Meet The Candidates: Claire Reynolds For Texas Congressional District 11
West Texas is worth fighting for.
This series is called Meet The Candidates. Over the next ten 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 Claire Reynolds?
Claire Reynolds is an attorney, a former journalist, and a Democrat running for Texas’s 11th Congressional District. She lives in Austin, though gerrymandering has drawn District 11 west through San Angelo, Midland, and past Odessa.
Reynolds was born in Indiana and grew up in central Illinois. She earned a degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School and spent several years in Chicago before moving to San Diego, where she received her Juris Doctor from the University of San Diego School of Law and passed the California bar.
She moved to Texas in 2007. It is the place she has lived the longest, the place where she met her husband, raised her children, and built her life. Reynolds has lived in Texas for nearly two decades and considers it home.
Reynolds says she decided to run for Congress out of anger and urgency. She points to the erosion of civil liberties, Congress’s willingness to cede its constitutional authority, the treatment of immigrants, the dismantling of public institutions, and what she describes as an accelerating slide toward authoritarianism. She argues that District 11’s current representative has enabled that shift rather than resisted it.
The district.
Texas Congressional District 11 is one of the most aggressively engineered Republican districts in the state. This is a classic packing-and-cracking example, concentrating Democratic voters into a few urban pockets, then drowning them in rural GOP turnout.
TX11 is 51.1 percent Anglo (non-Hispanic white), 35.3 percent Hispanic, 7.0 percent Black, and 4.7 percent Asian. Combined, Black and Hispanic voters make up 41.9 percent of the district’s voting-age population. That matters.
Turnout is where Republicans currently win. Republicans dominate here because Anglo voters turn out at consistently high rates, Hispanic turnout lags behind population share, and oil-and-gas-aligned messaging keeps swing-curious voters politically disciplined. Turnout in the 2022 midterm election was just 45.1%.
This is where the hidden opportunity in TX11 comes in, and it is what most pundits miss. The district has a 35% Hispanic voting-age population, a non-Anglo majority under 40, and several urban population centers with relatively low Democratic registration for their size. TX11 is a mobilization district.
Flipping TX11 would be difficult, but it is not a fantasy. The first requirement is a turnout shock among Hispanic voters. If Democratic turnout among Hispanic voters increases by even eight to ten points, the district margin tightens dramatically. Democrats do not need to win rural white counties. They need to run up margins in Ector, Midland, and Tom Green counties, cut losses elsewhere, and treat deep-rural counties as turnout-suppression zones rather than persuasion targets.
That environment may already be forming. Last night’s 37-point Democratic swing in Tarrant County is not noise. It suggests Republican margins are softer than they appear, that low-salience elections are breaking Democratic when turnout composition shifts, and that voters are more elastic than traditional models assume. If November looks anything like a referendum on authoritarianism, economic instability, or congressional abdication, TX11 moves from “Safe R” to “High-Risk R.”
That investment needs to go into the field, not television. TX-11 will not flip through cable news ads. It flips through Spanish-language organizing, church-based GOTV, oil-field worker persuasion focused on healthcare, wages, and corruption, and relentless ballot-chasing in Midland and Odessa. A serious field operation could add twenty to thirty thousand net Democratic votes. That alone changes the math.
The bottom line is this: TX11 is not hopeless. It is expensive, unloved, and misunderstood. The demographics are there. The turnout gap is the obstacle. The national environment is moving. If Democrats treat TX11 as a mobilization district, invest early, stop writing off West Texas, and run candidates who speak credibly to institutional collapse and economic dignity, this district stops being a Republican stronghold and starts becoming a Republican liability.
The incumbent.
When asked about his role models, August Pfluger reportedly referenced a rock in his front yard, praising its intelligence. This is a helpful context for understanding his approach to governance.
Pfluger has the moral curiosity of a tumbleweed and the emotional range of a gas receipt. He shows up, takes up space, and disappears as soon as the wind changes. You could replace him with a cardboard cutout in Midland, and voters might not notice the difference.
That’s all I got.
Reynolds also has a primary opponent.
In Claire Reynolds’ own words.
Below are some questions I asked Reynolds, based on previous reader polls, along with her answers.
Q: Should Congress pass a federal $17/hour minimum wage, indexed to inflation?
Yes. This should have been done decades ago, but better late than never. Honestly, I’d increase it to $25/hour, but $17/hour indexed to inflation is a good start.
Q: Do you support ending qualified immunity and instituting federal police accountability standards?
Yes. Police officers should be held to *at least* the same standards as anyone else walking the street. Ideally, they should be held to higher standards.
Q: Do you support federal student debt cancellation and tuition-free public college?
Yes. The idea that we are somehow letting student loan debtors “off the hook” by cancelling their debt is absurd. We have an entire generation of Americans that will eventually pay much more in interest than they ever borrowed. If we want a more robust economy, we need to create a situation that allows younger Americans to do things like buy houses and raise children. You cannot do these things with crushing student loan debt hanging over your head.
Q: Should the U.S. demilitarize the southern border and repeal harmful immigration policies?
Yes. Immigration should not be handled via a military response. It is possible to have a secure border without treating immigrants as if they were an invading force. We can fully fund government programs to review asylum applicants and let in guest workers without making them live in concentration camps. We should definitely defund and abolish ICE, which is basically Donald Trump’s secret police.
Q: Should Congress ban corporate PAC money and implement public campaign financing?
Yes. American politicians are bought and paid for by the highest bidder. And Americans know it and hate it! There is a solution to this, and it is banning corporate PAC money and financing campaigns with public funds.
TX11 deserves more than a man whose political role model is a rock.
It deserves representation that thinks, listens, pushes back, and actually notices when democratic norms are collapsing in real time. August Pfluger has made it clear that his preferred contribution is silence.
TX11 is not a lost cause. The demographics are there. The opportunity is there. What’s been missing is effort, imagination, and a willingness to treat West Texas as worth fighting for.
Claire Reynolds is running because she refuses to confuse obedience with leadership. She’s running because Congress is supposed to be a coequal branch, not a decorative one. And she’s running because the people of TX11 deserve someone who brings a pulse, a spine, and an actual point of view to the job.
If the choice is between another term of silence and a candidate willing to say out loud that the system is broken and worth rebuilding, that’s not a hard call. Even the rock could figure that out.
You can find out more about Clair Reynolds on her website, Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky.
February 2, 2026: Last Day to Register to Vote
February 17, 2026: First Day to Early Vote
March 3, 2026: Primary Election
Click here to find out what Legislative districts you’re in.
LoneStarLeft is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Follow me on Facebook, TikTok, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.
Finally, someone to vote FOR. I live in this district. Thanks for the info.
Thanks, Michelle! We absolutely should NOT give up on W Texas! Already shared on bsky.