Photo by Sage Friedman

The last week before Election Day can feel like living an entire year with your foot on the gas and your phone on fire.

Information comes at you faster than you can process it. You are answering messages, solving problems, encouraging volunteers, moving supplies, and doing a hundred things you never imagined would become your responsibility. You are getting so much done, yet somehow it still feels like you should be doing more.

If that is where you are right now, you are not alone. Candidates, campaign teams, organizers, and volunteers are riding emotional roller coasters all day long. Hope in the morning. Panic at lunch. A wonderful conversation with a voter. A terrible message from a stranger. Then somebody needs a box of yard signs, and apparently you are also the shipping department.

In 2022, I wish someone had explained this entire cycle to me. Not just how to survive the final push, but how to come down afterward. How to make room for joy, disappointment, exhaustion, and grief. How to recognize that the person who kept everything moving might eventually need someone to tell her she could stop.

So I am telling you now: you are allowed to stop long enough to take care of yourself.

During the 2022 election, a member of my team got very sick. I told her to rest for a few weeks, and I continued paying her while she recovered. That was the right thing to do. Meanwhile, I stepped in and kept going with shipments, paperwork, our online community, and messages from people who were upset, frightened, or angry.

Then my aunt, the woman who raised me, was dying.

My family kept her on life support until after the election so I could get there to say goodbye.

Even writing that now, I can see how much I was carrying. At the time, I just kept moving. There was always another task, another person who needed something, another reason to put my own feelings somewhere I would deal with them later.

After the election, I did not stop to grieve the results. I did not stop to grieve my aunt. There were family complications, because apparently death sometimes comes with a complimentary package of family chaos. And I had three children who still needed Christmas to feel like Christmas while I was falling apart inside.

One day, my team member called. She had rested. She was feeling better. She was pumped and ready to go.

I was in bed, under a weighted blanket, having an ugly cry.

I should not have answered that phone call. Or I should have answered honestly: “I love that you are ready. I am grieving, and I need some time.”

Instead, we entered that conversation from completely different places, and we left it out of sync.

I share that because I wish I had understood something then: needing rest is not a failure of commitment. Telling people what you need gives them a chance to understand you. They cannot see the weight you are carrying if you keep insisting you can carry everything.

Please take it from me. You are allowed to say, “I cannot do this today.”

Between now and Election Day, try to protect fifteen or thirty minutes when nobody needs anything from you. Put down the phone. Sit somewhere quiet. Take a few slow, comfortable breaths. Unclench your jaw. Let your shoulders come down from wherever they have been living near your ears.

You do not have to earn those minutes by finishing everything. Everything will not be finished. That is practically the campaign motto.

And make a plan for the days afterward, because the calendar may move on faster than your heart does.

When you pour yourself into a campaign, you are investing in a future you desperately want people to have. Better schools. Healthcare they can reach and afford. The freedom to make decisions about their own lives. A government that sees their humanity.

When the result does not go the way you hoped, the grief can be enormous. Candidates feel it. Staff members feel it. Volunteers who gave their evenings and weekends feel it. There is a particular heartbreak in working so hard for a kinder world and seeing cruelty rewarded.

You do not have to talk yourself out of that heartbreak. You do not have to produce an inspiring lesson by Wednesday morning. It is okay to not be okay.

It is also okay to feel relieved that the campaign is over.

You can miss your team and be grateful that your phone is finally quiet. You can be proud of what you built and disappointed by the outcome. You can have a happy cry, an ugly cry, or both before breakfast. None of those feelings cancels out the others.

If you can, schedule a little time away. It does not have to be an elaborate vacation. An overnight somewhere, an afternoon outside, or a day without notifications can give you some room to breathe. Tell people when you will be unavailable, and let yourself actually be unavailable.

Photo by Jacqueline Mungia

Do something you love without requiring it to serve a larger purpose. Get a massage. Read a book. Listen to something that has absolutely nothing to do with politics. Write thank-you cards when you have the energy. Do something kind for someone because it feels good.

My own small joy has become skincare. I spend twenty or thirty minutes most evenings massaging my face and doing my routine. Eye patches in the morning. A Biodance mask once a week. It has brought me a ridiculous amount of happiness.

That was my New Year’s resolution, and here I am in October still doing it. In a year full of things I cannot control, apparently I can commit to a 20 step Korean skincare routine.

Find whatever that small pleasure is for you. You are allowed to enjoy your life while caring deeply about what happens to everyone else.

And if you win, please let yourself be happy.

Celebrate. Invite people into your joy. Let the volunteers, donors, friends, and family members who carried pieces of this campaign with you feel that victory. So many people need a reason to exhale. Your win can give them one.

Then, after some rest, be intentional about what comes next. Go to lunch with someone whose judgment you trust. Write down your questions, ideas, and hopes for your office. Find a mentor and ask for guidance. Think carefully about the team you want to build, the skills you need, and the kind of workplace you want people to experience. Create job roles with those things in mind.

Whatever the result, give your team some closure. Gather when people have had a chance to recover. Share a meal. Plan a holiday gift exchange. Thank people for specific things they did. Remember the funny moments alongside the hard ones. You went through something together, and those relationships deserve care.

Photo by Nick Fewings

I know so many Texans are afraid to get their hopes up right now. We have been here before. We know what it feels like to believe, work, organize, and wake up disappointed.

But 2026 feels different to me.

I am seeing things I did not see in 2022. We have learned difficult lessons over several election cycles. We are more focused. We have more experience. We are still imperfect, and there is plenty we need to improve, but I can feel the work taking shape.

I believe the next chapter of Texas Democrats can bring a deeper commitment to working Texans, one that people can recognize in their everyday lives. I want us to carry that commitment beyond an election, into how we govern, organize, and take care of one another.

I cannot promise an outcome. I can tell you that I feel hope, even with everything we have been through.

So keep going. Make the calls. Knock the doors. Help someone make a voting plan. Then drink some water, put down your phone for a little while, and tell someone if you need help.

You are allowed to hope. You are allowed to feel grief. You are allowed to celebrate.

And you are allowed to rest, even when you love Texas enough to want to fix it.

Love and hope to all of you! Now go vote and let’s elect some Democrats!

Nancy Thompson

Go here to learn more: https://askme2026.com/justin-early-for-us-house/

Go here to learn more: https://askme2026.com/katy-padilla-stout-for-us-house/

Go here to learn more: https://askme2026.com/kyle-rable-for-us-house/

Go here to learn more about Mark: https://askme2026.com/mark-nair-for-us-house/

To learn more go here: https://askme2026.com/katy-padilla-stout-for-us-house/

I am starting with West Texas and the Panhandle.

We reached out to all candidates running for office and asked whether they wanted to participate in a webinar with us and whether they wanted a Candidate Trading Card. We are only endorsing those candidates who participated in our AskMe2026.com campaign.

