electorate. Districts are manipulated. Ballots are restricted. Polling places are closed. Participation is treated as a threat instead of a civic good. Democracy is managed instead of practiced.
This is not a failure of culture or values. It is the predictable outcome of a system designed to protect concentrated power from public accountability.
Texas does not have a culture war problem. It has a corruption problem, enforced by Republicans who use government power to shield wealth and punish dissent.
Democracy means control over the conditions of survival.
Democracy means ordinary people having real power over the decisions that govern their lives.
That power begins with the right to vote freely and have that vote count. It requires fair maps instead of rigged districts designed to predetermine outcomes. It requires automatic voter registration, accessible polling locations, and early voting that works for people with jobs, children, disabilities, or unreliable transportation. It requires competitive elections because leaders earn support, not because rules were engineered to guarantee it.
Democracy also means the right to organize, protest, and speak without intimidation. It means communities can challenge injustice without facing surveillance, criminalization, or retaliation from the state.
Democracy fails when policy responds upward instead of outward, when donors shape outcomes more than voters. When corporate lobbyists write legislation, while working families are told to be patient. A system that listens only to money is a captured system.
A democracy that works only for some is not a democracy at all. It is a hierarchy wearing democratic language.
Texas suffers from deliberate exclusion. Reclaiming democracy here is not radical. It is overdue. It is the unfinished work of generations who fought to be counted and were told, again and again, to wait.
What a Democratic Texas Government would do differently.
A democratic Texas government would stop governing for extraction and start governing for stability.
It would treat housing as shelter, not as a speculative asset, so working families are not priced out of their own communities by rising property taxes and private-equity landlords.
It would treat healthcare as infrastructure, not charity, keeping rural hospitals open and recognizing that access to care should not depend on zip code or income.
It would treat energy as a public responsibility, not a profit experiment, building a power system that prioritizes reliability over dividends and keeps people safe during extreme heat and cold.
It would treat labor as the foundation of the state’s economy, protecting workers across industries, including farmworkers, service workers, caregivers, and contractors whose labor keeps Texas running but whose rights are routinely ignored.
It would treat education as a public good, strengthening neighborhood schools, respecting educators, and refusing to hollow out classrooms to fund ideological pet projects.
Above all, a democratic Texas government would stop punishing people for being poor, different, or outspoken, and start using public power to make everyday life more secure, more affordable, and more dignified.
This is not radical. It is the basic function of democratic government. Texas has been denied it for too long.
This is why Texas Democrats are different. We come from a state where democracy had to be defended against violence, theft, and intimidation, and where multiracial coalitions were dangerous enough to be crushed. Our politics were forged under pressure, not comfort.
Texas belongs to the people who live here. We are done asking for recognition. We are done explaining our history to people who erase it.
This is not a new politics. It is the unfinished business of a stolen democracy.
And we are done waiting.
February 2, 2026: Last Day to Register to Vote
February 17, 2026: First Day to Early Vote
March 3, 2026: Primary Election
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Love this, and a wonderful reminder of what we are for. Always.
Damn, Michelle this is a hellava statement. I appreciate and support your efforts to bring justice and democracy to Texas. Good luck to all your hard work.