The Primaries Are Over. Now The Real Work Starts.
Progressives swept the primaries. Here's what comes next.
Before we get into it, the three races they called late last night (or early this morning, whether you went to bed at a reasonable hour or not).
Bo French won the Republican Railroad Commissioner runoff, further proving that Republicans are irredeemable. Of course, the Railroad Commission is responsible for regulating the fossil fuels in Texas, so the most logical move by the GOP is to elect the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan for that role. They’re trying to lose, and they may have their way.
Thurman Bartie won the (D) runoff for TX14. It’s on the SoS website, but the AP hasn’t called it yet. After our guy didn’t make it through the primary, I didn’t follow this race much. However, I’m really hopeful about some of the activity and numbers I’m seeing from Jefferson County. This has long been a Democratic stronghold, slipping into reddish territory in recent years due to low voter turnout. Jefferson County is the key to flipping multiple seats. We’ll do a deep dive soon.
Tiffany Perkinz won the (D) runoff for SBOE09 by about 500 votes. She’s going to have to work hard the rest of the year to win that split over, because in November she’ll be up against MAGA-extremist, January 6th Insurrectionist, Julie Pickren. And we need to get her out of our State Board of Education.
Click here if you missed the rest of the races we discussed yesterday.
Texas Democrats continue their leftward sway as we move toward the Convention and into the general election.
Depending on how long you’ve been subscribed to Lone Star Left, you may have seen me write about this topic more than once:
The Most Progressive Democratic Party in America Is in Texas
How Texas Democrats Are Leading The Resistance (While Some Are Selling Out)
Texas Democrats Vs. National Democrats: Who’s More Progressive?
Texas Democrats, as a whole, our party, our voters, our candidates, have increasingly gotten more progressive over the last few years. I would most attribute it to the launch and the work of the Texas Progressive Caucus, to all the work that Clayton Tucker did, and now to the new President, Angel Viator Smith, for making this the biggest and fastest-growing caucus in Texas.
The Texas Progressive Caucus is the only caucus I belong to, just because I believe in so much of what they do.
I’ve demonstrated to you that Texas is actually full of radicals by talking about our Platform, and some of the voting choices or bills introduced, about how we now have two Justice Democrats. And recently, I had the chance to ask Kendall Scudder to validate my view that Texas Democrats lean left relative to our non-Texas cohorts.
He responded, “Texas has this history of populism/progressivism. It’s run through our blood.”
And he’s right.
Clayton Tucker, our candidate for Agriculture Commissioner, by the way, wrote about this a few years ago.
In this article ⬆️, Tucker talks about the Farmers Alliance, the founding organization of the Populist movement, which held its first meeting just outside Lampasas, near his family farm. That movement spread to 43 states before being crushed by bankers and monopolists, but its ideas survived and evolved into the Progressive Era and eventually the New Deal.
He closes it with how the fight isn’t over. And he’s right.
FYI, I’ve endorsed Clayton Tucker because childhood hunger in Texas is an important issue to me, and the Agriculture Commissioner can make a big dent in it. And Clayton Tucker has plans to do just that.
Why do I believe that Texans, of all walks, have taken on progressive populism?
Because we’ve had to.
There’s something about living in a state this big, this hot, and this hard that strips away pretense. When your power goes out in a February freeze, and your neighbor’s pipes burst too, you don’t ask who they voted for before you help them. When the insurance company abandons you after a hurricane, you figure out real quick that the rugged individualism they sold you was always a lie. Community is survival in Texas. It always has been.
Texas progressivism was born in the dirt. It came from farmers who watched railroad monopolies bleed them dry and decided to organize instead of suffer alone. It came from workers in the refineries and the fields who knew that the only thing standing between them and exploitation was each other. That tradition runs deeper than the last thirty years of Republican rule would have you believe.
It came from the women in San Antonio’s pecan factories, who in 1938 walked off the job by the thousands. The Pecan Shellers’ Strike brought roughly 12,000 workers (mostly Mexican and Mexican-American women earning pennies a day) into the streets in what became one of the largest labor actions in Texas history. The city’s response was tear gas, mass arrests, and intimidation. They threw hundreds of strikers in jail. The bosses didn’t even bother pretending it wasn’t about race and class.
Leading them was Emma Tenayuca, a San Antonio native who was barely in her mid-twenties at the time. She’d been organizing since she was a teenager, and she understood that your labor is your leverage. The strikers won a modest wage increase before the factory owners mechanized the entire operation to make sure it could never happen again. Same as it ever was.
And it came from the farmworkers of the Rio Grande Valley, who in the summer of 1966 decided that if Austin wouldn’t come to them, they would go to Austin. Melon workers, earning less than 50 cents an hour with no minimum-wage protections, began a 490-mile march from the Valley to the Capitol, walking through the brutal South Texas heat in the middle of summer.
They carried the Virgin of Guadalupe alongside the United Farm Workers flag. They called it La Marcha. By the time they reached the Capitol steps on Labor Day, they had captured the attention of the entire state. Governor John Connally, rather than meet them, drove out to New Braunfels to intercept the march and tell them to go home. They kept walking.