Endorsed Candidates

To learn more about Riley go here: https://askme2026.com/riley-rodriquez-for-texas-senate/

Bo French is the Republican nominee for the Texas Railroad Commission, arguably one of the most powerful energy regulatory positions in America. Despite its wonderfully confusing name, the Railroad Commission does not regulate railroads. It regulates Texas oil and natural gas production, pipelines, natural-gas utilities, liquefied petroleum gas, critical natural-gas infrastructure, and coal and uranium surface mining. It has responsibilities involving drilling, abandoned wells, pipeline safety, waste disposal and other issues that can directly affect the bottom lines of energy companies operating in Texas.

So naturally, Bo French has spent a remarkable amount of time talking about Muslims.

• Not orphan wells.

• Not produced water.

• Not pipeline safety.

• Not methane.

• Not earthquakes caused by wastewater injection.

Muslims, and immigrants. And DEI. And LGBTQ people. And now, apparently, the racial makeup of the student section at a University of Texas football game.

I wish I were exaggerating.

I am not.

Even French’s own campaign website currently lists “Stop the Islamic Invasion of Texas” as one of his Railroad Commission issues, alongside his promise to “cut the stranglehold” of regulation on oil and gas operators. Yes, a candidate for the agency responsible for regulating oil wells has somehow made Islam a Railroad Commission issue. If you know anything about the oil industry you know that those in the oil industry have to work with people from all over the world, including Islamic countries.

But here is what makes the Bo French story much bigger than Bo French.

Texas Republican leaders knew exactly who he was. They publicly condemned him.

Greg Abbott told Republican voters that French didn’t understand oil and gas and could wreck the industry.

Dan Patrick called his rhetoric religious bigotry and demanded he resign as Tarrant Party GOP Chair.

Republican elected officials lined up behind his primary opponent.

Then Bo French won.

And suddenly? Well, apparently all those deeply held principles had an expiration date of approximately 11:59 p.m. on runoff night.

Welcome to Texas politics.

June 25, 2025: “Jews” or “Muslims”?

Our story begins before French was even a candidate for Railroad Commissioner.

On June 25, 2025, while serving as chairman of the Tarrant County Republican Party, French posted a poll on X asking:

“Who is a bigger threat to America?”

There were two choices:

1. Jews.

2. Muslims.

No, really. The original post was later deleted, but its original X URL and contemporaneous reporting are preserved here: San Antonio Current’s report preserving the poll.

The response from Republicans at the time was fierce.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said French’s words did not represent his values or those of the Republican Party and declared that antisemitism and religious bigotry had no place in Texas. Patrick called for French to resign as Tarrant County GOP chairman. Other Republican leaders joined the condemnation.

Remember Dan Patrick’s outrage. We’re going to need it later.

French followed the poll by explaining that his view was that “radical islam wants to conquer us.”

And that wasn’t the end of it. It was basically the opening credits.

August 11, 2025: French calls for a Muslim Texas legislator to be “denaturalized and deported”

Less than two months later, French turned his attention to Texas Rep. Salman Bhojani.

Bhojani is an American citizen, a Texas state representative, and one of the first Muslim Americans elected to the Texas Legislature.

French called him an “anti-American democrat,” accused him of trying to “further jihad,” and publicly called on federal officials to “denaturalize and deport” him.

KERA preserved the post and reported that French also published locations where Bhojani purportedly owned property. Bhojani said his family subsequently received threats. French also asked whether the law should be changed to prohibit foreign-born Americans from holding elected office.

Again, this happened in August 2025, a year ago. That date matters.

Because French didn’t announce his Railroad Commission campaign until November. In other words, virtually every major donor who subsequently financed Bo French’s statewide campaign had the opportunity to know what kind of political candidate they were funding.

Nobody can credibly claim that the June poll and August attacks were surprise revelations discovered after the checks cleared.

Then Bo French announces for Railroad Commissioner. And the checks begin.

This is where the story gets really interesting.

French announced his Railroad Commission campaign in November 2025. By then, the “Jews or Muslims” poll had been statewide news. Dan Patrick had publicly condemned him. French had demanded the denaturalization and deportation of a Muslim state representative.

And then money from people tied to oil, gas and mineral interests began arriving.

• On November 20, Mark Adamson, whose campaign filing identifies his employer as TSI Flow Products, contributed $20,000. TSI operates in oilfield equipment and manufacturing.

• On December 4, Richard “Dick” Moncrief, identified as an executive with Moncrief Oil International, contributed $15,000.

• On December 11, the Texas Freedom Fund for the Advancement of Justice gave French $150,000.

• On December 16, Miles and Laurie Boldrick contributed $25,000. Miles Boldrick’s filing identifies him as owner of Statewide Minerals Company, which is categorized as an oil-and-gas exploration business. Boldrick has also previously contributed to Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick, Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton.

That last part is important. The Railroad Commission regulates the industry. People making money from that industry are helping finance the person seeking a seat regulating it.

Campaign contributions by themselves do not prove corruption or a quid pro quo. Let’s be clear about that.

But Texans are absolutely entitled to ask whether the regulator will be accountable to the public or particularly attentive to the regulated businesses and wealthy interests financing his campaign.

And French has given voters another reason to ask.

His campaign platform explicitly promises to cut regulations on oil and gas operators and says he will “put the Texas oil and gas industry first.”

Put those two facts next to each other.

Oil and mineral interests help finance candidate. Candidate promises to cut regulations affecting oil and gas operators.

That isn’t proof of corruption. It is, however, one hell of a reason to pay attention.

February 2026: French won’t enter an Islamic center

By February, French’s campaign had become increasingly focused on Islam.

He backed out of a bipartisan candidate event because it was being held at an Islamic center and later characterized the “Islamization of Texas” as a danger.

Meanwhile, his campaign financing continued.

• The Texas Freedom Fund gave French $100,000 on February 6, $25,000 on February 13, $100,000 on February 17 and another $8,500 on February 27.

• James Stanton, an attorney, contributed $15,000 on February 5.

• Judy Messet contributed $10,000 on February 18.

• Patriot Mobile Action contributed $15,000 on February 20.

• And investor Alex Williamson, later identified in filings as president of ANW Minerals, began what would become more than $100,000 in contributions.

Again, the rhetoric and racists comments on X wasn’t scaring the money away.

March 2026: Follow the Dunn and Wilks money

Now we arrive at two names Texans should know very well:

Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks.

The Texas Tribune reported that the Texas Freedom Fund for the Advancement of Justice, formerly Defend Texas Liberty, was predominantly financed by West Texas oil billionaires Dunn and Wilks. By the end of February, that PAC had already given French $225,000 directly and spent another $150,000 advertising his candidacy.

That PAC alone accounted for more than half of the $637,139 French had raised from the beginning of his campaign through late February.

Think about that. One political network, predominantly financed by two West Texas oil billionaires, supplied more than half of the money French raised during the opening phase of his campaign.

And French was running for the commission that regulates the Texas oil and gas industry.

• On March 5, Alex Williamson, identified as president of ANW Minerals, contributed another $50,000.

