Man, as a lifelong Texas and observer of Texas politics, I still can’t believe that what happened on Tuesday is real. It took Republicans years to consolidate their control over Texas offices, and Democrats swept every statewide office and a majority in the State House in a single election. And not narrowly – every Democrat on the statewide ballot won by 6-7 percent, except for Talarico who won by 12 (ha, ha, Ken Paxton!).
There’s an incredible opportunity for Democrats here but also significant roadblocks. Republicans still hold the majority in the State Senate and will be able to use that to block any Democratic legislation. State agencies and universities will be in a weird space where their entire senior leadership were appointed by virtue of being Abbott stooges, and it will take time for Hinojosa to replace them.
I’ll have more thought later but for now I’m still content to bask in the glow. Welcome any other thoughts on what the election in Texas means for both the politics in my state as well as the impact on national politics.
One of our closest friends has a sister that works in the Texas DA’s office out of Austin, working on regulating industrial businesses that abuse Texas’ already pretty lenient environmental laws.
She is desperately hoping that some of the legislation and enforcement can now be updated to something resembling modern understandings. The number of stories we’ve heard where companies get called out, and just end up paying the slap-on-the-write fines daily because by dumping 20+ times the allowed runoff means doubling their profits - which more than pays for the fines, as well as similar egregious abuses.
It’s not just taxes that made Texas so attractive to business, that’s for sure. And it’s a much needed fix. She’s prepared though for a lot of “But it’ll cost jobs” pushback from all and sundry.
Is it known whether Texas is a net “importer” of likely Democratic voters? That is, as the large metro areas of Texas have been growing and booming and have been so business-friendly … have lots of people from more liberal areas been moving in?
Speaking of liberal, is the Austin metro area influencing areas around it? Is there a “liberal zone” slowly but surely subsuming the suburbs around Austin? Are people graduating from UT to work in other parts of the state and spreading liberal values that way, one person at a time? Enough to make up a net surplus of incoming liberals over incoming conservatives from other areas (e.g. going to work in Houston was common for a lot of fellow LSU grads 30+ years ago)?
Are there some other “mini-Austins” in the state centered around any other Texas universities from which smaller trickles of liberal settlement could spring? Without looking at any numbers, I’m assuming Waco and College Station are unusually conservative college towns. Guessing the same for Lubbock, but less sure. SMU, TCU, North Texas, Rice, U of Houston, UTSA and UTEP are all in or near major cities. I can think of many smaller schools like Lamar, Prairie View (an HBCU), and Stephen F. Austin but I don’t know what kind of cultural impact they have on their immediate communities and on the state as a whole.
I hope we get ongoing reports from our Texas Dopers about positive changes happening due to the new administration.
Some of us have been following Texas demographic changes for more than a decade now, which is kinda why the “turn Texas blue” movement never lost steam despite scoffs from the naysayers.
Expect a shitload of money poured into Republican campaign coffers in the next two years. The GOP cannot win the White House without Texas and, despite the many good jokes, Texas is a purple state, not a blue one (which is still great!).
First off, how much of this outcome is just a reaction to trump’s kleptocracy and racist ICE and how much to Paxton et al’s impunious sleaze? IOW, did folks vote for D policies, or for R or R-ish policies but honestly implemented?
If the latter, little will change in how TX’s business-friendly laissez faire government affects the lives of ordinary citizens. What will change is the sheer amount of sleaze in their news.
Thing is that the “honestly implemented” things was a thing Democrats like Obama and Biden did about Immigration. Even the Honestly implemented way is eons better than the abusive way of the Republicans that led to Judges arrested, protesters killed, non criminals rendered to nations where they did not came from, immigrants arrested with no due process, etc…
One thing that struck me is that after 30 some-odd years of almost uncontested Republican rule, they had become exceedingly arrogant. They were passing legislation or blocking legislation because it was ideologically pure, not because the people wanted it. To wit, vouchers, marijuana laws, gambling, and Paxton as the senatorial candidate stand out. The rural types that the GOP views as its bread and butter didn’t want vouchers, but the state level GOP didn’t care. Nobody wanted Paxton, but the rabid MAGA types and Trump. A large portion of the state wants legal marijuana and gambling, but Lt. Governor Dan Patrick personally claimed that he’d never let any bills for either see the light of day.
Even to their own people, the attitude seemed to be “We’ll do what we want, because you’ll always vote red regardless.”
I feel like it’s really the second one, but with a definite lean away from MAGA and Evangelical Christianity’s Svengali-like hold on the party. Like I was saying above, they’d become pretty arrogant and I think that many just got sick of them not listening and being corrupt or at least acting like they felt untouchable.
A large portion of the population is little-c conservative, but not rabid MAGA, libertarian, or even hateful.
Texas is a diverse place. It’s only 40% white, 12% black, 5% Asian, about 40% Hispanic, and 3% mixed race and everyone else. Unless you live in some Panhandle hick town, you’re going to be living and doing business with people of other races regularly. I think the ICE stuff that they’re doing flipped a massive proportion of the HIspanic vote to the Democrats, where they had largely voted Trump in the past. Leopards, faces, etc…
Well, to be fair, the Dem controlled CA legislature does similar, but to a lesser extent. However, the Voters voted in Paxton, not the GOP. But yes, you make a good point- also with Abortion, since few voters want abortion totally banned.
