Meet The Candidates: Keenen Colbert For Texas Senate District 02
Meet the veteran running to end Bob Hall's eleven-year reign.
This series is called Meet The Candidates. Over the next five 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 Keenen Colbert?
Keenen Colbert is an Abilene native, a Texas State University grad, and a Marine Corps veteran who spent more than eight years in uniform, long enough to earn both Non-Commissioned and Commissioned Officer status. His decorations include the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal. He’s the real deal.
Now he’s taking that same energy into SD2, running on a platform that hits the issues working Texans actually lose sleep over. School funding, healthcare costs, and a cost of living that’s been eating people alive. Colbert has no wealthy backers, no lobbyist money, no insider pedigree. Just a guy who grew up in Texas public schools and watched what happens when politicians stop showing up for the people who elected them.
The district.
We can flip this district this year. Keenen Colbert can flip this district this year.
In 2024, Trump carried SD2 59.3% to Harris’s 39.0%. That’s about 405,000 total votes cast in the district, with roughly a 163,000-vote gap. That sounds brutal until you look at the registration numbers.
SD2 in 2024 had only a 64.3% turnout, meaning 225,950 registered voters stayed home in a presidential year with a competitive US Senate race at the top of the ticket. In 2022, the last midterm, turnout was 44%.
That is not a locked Republican electorate. That is an enormous pool of non-participating voters in a district where the Democratic base, Dallas County, Latino communities in Navarro and Kaufman, and younger suburban voters, skews heavily toward the people least likely to show up in off-year elections without a serious ground game behind them.
The registration gap makes it sharper. Only 14.7% of voters with Spanish surnames in a district that’s 28% Hispanic by population. That’s an organizing opportunity. Colbert doesn’t need to convert Republicans. He needs to find the people who are already there, already agree with him, and just haven’t had a reason to show up yet.
Meanwhile, Hall survived his primary with 78.7%, not a disaster, but not a senator with his base locked down either. His opponent pulled over 16,000 Republican primary votes against an incumbent. And in 2018, a midterm wave, Kendall Scudder held Hall to 59.4% with no money and minimal infrastructure. That was nearly a 20-point swing from Hall’s 2014 baseline. History says this district moves when the environment moves. The environment is moving.
SD2 is a weird coalition district. Look at what’s actually in it:
Dallas County (16% of the district population). This is Colbert’s strongest territory. The Dallas portion of SD2 is 64% non-Anglo, 34.9% Hispanic, majority-minority, and Democratic-leaning. In 2024, SD2’s slice of HD113 went 54.3% Democratic.
Rockwall County (100%, 107,000 people). 65% Anglo, historically Republican, but a fast-growing Dallas exurb. These are suburban commuters, homeowners, parents of school-age kids. They care about property taxes, school quality, and cost of living. They’re not ideological warriors. This is the persuasion target.
Kaufman County (100%, 145,000 people). 54% Anglo, 41% non-Anglo, growing. More rural than Rockwall, but not deep-red rural. Has some swing potential if Democrats show up.
Collin County (9% of the district). Expensive real estate, educated suburbanites. The small sliver in SD2 is probably ticket-splitter country. Small in numbers, but the type of voter who breaks away from Hall on school vouchers and healthcare costs.
Van Zandt County (100%). 80.6% Anglo, deep red, forget it. Run up the score elsewhere.
Navarro County (100%). 51% Anglo, 43% non-Anglo. Latino and Black voters who are under-registered and under-mobilized. Real upside if there’s a ground game.
What will it actually take to win?
In a wave environment, and we should have a wave environment in November, here’s the math that makes SD2 competitive:
Colbert needs to run up the score in the Dallas County portion. Every point of Democratic overperformance there translates directly. He needs Navarro and Kaufman to show up. Those are non-Anglo communities with untapped potential for registration and voting. And he needs Rockwall to move even 4–5 points from 2022, because that county has 107,000 people and the exact demographic profile of a place that gets fed up with voucher politics and rising property insurance.
I would expect to see Colbert frequently partnering with campaign events with Congressional candidate Chelsey Hockett, and House candidates Orlando Lopez and Zach Herbert.
The incumbent.
Bob Hall has represented SD2 since 2015. In eleven years, his constituents have gotten culture war, conspiracy theories, and a voting record that reads like a checklist of things working Texans actually need him to stop doing.