• Five days later, Luke and Lindsy Dunn contributed $50,000. The campaign filing identifies Luke Dunn as an executive with CrownQuest Operating.

And then French went to CPAC.

March 27, 2026: “Don’t Sharia My Texas”

At CPAC Texas in Grapevine, French appeared on a panel whose actual title was:

“Don’t Sharia My Texas.”

This is not satire. Satire is becoming increasingly difficult to practice in Texas because reality keeps stealing the good material. At that event, French said Republicans should more openly embrace Islamophobia.

He also called for the United States to deport 100 million people.

There were an estimated 14 million unauthorized immigrants in the country in 2023, meaning a deportation program approaching French’s number could not be limited to people living in the country illegally. It would necessarily sweep far beyond that population.

And here is where the donor timeline becomes incredibly important.

Because if anyone wants to argue that French’s donors didn’t know what they were supporting before March 27, that argument becomes extraordinarily difficult afterward.

It was national-quality political news. The candidate said it publicly. He said it at CPAC. He said Republicans should embrace Islamophobia.

And then...

The money accelerated.

• On April 6, Alex Williamson gave French another $52,050.80.

• On April 7, Texas Conservative Voters PAC gave him $150,000.

• On April 27, the Texas Freedom Fund gave him another $100,000.

• On May 5, former Texas Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton gave French $25,000.

• On May 7, Texans United for a Conservative Majority PAC gave him $100,000.

That PAC deserves an asterisk approximately the size of Midland County.

Its contribution records show that Timothy and Terri Dunn gave it $5 million in June 2025, another $200,000 in February 2026 and another $150,000 in May 2026, in addition to an earlier $125,000 contribution. The PAC then gave $100,000 to Bo French.

This is why looking only at a candidate’s direct donor list can be misleading.

Money can travel through PACs. And when you follow the money behind the PACs, the same names start appearing again.

• Dunn.

• Wilks.

• West Texas energy wealth.

• Hard-right political organizations.

• Bo French.

On May 11, Farris and JoAnn Wilks themselves contributed approximately $25,000 directly to French.

On May 11, the Texas Freedom Fund contributed another $40,000.

On May 19, Texas Conservative Voters PAC contributed another $25,000.

On May 21, investor Douglas Scharbauer contributed two reported $25,000 entries.

This wasn’t donors reluctantly sticking with French despite his rhetoric.

We cannot know individual donors’ motives unless they tell us, and a contribution does not prove agreement with every statement a candidate makes. But we can say something much simpler and much more defensible:

• They knew.

• The statements were public.

• The controversy was public.

• The condemnation was public.

• And the checks came afterward.

And then there is Double Eagle

On June 30, John Sellers, identified in French’s campaign filing as co-CEO of Double Eagle, contributed $25,000.

That same day, Tara and Cody Campbell contributed another $25,000, with Cody Campbell likewise identified as co-CEO of Double Eagle.

Double Eagle Energy isn’t some neighborhood oil-change shop.

It is an independent oil and natural-gas company focused on development and production in the Permian Basin. Double Eagle says its fourth iteration completed a partial sale to Diamondback Energy in April 2025 for $4.1 billion. An earlier DoublePoint transaction sold assets to Pioneer Natural Resources for $6.4 billion.

So two people associated with leadership of a major Permian oil-and-gas company contributed a combined $50,000 to a candidate seeking a seat on the agency with primary regulatory jurisdiction over Texas oil and natural gas.

Again, perfectly legitimate question:

“Who does your Railroad Commissioner work for?”

Because Texans deserve a regulator whose first responsibility is to Texas, not a regulator whose campaign owes enormous debts of gratitude to people and organizations connected to the industry he is supposed to regulate.

Meanwhile, Republicans were warning us about Bo French

Here’s the part that would be hilarious if the job weren’t so important. During the Republican runoff, some of the biggest names in Texas Republican politics tried to stop French.

• Gov. Greg Abbott supported incumbent Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright.

• Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick supported Wright.

• Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows supported Wright.

• Republican legislators supported Wright.

• The Texas Oil and Gas Association’s PAC supported Wright. Exxon and Chevron also contributed to Wright’s campaign.

Abbott’s criticism of French was particularly brutal. Abbott said French “doesn’t know anything about oil and gas” and warned that putting him on the Railroad Commission could “wreck” Texas oil production.

Read that again.

That wasn’t Jon Rosenthal saying it. That wasn’t the Democratic Party saying it. That was Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, telling Republican primary voters that the Republican who is now their nominee doesn’t know anything about oil and gas and could wreck the Texas oil industry.

Seems relevant for the guy we’re thinking about putting on...

checks notes

...the Texas oil and gas regulatory commission.

Then Bo French won.

French narrowly defeated Wright. And suddenly the Republican Party discovered the healing power of political amnesia. Abbott congratulated French and said Republicans would remain united for November.

Dan Patrick, who had previously demanded French resign because of his “religious bigotry,” apparently had what French described as a “very nice call” with him and offered his support.

So let’s review.

Dan Patrick in 2025:

“Religious bigotry has no place in the Republican Party. Resign.”

Dan Patrick in 2026:

“Congratulations. Let’s win.”

Greg Abbott during the primary:

“This man doesn’t know anything about oil and gas and could wreck the industry.”"

Greg Abbott after the primary:

“Republicans unite!”

That isn’t a change in Bo French. Bo French didn’t moderate. He didn’t apologize and spend a year demonstrating personal growth. He went in the opposite direction.

What changed was that Republicans needed his vote in November. Apparently the moral emergency ended when the primary did.

And French admitted the culture war was the strategy

After winning the Republican nomination, French explained why he had spent a campaign for oil-and-gas regulator talking about subjects having virtually nothing to do with regulating oil and gas.

He said:

“I ran a campaign because I had to win a Republican primary.”

French specifically cited talking about the “Islamification of Texas,” DEI and LGBTQ issues and said his victory demonstrated that Republican grassroots voters wanted candidates fighting on those issues.

Well. There it is.

Bo French essentially told Texans that culture-war politics helped him win the Republican primary for an energy regulatory agency.

Meanwhile, Texas has thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells. The state is dealing with enormous quantities of produced wastewater. Texans are worried about pipelines, pollution, earthquakes, groundwater, energy reliability and the future of an industry that drives a huge portion of our economy.

Those are Railroad Commission issues.

Whether a Muslim family in Plano follows Islamic dietary rules? Not so much.

August 24, 2026: “I want them all gone”

French kept going.

On August 24, he posted:

“I voted for mass deportations but I will settle for less as long as Ilhan Omar is among them. Just kidding. I want them all gone.”

The Houston Press preserved the post and reported that some of French’s other controversial posts had already been deleted. Read the preserved August 24 post and reporting.

Again, we’re discussing a candidate for Railroad Commissioner. I keep reminding you because apparently someone needs to remind Bo French.

September 10, 2026: Greg Abbott discovers Sharia law

And then something very revealing happened at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas last week.

Gov. Greg Abbott stood onstage and declared:

“We will fully ban Sharia law in Texas.”

