Meet The Candidates: Chelsey Hockett For Texas Congressional District 05

The first step is showing up.

This series is called Meet The Candidates. Over the next nine 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 Chelsey Hockett?

Chelsey Hockett is not coming out of the usual candidate pipeline. She’s a union-family mom in East Texas who is running because the life she and her neighbors actually live has almost nothing to do with the speeches politicians give about it.

Her story starts where many Texas families are right now. Medical bills, pregnancy complications, loss, and stretched paychecks that stopped stretching years ago. The rising cost of groceries, childcare, housing, and health care is the reason her campaign exists.

She’s raising her kids to learn actual history, trust science, and treat empathy as a responsibility rather than a slogan. That framing carries directly into why she’s running. Policy-wise, she lands firmly in the working-class progressive lane. Medicare for All, protecting reproductive freedom, strengthening rural hospitals, defending public education from voucher programs, affordable college, union protections, restoring the Voting Rights Act, overturning Citizens United, and major immigration reform, including abolishing ICE.

The district.

TX05 is the kind of district where the GOP baseline sits around the high-50s to low-70s, depending on the turnout model. In other words, Democrats don’t win this seat by persuasion alone.

But TX05 is not ideologically monolithic; it’s just structurally imbalanced.

The district stitches together exurban Dallas County growth, working-class suburbs, and rural East Texas. That coalition votes Republican, but for very different reasons. Some are culture voters. Some are habit voters. Some are low-information voters. And a huge portion are non-voters.

That last group is the real electorate.

The Republican margin isn’t produced by universal conservative agreement. It’s produced by consistent participation from older rural voters and inconsistent participation from younger, working-class suburban and minority voters.

Which means the flip path is turnout redistribution. Democrats do not need a majority of the people who live here. They need a different majority of voters here.

So what would it actually take to flip TX05?

First, a candidate who is legible to working-class voters. Someone who can speak credibly about cost-of-living pressure. This district will respond to material relevance.

Second, relentless local organizing. Year-round presence. Church events, school board meetings, union halls, county fairs, and community colleges.

Third, participation expansion. The district’s Republican margin depends on low turnout among renters, younger families, and working-hour voters. If turnout rises evenly, Republicans win. If turnout rises unevenly, Democrats suddenly have a race.

TX05 is flippable, but it’s going to take some work.

The incumbent.

Anyone who has been following Lone Star Left long enough can tell you that I’m not a fan of Lance Gooden and have often characterized him as “tied for first place with Brian Babin as BIGGEST liar in Texas.” The dude lies as often as he breathes. On committees, in Congressional debates, on social media, he just never tells the truth about anything. Neither does Brian Babin. They’re both from East Texas. Obviously, no offense to East Texas, but I don’t know what’s wrong with those two.

Gooden also has a 96% lifetime score with the Heritage Foundation, you know, the Project 2025 people.

Hockett also has two Democratic primary contenders in this race.

In Chelsea Hockett’s own words.

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

Q: Do you support a Green New Deal or similar large-scale federal climate action plan?

Yes. I support a Green New Deal. Federal climate policy is economic justice, racial justice, public health, and infrastructure policy all at once. For generations, black and minority communities have been forced to live with unsafe drinking water (Sand Branch!), toxic chemical exposure, polluted air, and industrial facilities placed directly in their neighborhoods while wealthier communities are protected.

In Texas, families are paying the price through grid failures, water insecurity, and infrastructure failures. Rural communities in East Texas are watching their aquifers being sold off to the highest bidder, billionaire land grabs, rivers used as dumping grounds, and the working families are left with higher energy bills, health risks, and fewer protections. We need large-scale public investment in clean energy, safe water, grid reliability, and climate-resilient infrastructure to strengthen local communities and create good union jobs.

A real climate plan must center on environmental justice, public accountability, and public ownership of essential resources instead of privatization and corporate capture. Communities should not be sacrificed so polluters can extract profit. We need to repair harm, protect future generations, and deliver real stability and dignity for the people who have been carrying the cost of inaction the longest.

Q: Do you support universal, publicly funded healthcare?

I support Medicare-for-All. The United States is the only wealthy country where medical bankruptcy is normal, and no one should lose their healthcare because they got sick, pregnant, or injured. I nearly had to pay a $100,000 bill in hospital fees from labor, an emergency c-section, and a NICU stay because the store that I was a General Manager at shut down 2 weeks after Covid-19 hit. Stable jobs are disappearing rapidly in the United States, and our health insurance cannot be tied to them. It traps people in unsafe and unstable work environments, punishes caregivers and small business owners AND workers, and leaves families one layoff or diagnosis away from disaster. Universal, publicly funded healthcare lowers costs, improves outcomes, strengthens worker freedom, and treats healthcare as the public good it should be instead of a commodity driven by profit.

Q: Do you support ending qualified immunity and instituting federal police accountability standards?

Absolutely. Policing in this country has been used for centuries as a tool of racial control and state violence against Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities, from slave patrols and forced removals to modern over-policing, militarized raids, detention abuses, and family separation carried out by agents like ICE. Qualified immunity protects that legacy by insulating officers and agencies from real accountability when civil rights are violated. Law enforcement agencies are not above the law and should never be treated as such, especially when that power has been historically weaponized against marginalized communities.

Accountability must include a national use-of-force standard, independent investigations, transparent misconduct reporting, meaningful decertification and discipline, and real legal consequences when constitutional rights are violated.

Q: Would you support major tax reform, including raising taxes on billionaires and large corporations?

I support major tax reform, especially raising taxes on billionaires and large corporations. Some of the biggest corporations in the country pay single-digit effective tax rates, while small businesses and working families often pay 20-30%. If a small local business is paying a higher share than Walmart, United Healthcare, and Amazon (nearly combined), then something is fractured in our tax system.

This money is supposed to fund schools, healthcare, roads, disaster response, clean water, and basic community stability. Instead, we are closing schools, flooding camps, closing rural hospitals, drinking toxic water, and blowing out tires on highways. These corporations are paying so little in wages and taxes that the average American is paying for their employees to live.

Q: Do you support expanding the Supreme Court or instituting term limits for justices?

Yes. I support expanding the Supreme Court and instituting term limits for justices. The Court is acting as a branch of the GOP, and not an independent branch. John Roberts has overseen the erosion of voting rights and civil protections while pretending the Court is neutral.

Decisions backed by Brett Kavanaugh have helped normalize racial profiling and state abuse under the law. Clarence Thomas has accepted undisclosed gifts and benefits from wealthy political interests without accountability. That should outrage anyone who believes in the rule of law. The rights of immigrants, women, Black and Indigenous communities, 2SLGBTQIA+ people, and voters should not hinge on the ideology or ethics of lifetime appointees. We need structural reform. The Supreme Court, as it is today, has failed the people it was supposed to protect.

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

Ida B. Wells’ and John Lewis’ courage, ethics, and refusal to accept injustice have shaped how I understand power and responsibility. Their moral backbone is what I can only aspire to have.

Districts don’t change by accident.

Win or lose isn’t actually the only measurement in a district like this. The measurement is whether voters who haven’t been spoken to in years start recognizing they are part of the political system, whether turnout patterns shift, and whether future candidates have a foundation rather than starting from zero.

TX05 flips because someone runs the first serious one.

You can learn more about Chelsey Hockett on her website, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.