Hall arrived in Austin as a Tea Party true believer who, on the record, believed bike paths were a United Nations plot, that Obama was using public schools for “communist indoctrination,” and that Satan controlled his own Republican predecessor in SD2. His colleagues in the Senate literally gave him a tin foil hat for his desk.
It hasn’t gotten any more normal from there. In 2021, testifying on a sex education bill, Hall told a witness that the abortion industry invented comprehensive sex ed to create a “supply line of young women for abortions.” Texas Monthly flagged it at the time as having “no relation at all to reality.” The man sits on the Health and Human Services Committee.
On education, Hall’s record is unambiguous. He voted against a $10,000 teacher pay raise amendment in 2023. He’s been repeatedly endorsed by the Texas Home School Coalition PAC, which exists to funnel public money away from public schools. He voted to attach a voucher program to the school funding bill that same session. The House killed it, but Hall’s position was never in doubt.
On the grid, the record is equally damning, just in a different direction. Hall was warning about electromagnetic pulse attacks and geomagnetic storms for years before Uri. His colleagues gave him that tin foil hat in 2017.
And to think Republicans not only voted for this man, but also re-elected him. 😱
When Uri hit in February 2021, and millions of Texans froze in their homes, Hall claimed vindication. But none of his grid legislation became law. Not once in eleven years. He was the chairman of the committee with jurisdiction, and he couldn’t get a single substantive grid protection bill across the finish line. People died.
That’s who SD2 has had representing them for eleven years. A guy who talks constantly, votes against teachers and public schools, and has nothing to show for a decade of sitting on the committees that were supposed to be fixing the problems he kept warning about.
Keenen Colbert is a Marine who earned his rank. Bob Hall is a senator who never earned the trust his constituents placed in him.
In Kennen Colbert’s own words.
Below are some questions I asked Colbert, based on previous reader polls, along with his answers.
Q: Do you support a statewide minimum wage increase to at least $15/hour?
Absolutely! Raising the minimum wage is long overdue for Texans. $7 an hour simply isn’t a livable wage for anyone working full-time trying to support themselves, and our minimum wage needs to adjust to that. Any Texan who works full-time in this state should be able to afford a roof over their head, food for their stomach, and to see a doctor if they get sick.
Q: Should Texas end tax subsidies and abatements for large corporations?
Yes! Large corporations can afford to pay their fair share in taxes, and it’s time that our tax code for corporations ensures that.
Q: Do you oppose school vouchers and efforts to privatize public education?
As a lifelong Texan who received his education solely through public schools, I wholeheartedly oppose efforts to privatize public education. I would support ending our current school voucher program completely to ensure that public funds are going to public schools.
Q: Should Texas guarantee free school meals to all K–12 students, regardless of income?
YES! Regardless of income, no student should have to go hungry while at school. Period.
Q: Should Texas end tax breaks and regulatory loopholes for oil and gas companies, including exemptions from emissions reporting and waste disposal standards?
YES! Oil and gas companies do not need Tax breaks. They can afford to pay their share in taxes as well as follow all rules and regulations for their industry.
Q: Would you support redirecting state subsidies from fossil fuels to fund community-owned solar, wind, and battery projects in low-income and rural areas?
Absolutely. Leaning towards renewable resources is the way of the future. Redirecting state subsidies to community-owned projects like solar and wind would literally give power to the people.
Q: Do you support publicly financed elections to reduce corporate and PAC influence?
ABSOLUTELY! Elected officials work for the public, not PACs or corporate donors. I would support the finances behind elections to reflect such intent in order to better ensure that candidates and incumbents remain focused on who it is they truly work for.
Bonus Question: How do you plan to engage and energize young and working-class voters?
I plan on meeting young people where they are and speaking with them, not at them. Young people are paying attention to politics, and the working class is feeling pressure. They need to see that there are going people on the ballot fighting for their future and ready to remain engaged
SD2 is flippable.
The numbers say so. The environment says so. And Keenen Colbert, a Marine veteran with no lobbyist money and no patience for the kind of politics Bob Hall has been running for eleven years, is exactly the kind of candidate who can do it.
Keenen Colbert is ready. The question is whether SD2 is.
You can find out more about Keenen Colbert on his website, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.
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