Read the Texas Tribune’s convention coverage.

There’s a rather inconvenient problem with this terrifying Sharia-law takeover. There is no separate Sharia government operating Texas. The Railroad Commission isn’t enforcing Sharia. The Legislature isn’t governed by Sharia. Texas courts don’t get to throw away the Texas Constitution and substitute religious law.

Religious Americans may voluntarily follow religious teachings or use private religious mediation and arbitration subject to American law. Christians do it. Jewish Americans do it. Muslim Americans do it.

But religious law does not supersede the United States Constitution or Texas law.

So what exactly is Greg Abbott saving us from? He just wants us to hate a new group of people. He’s all about the hate. Greg Abbott is truly the devil.

And why, after condemning Bo French’s rhetoric and warning Texans about him, are Republican leaders now campaigning on a theme French used to win his primary?

That is the question.

Because Bo French may have taught Texas Republicans a lesson.

Not that the rhetoric was wrong.

That it worked.

September 13, 2026: Bo French looks at UT students and sees a “problem”And just when you thought we had reached the bottom of this particular political barrel, somebody apparently brought excavation equipment.

On September 13, French posted a photograph of University of Texas students celebrating the Longhorns’ comeback win over Ohio State.

Many of the young people pictured appeared to be students of color.

French wrote:

“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

Here is French’s September 13 X post.

He then argued that Texas institutions had been “overrun by illegal aliens and foreign nationals.”

This time, Republican officials once again rediscovered their outrage.

Sen. John Cornyn condemned the post and asked whether Republican elected officials were going to condemn intolerance and racism or allow it to become normalized.

House Speaker Dustin Burrows told French the post had “crossed the line” and told him to delete it.

Republican Rep. Jared Patterson was even more direct:

“This is racist. It is wrong.”

Rep. Lacey Hull called the post heartbreaking.

Greg Abbott distanced himself from French’s message, saying a photograph of Longhorn fans celebrating actually showed how Texans unite and that people can oppose immigration policies without demeaning people because of their race or ethnicity.

And French? He doubled down. Of course he did.

Republicans, I have a question.

If Bo French is too racist for your Twitter feed... If he is too religiously bigoted to chair a county Republican Party... If he doesn’t understand oil and gas... If Greg Abbott himself believes he could wreck the Texas oil industry...

Why in God’s green Texas are you asking us to make him a Texas Railroad Commissioner?

You cannot simultaneously tell Texans:

“This man’s rhetoric is unacceptable.”

and:

“Please vote to give this man regulatory power over one of the most important industries in the world.”

Pick one!

Because this isn’t a city council seat deciding whether someone’s fence is six inches too tall.

The Railroad Commission oversees an enormous part of the Texas energy economy. Texas produces nearly half of America’s crude oil, and the Commission regulates oil and natural gas, pipelines and other critical energy infrastructure.

Competence matters. Judgment matters. Independence matters. And who finances the regulator matters.

Now follow the money one more time.

French’s campaign financing reads like a tour of the intersection between Texas energy money and hard-right politics.

You have the Texas Freedom Fund, a political organization predominantly financed by oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into French’s candidacy and associated advertising.

You have Luke and Lindsy Dunn, with Luke identified as a CrownQuest Operating executive, contributing $50,000.

You have Farris and JoAnn Wilks contributing another roughly $25,000 directly.

You have Alex Williamson, identified in filings with ANW Minerals and investments, giving more than $100,000 through the contributions visible in the records.

You have Miles and Laurie Boldrick, associated with Statewide Minerals, giving $25,000. Statewide Minerals is identified as an oil-and-gas exploration business.

You have Richard Moncrief of Moncrief Oil International giving $15,000.

You have Mark Adamson of TSI Flow Products giving $20,000.

You have John Sellers and Cody Campbell of Double Eagle, a Permian oil-and-natural-gas company whose predecessor businesses were involved in multibillion-dollar transactions, associated with a combined $50,000 in June 30 contributions.

You have Ryan Sitton, himself a former Texas Railroad Commissioner, giving $25,000.

And you have multiple PACs moving six-figure amounts into the campaign, some of which themselves receive enormous contributions from the same Dunn political network.

That does not prove that any donor purchased a vote. It does not prove an illegal quid pro quo.

But democracy does not require Texans to wait until somebody leaves a briefcase labeled “BRIBE” on a regulator’s desk before asking questions about conflicts of interest.

The appropriate question is much simpler:

“Will the person regulating an industry protect Texans first, or the industry interests helping finance his election?”

Especially when that candidate is simultaneously promising the regulated industry that he intends to cut its regulations.

There is another choice: Jon Rosenthal

And this is where the contrast in this election becomes almost absurdly clear.

Democrat Jon Rosenthal isn’t running for Railroad Commissioner because he discovered oil and gas sometime between the primary filing deadline and Election Day.

Rosenthal is a career oil-field engineer with roughly two decades of industry experience.

The Texas Tribune described the race succinctly: “an oil-field engineer versus an energy trader running on culture wars.”

Rosenthal has said he wants to focus the Railroad Commission race on what the Railroad Commission actually does. Radical concept, I know.

He has talked about energy infrastructure, pollution, orphan wells, the power grid, and protecting Texans while maintaining a strong energy industry. His pitch is that the commission needs technical expertise and accountability rather than another statewide culture-war platform.

You don’t have to agree with Jon Rosenthal on every political issue to recognize the basic job description.

One candidate spent decades working as an oil-field engineer.

The other spent much of his campaign talking about the “Islamification of Texas.”

One wants voters talking about energy.

The other apparently wants voters inspecting the skin color of Longhorn fans.

And Greg Abbott himself already told Texas Republicans which candidate he thought didn’t understand the oil business.

Spoiler alert: It wasn’t Jon Rosenthal.

This election is bigger than Bo French.

Bo French is certainly a candidate. But he’s also a test. A test of whether Republicans actually mean what they say when they condemn bigotry. A test of whether competence still matters in statewide government. A test of whether Texans believe regulators should be independent of the industries they regulate. And maybe most importantly, a test of whether fear can continue distracting us from the things government is actually supposed to fix.

• Texans are worried about electricity bills.

• They’re worried about water.

• They’re worried about abandoned wells.

• They’re worried about earthquakes in West Texas.

• They’re worried about pollution.

• They’re worried about whether our infrastructure can support the extraordinary growth happening across this state.

Those are real problems.

Texas does not have an imaginary Sharia Railroad Commission sneaking around Midland.

But we do have a real Railroad Commission. And we get to decide who sits on it.

Republicans already told us what they thought of Bo French. Dan Patrick told us his rhetoric was religious bigotry. Greg Abbott told us French didn’t understand oil and gas and could wreck the industry. John Cornyn is now warning Republicans that normalizing French’s intolerance could destroy their party.

Maybe Texans should believe them.

Because political principles that disappear the moment your guy wins the primary aren’t principles. They’re press releases.