I actually asked this in the Elon Musk Pit thread, but it’s actually a very good question to ask here, rather than gloating/dreaming of it:
Incidental, but does anyone have the details on if any of the huge Texas state incentives for Elon required a certain number of jobs/production in the new facilities that he might be in violation of as a result of winding down the Cybertruck?
Because, well, the next state administration might actually be looking to enforce those, rather than give a pass…
A lot of sweetheart deals such as the above, but also Datacenters and the like deserve a really close look. I know of the planned halt on all future Datacenters, but going back to @bump’s point about the arrogance and unthinking faith in the Deep Red status quo, there’s a big chance to investigate and claw back (please oh please) some misspent public fortune.
The day after the election, one of the talking heads on CNN said that some in Texas were blaming the “great replacement theory” for the blue wave in Texas. Given that Texas broke off from Mexico, it’s more like a return to a previous era.
And the New York Times has an article (gift link) that the mayor of Houston “was directing city police officers on Friday to limit their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement during traffic stops, bucking a policy imposed on Texas’s largest city by Gov. Greg Abbott.”
Under an executive order from the mayor, Houston police officers will no longer alert ICE agents when they encounter an unauthorized migrant during routine traffic stops or in connection with other low level infractions.
Instead, officers will only alert ICE in cases where a person has been arrested and is being brought to, or has already arrived at, a county jail.
Well, the rather out-there to the Right party faithful who vote in primaries elected Paxton. The clowns didn’t like Cornyn as a RINO, and apparently Paxton somehow was better to them. At any rate, they don’t represent most Texans, and I think that was on clear display Tuesday night.
You seem to be assuming that ICE cruelty was THE driving factor in the vote tally on Nov 3.
I’m not asserting you’re wrong. But are you sure? Is there evidence that is so?
On immigration specifically, what do the current crop of voting Texans really want on the spectrum from immediate magical citizenship for all undocumented, to immediate magical deportation of all undocumented? I truly don’t know how the Texan voting public maps on that. And what do they want as a path for future Latin legal aboveboard immigration? Open border, lots of worker visas leading to green cards & citizenship, some, little, none?
Clearly if you ask 10 Texans you’ll get 12 opinions. But what’s the shape of the collective cloud of opinion?
Hispanic vote a driving factor in James Talarico’s Texas Senate win.
Two factors contributed to many Hispanics voting Democrat this time around: the economy and immigration enforcement tactics.
This was exhibited in border counties like Hidalgo and Cameron counties. Comparing President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential margin with Talarico’s 2026 Senate margin, Texas has shifted nearly 26 percentage points toward Democrats. Across the state in majority-Hispanic areas, the margin swung nearly 36 percentage points.
So, yeah, Republicans did FAFO, and looking at the past in other nearby states, it will be really hard to change that for generations…
Every single person bears the image of the sacred. Every single person is holy, not just my neighbor who looks like me, not just my neighbor who prays like me, not just my neighbor who votes like me. I am called to love all of my neighbors the way I love myself.
And crystallizes the political moment.
The people at the top divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, by culture, so we don’t notice that they are picking our pockets. That they are defunding our schools, that they are gutting our healthcare, that they are raising taxes on all of us while they cut taxes for themselves.
And proposes a path forward.
We must unrig this economic system that only benefits the top 1%. We must pass universal healthcare, so no one goes bankrupt just because they get sick. We must invest in our teachers and our students, so every underdog has a fighting chance. We must end these corrupt forever wars that are driving up prices and killing our great men and women in uniform.
But this attempts to dismiss how the war against immigrants is also a factor on increasing inflation.
We see that through added labor costs and reduced output
for farmers in the short run (Charlton, 2025). According
to the 2022 USDA Census, wages and salaries represented
42% of production expenses for greenhouse and nursery
operations, and 40% for fruit and tree nut operations
(USDA, 2025).
Without a new stream of migrant workers, and with many
well established communities being targeted, agricultural
systems must rapidly change. In the short run, where
harvest seasons are time sensitive, firms that depend on
this labor will have to face reduced productivity and/or
higher production costs (Charlton, 2025).
There are a few factors at play here. Mortgage rates are high, sitting at 7.4% according to Freddie Mac. Diesel and building materials are pricey right now, too. Plus, there are labor shortages: More than a third of builders reported immigration enforcement activity in their area, which caused delays because workers weren’t reporting to job sites.
NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz visits different housing markets all over the country. Last week he was in Alaska; this week he’s going to Colorado. Lately, he said, builders have been expressing more worry about workers.
“We’ve seen in the data and I’ve heard from builders over the last month or two, an increasingly tightened labor market,” he said.
So, yeah, it is the economy with less immigrants too, stupid Trump…
The term ‘illegal immigrant’ can be interpreted two different ways. Many immigrants seemed to believe that el donald really did mean to just go after the Mexican rapists and murderers. The ones who have become citizens and can vote often resent the ones that they know are just gaming the system any way they can.
It became clear that el donald was encouraging the other interpretation. He was cultivating ignorance with the stereotype that all immigrants are illegal. That is downright insulting to the voting citzens when it sinks in.
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