Yeah, true. Not like higher fuel prices, but it aint nothing.
As a lifelong Texan, I’m hopeful, but not certain at all of what our trajectory will be. The senate will certainly be a stumbling block, they’re already planning to limit the historically powerful position of Lt. Governor. Here’s to hoping that there’s enough Republicans in that body who are either reasonable enough or morally flexible enough to bend with the prevailing winds.
Either way, it’s Texas. It’s going to be at least a little weird and crazy. Always has been. Hopefully it surprises us in a good way this time.
ICE’s wanton cruelties sent a message to minorities that their citizenship status was little protection if you weren’t anglo.
Trump and the GOP have put the party in a deep hole with a future electorate that will be 50% non-white.
The institutional GOP had worked for years to cultivate that socially conservative demographic, and these haters out to inflict maximum cruelty threw all that work away.
Poking the Latinx tiger is the same way the Republicans lost red California.
Perhaps they can be encouraged to double down on racism and hoped-for mass deportations ethnic cleansing as their main campaign theme and pledge of 2028? Not just in Texas, but nationwide? 
Actually, there was another factor that voters did see higher than the economy and immigration in some exit polls: The corruption of the Trump administration and how Republicans supported and enabled that corruption.
Voters issued a broad and withering critique of how politics works and how it affects us all. In poll after poll, corruption was identified as a top issue. In the NBC News exit poll, 90 percent said it was a crucial or major factor in how they voted. To Americans in 2026, corruption was visceral. It encompassed how a system dominated by big money hikes costs and crushes opportunity, giving us data centers as well as grifting.
Democrats need to tune their antennae to voter disgust with corruption. It’s not just big money donors, it’s really basic things like stock trading, too.
The thing about fuel prices looks a lot like a hint. If people actually supported el donald’s war with Iran, they would not be complaining about some economic impacts. Starting a war just doesn’t get the rally-round-the-flag effect that you see in response to someone else starting it.
This is a Good Thing!
Appointed school board managers in some of Texas’ districts under a state takeover said Friday that they are preparing to be out of a job as soon as January.
Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa campaigned to stop state takeovers in public schools and to replace Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath with an educator on her first day in office, which would be Jan. 19. The new commissioner could immediately change the governance of the eight districts that were taken over by the state because campuses persistently failed academic standards.
During a state takeover, a commissioner appoints managers who assume the authority of locally elected trustees. Hinojosa’s appointee could replace any or all appointed board managers at any time with new appointees, education experts said.
…
Hinojosa’s win elated many teachers, parents, and community members, who said they voted for her with the hope that she would facilitate the return of local control to their school districts.
“Everybody thought this trend of the state running schools was unstoppable,” said Elizabeth Chapman, an English teacher and parent in Houston. “We anticipated that they were just waiting until after the election to announce that Austin ISD was next, and now we have an answer that the people of Texas want local control of their school districts.”
Jessi Heiner, an organizer with the Houston Federation of Teachers, said she started sobbing Tuesday evening when she learned that incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott conceded.
A change in governor “felt like it was the only way that we could get our school district back and help make sure others didn’t lose theirs,” said Heiner, a volunteer with Hinojosa’s campaign. “It felt like it was literally saving our school district and the Texas public education system.”
Under the takeover, Houston ISD saw rising teacher turnover, reporting a rate nearly double the state average in the 2025-26 school year. The share of students leaving has accelerated every year since the takeover started at a rate unmatched by similar districts, according to a Texas Tribune analysis.
…
My bold.
So did a lot of us, Jessi honey.
The Blue Wave in Texas is going to touch people’s lives deeply. It will take a long time for Texas schools to climb up from the bottom of the barrel, but it’s a start.
One thing I know is that a white buddy of mine who has a Mexican wife (green card), is that ICE has been harassing people at local grocery stores in San Antonio. It freaks her the hell out, and from what he tells me, a whole bunch of other Mexican-Americans and permanent residents.
I can totally see people thinking that this is far from cool; even if they do want better enforcement of immigration law, they want it to be more specific; places like Bexar County are 60% Hispanic, so they can’t really go after people based on the way they look/sound without catching a lot of citizens and permanent residents.
That seems to be the big issue from what I hear; ICE agents aren’t really distinguishing between Mexican Americans, legal residents, and illegal immigrants, because they’re all various flavors of Mexican from what they see.
Correct because it appears the ONLY characteristics they are focusing on is skin color or people who have a certain “look”. And speak Spanish.
That doesn’t fly in Texas or in many other states.
From everything I’ve seen, Mike Morath is first and foremost a political hack, and is all the more worse, because he’s chosen public education as his arena for his hackery. Looking at his Wikipedia page and other web resources, he seems to be an extremely weird cat. As in, white member of Alpha Phi Alpha weird.