And Texans deserve better than another politician whose qualifications for regulating one of the most important energy industries on Earth seem to include an impressive Twitter following, an obsession with Muslims and a donor list filled with people connected to the industry he’ll be responsible for regulating.

We have another choice.

His name is Jon Rosenthal. He’s an engineer. He understands the industry. He wants to talk about the actual job. And after everything Texas Republicans themselves have told us about Bo French, perhaps the most bipartisan thing Texans can do this November is take their warnings seriously.

Vote Jon Rosenthal for Texas Railroad Commissioner.

Because the Railroad Commission should be regulating oil wells. Not fighting imaginary Sharia law, and being a racist bigot online, and getting away with it.

You can donate to Jon Rosenthal here: DONATE

We have 52 more days to win this thing.. Please volunteer and show up!

Nancy Thompson

I was born in Texas, but I grew up in New Mexico. And when I was a kid, New Mexicans were jealous of two things in Texas: the roads and the schools. Seriously. Texas had a reputation. You crossed the state line, and suddenly the highways were smoother, and people talked about Texas schools like they were doing something right.

So naturally I thought, when did that change?

And off I went down another rabbit hole.

Lucky you. You’re coming with me.

Photo by John Cardamone

Laying the Foundation: The 1980s

Let’s start in the early 1980s, when Texas leaders looked at public education and said, basically, “Yeah, we need to fix this.”

Governor Mark White, a Democrat, made public education one of his biggest priorities. He appointed businessman Ross Perot to lead a commission studying Texas schools, and that work led to one of the biggest education reform packages in state history: House Bill 72 in 1984.

HB 72 raised teacher pay, tightened certification standards, reduced class sizes in early grades, increased assistance to poorer districts, expanded statewide testing and accountability, strengthened attendance rules, and created the famous “No Pass, No Play” policy.

Translation: Texas decided that if we wanted better schools, we might actually have to invest in teachers, set standards, and make sure poor school districts weren’t just left out there eating dust.

Wild concept.

At the same time, Texas was being forced to confront another uncomfortable truth: where you lived had way too much to do with the quality of education you received.

Edgewood ISD and other property-poor school districts sued the state, arguing that Texas’s school funding system was fundamentally unfair. In 1989, the Texas Supreme Court agreed and ruled the system unconstitutional.

That kicked off years of lawsuits, legislative rewrites, and increasingly creative attempts to answer a question Texas still hasn’t fully solved:

How do you fund public schools fairly in a state where some school districts sit on enormous property wealth, and others do not?

Under Governor Ann Richards, Texas continued working on school finance reform. In 1993, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 7, creating the equalization system that eventually became known as “Robin Hood.” Wealthier districts were required to share revenue or otherwise reduce their taxable wealth per student.

People can argue forever about the details of Robin Hood, and believe me, Texans have made a competitive sport out of doing exactly that. But the principle behind it was pretty simple:

A child’s educational opportunity shouldn’t depend entirely on whether their ZIP code has million-dollar homes or cattle trailers.

Then Something Interesting Happened: Texas Got Better

Here is the part of Texas education history we almost never talk about.

Texas started getting really good results.

The state began posting impressive improvements on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, sometimes called the Nation’s Report Card.

Texas’s fourth-grade math score went from 218 in 1992 to 229 in 1996 and 231 in 2000. By 1996, Texas students were scoring about six points above the national public-school average in fourth-grade math. Texas also gained national attention for narrowing racial achievement gaps.

So whenever someone says, “Texas schools have always been terrible,” nope.

That is simply not true.

Texas proved that a huge, diverse, rapidly growing state could make major academic gains.

And those gains didn’t belong to one political party.

Mark White’s reforms mattered. Ann Richards’s school finance work mattered. George W. Bush’s accountability reforms mattered.

That’s an important part of this story, because public education in Texas used to be something Democrats and Republicans actually competed to improve.

Imagine that.

1995: George W. Bush Restructures the System

In 1995, Texas rewrote large portions of its Education Code through Senate Bill 1.

The law returned more authority to local school districts, expanded state accountability, gave the governor authority to appoint the education commissioner, established the State Board for Educator Certification and created the modern charter-school framework.

Charter schools began enrolling students in 1996–97.

At first, they were a relatively small experiment. Today? Not so small.

By the 2024–25 school year, Texas had 959 state-authorized charter campuses serving more than 436,000 students. By 2026, that figure was roughly 446,600 students, or about 8 percent of Texas public-school enrollment.

So over time, Texas didn’t just maintain one public education system.

It built competing systems. And that matters later.

A lot.

The Rick Perry Years: Enter Property Tax Politics

By the early 2000s, another big shift was happening.

School finance increasingly became tied to one of Texas politicians’ favorite campaign promises:

Property tax cuts.

Governor Rick Perry called a special session in 2006 after another school-finance lawsuit reached the Texas Supreme Court. Texas substantially reduced school district maintenance-and-operations property tax rates, cutting them by roughly 11 percent in 2007 and about 33 percent by 2008.

The state tried to replace some of that lost local revenue through a redesigned business franchise tax and other sources.

And this is where Texas created a problem that would follow us for the next two decades.

• We wanted lower local school taxes.

• We wanted rapidly growing schools.

• We wanted more accountability.

• We wanted higher standards.

• We wanted great teachers.

• We wanted new technology.

• We wanted better outcomes.

And we wanted all of this while constantly talking about how much money we could take out of the system.

That math was eventually going to math. And not in a good way.

Interestingly, Texas didn’t immediately fall apart academically.

During the 2000s, fourth-grade math remained a Texas strength. NAEP math scores were 237 in 2003, 242 in 2005, 242 in 2007 and 240 in 2009. Texas remained above the national average for much of that period.

Reading was another story.

Texas was never quite the reading superstar it was in math.

That distinction matters because Texas public education was never simply “great” or “terrible.”

Some things were working.

Other things absolutely were not.

Then Came 2011

If you are looking for one giant flashing warning sign in modern Texas education history, 2011 is it.

Facing a state budget shortfall, the Republican-controlled Legislature cut approximately $5.4 billion from public education.

And Texas was not shrinking. Texas was booming. More people were moving here. More children were entering public schools. Districts were growing.

And then the Legislature chopped billions out of the system.

The effects were immediate.

In the first year alone, about 25,000 school employees disappeared, including nearly 11,000 teachers. Districts had been adding roughly 83,000 students per year, yet eliminated more than 10,000 teaching positions.

Think about that for a second.

More kids.

Fewer teachers.

What could possibly go wrong?

Districts reported larger class sizes, fewer teachers, cuts to tutoring, fewer electives, reduced pre-K services, cuts to special education, and fewer teacher-support positions.

This is one of the most important turning points in the entire story.

Texas wasn’t just asking schools to become more accountable.

Texas was asking them to do more with significantly less.

And Then We Gave Everybody STAAR Tests

Because apparently cutting billions out of schools wasn’t enough excitement, Texas rolled out the STAAR testing system in 2012.

Students, teachers and campuses faced increasingly consequential standardized testing requirements.