By the time they reached the Capitol steps on Labor Day, over 15,000 people had joined them. The march didn’t win them the minimum wage that year, but as Rebecca Flores, former director of Texas United Farm Workers, later said, “It was the spark that initiated the Chicano movement here in the state of Texas.”
I want to tell you that Republicans are all we have to worry about.
For years, Texas Democrats had the luxury of the establishment staying out of our state. Now that it looks like Texas is about to flip, that is no longer the case. Some of these establishment groups are connected to DNC adjacent groups that focus on messaging.
How will we see that play out at the Convention?
How will we see that play out in November?
I couldn’t tell you. I will be making endorsements at the Convention in June, but unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it this year. I’m hoping they livestream the committees and, at the very least, the main meetings.
I’ve always said that the Platform is a good temperature gauge not only of where we are ideologically but also of what our priorities are. So, I’m really hoping to see this year’s Platform continue its progressive trend, especially in healthcare and childcare.
But November? We’re going to be okay.
We’re FINALLY through the primaries, and progressives had a lot of wins.
Y’all, did you hear? Dr. Letitia Plummer, Lone Star Left’s endorsement, won the Democratic Judge runoff for Harris County. Which means she’ll replace Judge Lina Hidalgo when she retires. This is a big win. Congratulations to both Dr. Plumer and Harris County.
As far as the Senate race goes, I know there are still a lot of hurt feelings, but until we get money out of politics, pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and restore Voting Rights to all, we have to play the hand we’re dealt.
Gina Hinojosa can win, or she can come close. She’s a progressive, we can trust her and rely on her. Her biggest climb will be money. In Taylor Rehmet’s race, the Republicans outspent him six-to-one. Currently, Abbott has about 100-to-1 cash on hand.
Talarico, Hinojosa, Lt. Governor candidate Vikki Goodwin, Comptroller candidate Sarah Eckhardt, Agriculture Commissioner candidate Clayton Tucker, and Railroad Commissioner candidate Jon Rosenthal are all solidly progressive.
So, to understand that our statewide slate is almost completely a progressive slate. That’s kind of a big deal.
But what about down-ballot?
We got big scores here, too! I am not going to go through everyone, but some shoutouts are well deserved.
In Congress:
Christian Menefee won. Al Green is an icon, and we will always love and cherish him. We are super excited to see what great things Menefee brings us to the next Congress.
Rev. Dr. Pastor Freddie Haynes is going to be my Congressperson, and I am over the moon about that. Texas’ second Justice Democrat, after Geg Casar.
We’ll talk about the numbers for Congress again soon, now that we have candidates on both sides. Republicans did a massive dummymander. We’re going to hit them where it hurts.
In the Texas House:
We’re going to flip it this year. I don’t know about the Texas Senate. We’ll talk about it more later. But, like with our statewide slate, progressives also saw a lot of big wins.
Talarico, Hinojosa, Goodwin, and Rosenthal all came from the Texas House. And they’re each being replaced by a progressive counterpart, Samantha Lopez Resendez, Montserrat Garibay, Pooja Sethi, and Odus Evbagharu.
These are all safe-blue seats. And there isn’t one person on this list ⬆️ who I’m not ga-ga over. So, the Texas House isn’t losing progressives. It’s actually replacing a few and gaining a whole lot more.
Bobby Guerrera (D-HD41), Ray Lopez (D-125), and Alma Allen (D-131) all retired this year, and every single one of their endorsements lost. And we’ll now usher in three new progressive House members in these safe blue seats. Julio Salinas, Adrian Reyna, and Staci Childs.
But what’s most important is that we flip 14 House seats this year. We can do that. This year. Later, we’ll go over which seats and which organizations are targeting (and why they’re targeting those in particular). We’re going to flip more than 14. And we have solid progressives across the state who will wind up in the Texas House next year. Stay tuned, and we’ll talk about it more over the summer.
Flipping the Texas House is key to ending Republican destruction in Texas.
I do this because I grew up in Texas.
Because I watched what happened when the power went out, and the pipes froze, and the governor blamed windmills. Because I’ve seen what thirty years of one-party rule does to a state with this much potential and this many people who deserve better. Because I believe, down to my bones, that Texas is not a red state. It’s a non-voting state. And when people vote, things change.
But if I’m being honest with you, it’s bigger than that.
I do this because of Emma Tenayuca. Because of the farmworkers who walked 490 miles in the South Texas summer. Because of the pecan shellers in San Antonio and every Texan who ever looked at a system designed to grind them down and decided to organize instead of surrender.
I focus on progressive politics because I believe that a government that works for working people is not a radical idea. It’s the oldest Texas idea there is.
That means when we talk about who Texas is, we’re talking about all of it, the refineries and the pecan factories, the farms and the food deserts, the communities that have been told for generations that their vote doesn’t matter.
It does.
Texas is not going to flip because of a single candidate or a single election cycle. It’s going to flip because of a movement, one built on the same foundation that’s always powered this state’s best moments and the stubborn belief that ordinary people, organized and determined, can outlast any monopoly, any machine, any amount of money.
We’ve done it before. We’re going to do it again.
Click here to find out what Legislative districts you’re in.
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Thank you for doing this. I’m not able to do it myself.
It’s so easy to just write down your recommendations and take them to the booth!
Thank you, Michelle!!! I'm stoked! Just shared on bsky.