This is important. Even the economic issues weren’t just about the price of things. We had Trump and his cronies being dismissive of the economic pain of ordinary citizens while they openly raked in billions of corrupt dollars in barely disguised bribes and bragged about it. It was the constant conspicuous consumption at the top, Trump’s constant attention to tacky gold-plated vanity projects.
It was the juxtaposition that inspired people to vote them out.
In terms of the reasons why Texas went blue, obviously it’s an “all of the above” situation. But if I had to rank the reasons why this year was the Democratic breakthrough, I’d say:
Gas and groceries. Without the nationwide rejection of the Trump Administration and Republicans over cost-of-living concerns, you do not have Texas turning blue. Maybe Talarico still squeaks it out (for reasons below), but the statewide offices and state house become just another in the long line of “dang, we got so close!” narratives that Democrats have been telling themselves about Texas for years.
Democratic candidate quality. Talarico is IMO a once in a generation political talent. His message discipline during the campaign was crazy good. Never got distracted by Republican “James Talarico wants to cut off your son’s wiener” messaging. Everything was about cost of living and Paxton’s corruption. He went everywhere and didn’t just write off rural Texas. Hinojosa likewise ran a disciplined if less prominent campaign. The last few elections Abbott basically ignored his opponent, not wanting to raise their name ID. This election you couldn’t miss the avalanche of negative advertising against Hinojosa, which just projected that he felt threatened.
Poor Republican candidates. Paxton was a TERRIBLE candidate. Obviously mired in personal and professional sleaze. He was lazy and unfocused, and national Republicans basically had to come in and take over his campaign. He was completely unprepared for an election where he couldn’t just coast on the support of his hard right base. And I have to say it – he looks weird. His lazy eye and smirk of a smile was off putting to low-engagement voters who were paying attention to him for the first time.
Abbott and the other statewides are much better politicians, but couldn’t answer the fundamental question of the campaign – you’ve been in power for a decade plus, why haven’t you fixed the things we’re mad about (gas prices, AI data centers, etc.)? They desperately tried to spin up the anti-trans culture war again but it just came off as pathetic when voters are paying $4 a gallon for gas.
Immigration enforcement. Others in this thread have explained this well, I’ll just say that plenty of Latino voters were fully on board for The Wall and bussing undocumented immigrants to other states. An omnipresent police state harassing anyone who is brown and speaks Spanish was another matter.
There were other smaller factors that likely came into play (some think the THC ban was a big factor in Dan Patrick’s loss – I’m less convinced). And of course the question remains whether this represents a unique set of circumstances or a genuine realignment of Texas politics. I can’t wait to find out!
The New York Times ran an article (gift link) about how Talarico wore cowboy boots everywhere. The article even has a photo of him, on stage in a white dress shirt and suitcoat, but wearing blue jeans and the cowboy boots. In short, he was relatable to those in Texas. (Personally, I think cowboy boots are silly, but I’m not running for office there.)
What was silly was the New York Times even commenting on the cowboy boots. And you saying that cowboy boots themselves are silly. Maybe for you they would feel like a costume, but around here they are utterly commonplace.
In Texas, cowboy boots are just shoes. People wear them. They are not a political statement, a cultural statement, or even a fashion statement. They are just the shoes that people put on. You see them everywhere and they are no big deal.
This is probably true in other Southwestern states, too. I’m not sure.
Yeah if you go out and have boots custom-made out of pink rhino hide with platinum tips, okay, those are some kind of a statement. But around here are people just wear them everywhere all the time without comment.
The point was that he fit in wearing cowboy boots in a way he wouldn’t wearing dress shoes.
Exactly. Abbott and Paxson regularly wear cowboy boots, and nobody ever comments on them.
In general, Republicans like Greg Abbott nor Ken Paxton get a pass on demonstrating their macho credentials in a way that Democrats do not. Talarico in particular seemed suspiciously un-macho to some, so, as the NYT article said, the wearing of the cowboy boots made him seem acceptable to some in the Lone Star State. I suppose he could have dropped his trousers and shown off the family jewels instead. From the article
Lucchese cowboy boots haven’t played such a prominent supporting role in a Texas campaign since Senator Ted Cruz made them part of his story in 2013. Even though Paxton was also known to wear cowboy boots — a custom-made kangaroo-top pair from Olsen Stelzer and his own Luccheses — his footwear never became as ubiquitous a part of his personal semiology. Which raises the question: Why did Talarico’s boots matter so much?
In part, because of what they represent: a certain mythology of manliness having to do with the frontier and wide-open spaces, where wind-toughened men carve a life for themselves out of the land, which was one of the subtexts of the election in general. Talarico may look like a choirboy and talk like the seminarian he is, but his boots added a layer of machismo to his image that spoke to an entirely different audience.