So the state essentially said:

“We’re cutting your funding.”

Also:

“Here are tougher tests.”

And:

“We will judge you based on the results.”

Cool.

Cool cool cool.

Hundreds of Texas school districts eventually sued the state, arguing in part that Texas was raising expectations without providing sufficient resources to meet them.

By 2013 and 2015, lawmakers restored much of the money cut in 2011. But restoring money doesn’t magically undo years of disruption. By 2015, traditional school districts still employed about 3,700 fewer teachers than before the cuts, even though enrollment had grown.

Think of it this way:

If someone removes your roof for two years and eventually gives you back most of the shingles, you can’t really say, “See? Problem solved.”

There has been weather inside the house.

Photo by CDC

Greg Abbott Takes Office

Greg Abbott became governor in January 2015. And at first, Texas still had some genuine academic strengths.

In 2015, Texas fourth graders scored 244 in math, about four points above the national public-school average.

But reading continued to struggle. Texas fourth-grade reading scores went from 220 in 2007 to 218 in 2011, 218 in 2015, 215 in 2017 and 216 in 2019.

Not exactly a victory parade.

Then came another accountability overhaul.

In 2017, lawmakers passed HB 22, creating the A–F accountability system. Campus ratings began in 2018. Supporters argued the grades made school performance easier for parents to understand. Critics argued the system put too much weight on standardized tests and frequently reflected student poverty as much as school quality.

And frankly, both arguments can be true.

2019: Texas Finally Puts Some Real Money Back In

Credit where credit is due.

House Bill 3 in 2019 was a significant public-school investment.

Abbott signed legislation providing new school finance funding, teacher pay increases, increased funding for high-needs students, and property tax relief. The state’s basic allotment eventually reached $6,160 per student in average daily attendance.

That was good.

The problem was what happened next.

Or more accurately, what did not happen next.

The basic allotment basically sat there.

Meanwhile, inflation showed up like an unwanted relative who announces at Thanksgiving that they’ll be staying through New Year’s.

• Electricity got more expensive.

• Fuel got more expensive.

• Insurance got more expensive.

• Buses got more expensive.

• Food got more expensive.

• Construction got more expensive.

• Employee benefits got more expensive.

• Instructional materials got more expensive.

Salaries needed to go up because teachers also enjoy luxuries like food and housing. And yet the core per-student funding formula barely moved.

School districts cannot simply raise prices when costs go up.

There is no superintendent standing outside the elementary school saying, “Sorry folks, inflation. Third grade is now $14.99.”

They depend on the Legislature.

Then COVID Hit

In 2020, the entire country got punched in the face.

Schools closed. Remote learning took over. Attendance changed. Families were stressed. Students lost instructional time. Teachers burned out.

By 2022, national NAEP results showed the largest reading decline since 1990 and the first-ever decline in mathematics on the long-term trend assessment.

Texas was not immune.

And this is important: not every decline after 2020 can honestly be blamed on Greg Abbott, Republicans, Democrats, vouchers, charter schools, or your least favorite school board member. COVID was a massive national educational disruption.

But the policy question after COVID was simple:

How aggressively would Texas reinvest in its public schools to help them recover?

And that is where this story gets political again.

The Debate Changes

By 2023, Texas had billions of dollars available. But public-school funding became tangled up with Governor Abbott’s push for Education Savings Accounts, better known to most Texans as school vouchers.

The Texas House repeatedly resisted Abbott’s proposal, with opposition coming from Democrats and a significant group of rural Republicans. And something had fundamentally changed in the Texas education debate.

For much of the 20th century, the argument was:

How do we make public schools better?

By the 2020s, one of the biggest education debates in Texas had become:

How do we help families leave them?

Those are not the same policy philosophies. Not even close.

Meanwhile, Texas Lost Its Academic Edge

Remember when Texas fourth graders were outperforming the national average in math?

• In 1996, Texas was six points above the national public-school average.

• In 2005, it was five points above.

• In 2015, four points above.

• By the 2020s, that historic advantage had largely disappeared.

Reading remained particularly weak.

Texas’s 2024 fourth-grade reading score was 212, about two points below the national public-school average.

That matters.

Texas once distinguished itself by outperforming the country. Now the state is trying to claw its way back.

2025: Vouchers Finally Pass

After years of trying, Greg Abbott finally got his voucher program.

He signed Senate Bill 2 on May 3, 2025, creating a statewide Education Savings Account program allowing taxpayer dollars to be used for approved private-school and education expenses.

The Legislature initially authorized up to $1 billion for the 2026–27 biennium.

The program can provide roughly $10,000 for private-school students, with higher amounts for certain students with disabilities and smaller payments for some homeschool expenses.

That represents one of the largest philosophical shifts in Texas education history. For generations, the question was:

How do we adequately fund every public-school student?

Now the question is also:

How much public money should follow students outside the public-school system?

And here is where a lot of public-school people start grinding their teeth.

While private-school students can receive roughly $10,000, the public-school basic allotment moved from about $6,160 to $6,215. Not even close to the private school allotment.

That is not exactly making it rain.

Texas Says It Wants Great Schools. Its Checkbook Has Questions.

By 2026, the average Texas teacher salary was estimated at $63,749.

The national average was about $74,495.

Texas ranked around 33rd in average teacher pay.

And Texas ranked roughly 47th in per-student spending, at about $12,815 per student.

So whenever someone says Texas wants to be a national leader in public education, I have one small follow-up question:

Does Texas actually spend like a state that wants the best public schools in America?

Because ranking 47th in spending while talking about becoming Top 5 in achievement is a little like announcing you’re training for the Olympics while refusing to buy running shoes. We aren’t even equipped to be in the race.

Then Enrollment Starts Dropping

In 2026, Texas public schools recorded their first non-pandemic enrollment decline in nearly four decades.

The state had roughly 76,000 fewer students enrolled during the 2025–26 school year.

And no, it isn’t all because of vouchers.

The causes include declining birth rates, changing demographics, immigration fears and enforcement, homeschooling, private schooling, charter competition, population shifts and lasting pandemic-era changes.

But this matters enormously because Texas funds schools largely based on student attendance and enrollment formulas.

• Fewer students can mean less revenue.

• Less revenue can mean cuts.

• Cuts can mean school consolidations, fewer electives, larger classes and fewer services. That can make more families leave.

• Which means even less revenue.

Congratulations, you have now created the public-school version of a hamster wheel, except the hamster is a superintendent trying to balance a budget.

So What the Hell Happened?

After looking at 40 years of Texas public education history, the answer is not one governor, one party, one test, or one bill.

It’s a series of choices.

Texas proved during the 1980s and 1990s that investment and reform could work. Leaders raised teacher pay, equalized funding, increased accountability, and invested in improving schools. Those policies coincided with major academic gains.

Then Texas increasingly prioritized property-tax compression while trying to educate a rapidly growing student population.

• Then came the 2011 cuts.

• Then testing and accountability increased while resources tightened.

• Then the basic allotment stopped keeping pace with actual costs.

• Then Texas built competing systems: traditional public schools, a massive charter-school sector, and now a statewide private-school voucher program.

And today Texas ranks near the bottom nationally in per-student spending while saying it wants to become one of the best education states in America.

Here’s the thing.

Texas knows how to build good public schools because Texas already did it.

This isn’t some theoretical idea.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Democrats and Republicans treated public education as infrastructure. They fought about how to improve it, how to equalize it, how to measure it, and how to invest in it.

Somewhere along the way, the question changed.

It went from:

How do we make Texas public schools the best?

to:

How cheaply can we run them, how much can we cut school property taxes, and how many alternatives can we create?

And now Texas is spending near the bottom of the country while expecting Top-5 results.

That is not an education strategy.

That’s asking for champagne schools on a Lone Star budget.

And maybe that’s the biggest lesson in all of this. Texas public schools didn’t suddenly forget how to educate kids. Texas changed what it was willing to invest in them. We know Texas can do better.

Because Texas already did.

The question now is whether our leaders want to build great public schools again, or whether they’ve decided managing their decline is good enough.

For Texas kids, teachers, parents, and communities, it shouldn’t be.

And as I type this, my son’s school district is about to be taken over by the state of Texas; our school district closed 10 campuses, and my son has 40 kids in each of his core classes. Desks barely fit in the classroom. They cut languages, art, pe, sports, choir, band, and theatre, and so many things that make school fun. A parent walked by my house the other day and said, “So glad my son is graduating this year; we may make it before state takeover.” Our family is not as lucky.

Yours in resistance,

Nancy Thompson

For the last three years, I have become increasingly curious about labor unions for a very practical reason: apparently I cannot go to Europe without somebody going on strike.

Train workers. Taxi drivers. Airport workers. General strikes. At some point during nearly every trip, someone announces they are not working today because they would like better pay, better benefits, a better retirement age, or simply because they are French and it is Tuesday.

And inevitably, some part of our trip gets rearranged.

At first, it was frustrating. Then I started paying attention.

Because we rarely experience labor power like that in Texas. We don’t routinely see workers collectively stopping an entire industry and forcing government leaders and corporations to negotiate.

So I started wondering: Why does labor have so much power in some countries, while American workers, and particularly Texas workers, have so little?

How we got here.

First, Labor Day Was Actually About Labor

Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, but by then roughly 30 states were already celebrating it. The holiday grew out of the labor movement, with organizations including the Central Labor Union and Knights of Labor promoting celebrations and worker demonstrations.

One of the first major Labor Day celebrations was held in New York City in 1882 and included a parade. And if you know anything about New York City, you know they have never needed much convincing to have a parade.

But Labor Day wasn’t created because Americans desperately needed one final opportunity to buy a discounted mattress before fall.

It came from a period when American workers were organizing for something we take for granted today: power.

Power over their wages. Power over their hours. Power over their safety. Power over whether their children had to work. Power to negotiate collectively instead of walking individually into the boss’s office and hoping he was feeling generous.

And organized labor helped fundamentally change American life.

A Lot of Things We Consider “Normal” Were Once Radical

• The eight-hour workday wasn’t always normal.

• The 40-hour workweek wasn’t normal.

• Overtime wasn’t normal.

• A minimum wage wasn’t normal.

• Workplace safety regulations weren’t normal.

• Restrictions on child labor weren’t normal.

Workers had to organize and fight politically for those protections.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 eventually established federal minimum-wage, overtime, and child-labor standards. The labor movement had spent decades pushing for shorter working hours and better working conditions.

So when someone receives time-and-a-half for overtime today, that isn’t because corporate America collectively decided workers deserved a little something extra.

It’s because workers fought for it.

Organized labor was also part of broader political coalitions that helped push America toward unemployment insurance, Social Security, workers’ compensation, workplace safety laws, and eventually family and medical leave.

And unions didn’t only change laws.

Collective bargaining helped normalize things such as weekends and shorter workweeks, paid vacations, paid holidays, employer health insurance, pensions, seniority protections, grievance procedures, workplace safety rules, and more predictable schedules.

Not all of those became legal rights. In fact, America still does not have a federal law guaranteeing workers paid vacation.

But when unionized employers offered better compensation and benefits, other employers had to compete for workers.

That is an important part of this story.

Unions didn’t just increase the bargaining power of union workers. They helped increase expectations for American workers.

Then America Started Changing the Rules

The modern era of American organized labor really begins with the Wagner Act of 1935, formally the National Labor Relations Act.

It protected the right of most private-sector workers to organize, form unions and bargain collectively, and it created the basic federal framework we still use today.

Union membership grew dramatically during the following years.

And then came the backlash. It’s always the backlash!

1947: Taft-Hartley

If you want to understand what happened to American union power, remember one name: Taft-Hartley.

In 1947, a Republican-controlled Congress passed the Labor Management Relations Act over President Harry Truman’s veto.

Taft-Hartley didn’t abolish unions.

It did something much more consequential.

It limited many of the tools unions could use to exercise power.

The law outlawed closed shops, restricted secondary boycotts, excluded supervisors from bargaining units, created additional unfair-labor-practice provisions applicable to unions, established mechanisms for workers to decertify unions, and imposed other restrictions on union activity.

But perhaps most consequentially for Texas, Section 14(b) allowed states to adopt what we now call right-to-work laws.

And Texas wasted approximately zero time.

Texas Goes Right-to-Work

Texas became a right-to-work state in 1947. Just a few weeks after the Taft-Hartley.

The argument was framed around individual freedom: workers shouldn’t be forced to join or financially support a union as a condition of employment.

Supporters also argued right-to-work would make Texas more attractive to employers and promote economic development.

Opponents argued it created a structural problem for unions: workers could receive benefits negotiated by a union while choosing not to financially support it, weakening the institution responsible for bargaining.

Texas business interests embraced the new model, including oil and manufacturing interests and, at the time, conservative Democrats.

Yes, Democrats.

Texas politics used to be wildly different. (look up Dixiecrats)

Over the following decades, Texas built an economic-development strategy around low taxes, lower regulation, flexible labor markets and relatively weak organized labor.

And that strategy worked in one very important sense: Texas experienced extraordinary economic and population growth and became extremely attractive to businesses.

But there is another side of that equation.

What is good for attracting corporations isn’t automatically good for the bargaining power of the people working for them.

The Restrictions Kept Coming

In 1959, Congress passed the Landrum-Griffin Act. Parts of the legislation responded to legitimate concerns about corruption and internal union governance and established important protections for union members.

But it also further restricted union tactics, including secondary boycotts, certain picketing and so-called “hot cargo” agreements.

So look at the trajectory.

1935: The federal government protects workers’ ability to organize.

1947: Congress substantially restricts some of labor’s most powerful economic tools.

1959: Congress adds another layer of restrictions.

Then the American labor system gets even more complicated because public employees aren’t governed by exactly the same rules.

States developed their own systems governing teachers, firefighters, municipal workers, and other public employees.

Which brings us back to Texas.

Texas Put Even More Limits on Public Workers

Texas heavily restricts collective bargaining for many public employees. Teachers and many state and municipal employees do not have the broad collective bargaining rights available to workers in some other states.

Texas also prohibits public employees from striking.

Think about how significant that is.

A French transportation worker can participate in a strike that brings trains to a halt.

A Texas public school teacher cannot legally say, “Enough. We’re all walking out tomorrow.”

Texas has also limited local governments’ ability to enact certain labor protections, restricted some public-sector union mechanisms, maintained relatively weak prevailing-wage structures compared with heavily unionized states, and embraced employment structures involving contracting and subcontracting that can make traditional workplace organizing more difficult.

Texas didn’t accidentally end up with weak organized labor.

We made policy choices.

Then Ronald Reagan Sent America a Message

In 1981, members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, PATCO, went on strike.

The strike was illegal under federal law.

President Ronald Reagan ordered them back to work. When thousands refused, his administration fired more than 11,000 striking controllers.

This wasn’t a new anti-union law.

But it was culturally enormous.

It demonstrated that the federal government was willing to take an extraordinarily hard line against a major union.

Corporate America noticed.

Organized labor noticed.

Everybody noticed.

And Then Came Janus

In 2018, the Supreme Court decided Janus v. AFSCME.

The Court held that public employees who choose not to join a union cannot be required to pay agency fees to that union.

Again, the question is bigger than whether someone should be required to pay union fees.

It’s about the structure of collective bargaining.

The union may still represent workers in the bargaining unit, including nonmembers, while those workers cannot be compelled to financially support it.

That further changed the financial structure of public-sector unionism across America.

But There Is Another Problem: America Changed, and Labor Law Didn’t

This may be one of the most overlooked pieces of the entire story.

The American economy of 2026 looks nothing like the American economy of 1935.

We now have gig workers, subcontractors, franchises, staffing companies, independent contractors, enormous multinational supply chains and workplaces where the person technically employing you may not be the company effectively controlling your working conditions.

But much of our basic labor framework was designed around the twentieth-century factory.

Essentially, we are trying to regulate an Uber-and-Amazon economy with a labor model designed when Franklin Roosevelt was listening to the radio.

And that makes organizing much harder.

🇫🇷 Which Brings Me Back to France

France is fascinating because it destroys one of our assumptions about unions.

Only roughly one in ten French workers belongs to a union.

That isn’t radically different from the United States.

But French unions have vastly more structural power because collective bargaining agreements can extend across industries and cover workers who aren’t union members.

That means a relatively small percentage of organized workers can influence wages, benefits, vacation, retirement and working conditions for an enormous percentage of the workforce.

That is why France can have relatively low union membership and still have extremely powerful unions.

And yes, when those workers strike, everybody knows about it.

The trains stop. Garbage piles up. Flights get disrupted. Students march. Farmers occasionally deposit manure somewhere highly symbolic.

It’s basically political performance art with baguettes and labor law.

🇺🇸 Texas Is Almost the Opposite

Only about 5% of Texas wage and salary workers belong to unions, roughly half the national rate.

But the bigger difference isn’t simply membership.

It’s reach.

American unions generally bargain employer by employer and workplace by workplace. French collective bargaining can establish standards across much larger portions of an industry.

That means France has built a system that amplifies worker bargaining power.

Texas has built one that limits it.

🌎 Look Around the World

Union membership also varies dramatically between countries.

Roughly speaking, recent internationally comparable data show:

1. 🇮🇸 Iceland: ~91%

2. 🇸🇪 Sweden: ~66%

3. 🇩🇰 Denmark: ~60%

4. 🇳🇴 Norway: ~52%

5. 🇫🇮 Finland: ~51%

6. 🇧🇪 Belgium: ~48%

7. 🇨🇦 Canada: ~28%

8. 🇮🇪 Ireland: ~22%

9. 🇦🇹 Austria: ~20%

10. 🇩🇪 Germany: ~14%

11. 🇫🇷 France: ~10%

12. 🇺🇸 United States: ~10%

13. 🤠 Texas: ~5%

The exact reporting year varies by country, so don’t obsess over decimal points. Look at the scale.

Texas isn’t merely less unionized than Sweden.

We aren’t even playing the same sport.

And here’s what I find particularly interesting: Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Germany aren’t economic wastelands where businesses ceased to exist because workers acquired bargaining power.

They have successful private economies and globally competitive corporations.

The choice doesn’t have to be business OR workers.

Healthy economies can have both.

So What Could Texas Actually Do?

If Texas wanted to increase worker bargaining power, we have options.

We could reconsider right-to-work policies. We could expand collective bargaining rights for public employees. We could strengthen protections against retaliation for organizing. We could crack down on wage theft and worker misclassification. We could strengthen prevailing-wage policies and apprenticeship programs. We could give local communities greater freedom to establish worker protections. We could explore new bargaining structures for industries where traditional workplace-by-workplace unionization no longer fits the economy.

Some changes would require federal action. Others could happen right here in Texas.

But before any of that happens, we have to change the political conversation.

Democrats Need to Stop Talking About Institutions and Start Talking About Workers

I think Texas Democrats have an enormous opportunity here.

Instead of beginning with:

“Are you pro-union?”

Ask:

“Do you think people who work for a living deserve bargaining power?”

Because a Texan who doesn’t identify as “pro-union” may still believe that workers deserve better wages, overtime protections, paid family leave, safe workplaces, apprenticeships, local jobs and protection from wage theft.

The message should be simple:

If you work full time in Texas, you should be able to afford your life.

That’s not radical.

That’s the freaking deal.

Talk About the People Who Actually Build Texas

Texas Democrats should be talking constantly about electricians, welders, refinery workers, HVAC technicians, linemen, construction workers, nurses, teachers, truck drivers, warehouse employees, and the people rebuilding our communities after hurricanes, floods, fires, and freezes.

• Invest in apprenticeship programs.

• Expand skilled-trade training.

• Protect prevailing wages.

• Create veteran-to-trades pipelines.

• Fight wage theft.

• Protect workers from dangerous heat.

• And when workers are fighting for better treatment, show up.

• Walk the picket line.

• Visit the job site.

• Listen to the nurse.

• Listen to the teacher.

• Listen to the refinery worker.

Don’t send another consultant-produced advertisement featuring a suspiciously clean man wearing a brand-new hard hat while staring heroically toward the horizon.

Use real workers.

Real stories.

Real accents.

Real kitchens.

Real frustrations.

Texans can smell fake political messaging faster than a Buc-ee’s brisket sandwich from three counties away.

And Make It About Family Economics

Labor policy isn’t some obscure special-interest issue.

• It’s family policy.

• It’s whether your paycheck covers groceries.

• It’s whether you can take your child to the doctor without losing your job.

• It’s whether your spouse has health insurance.

• It’s whether your electric bill eats your raise.

• It’s whether your kid can afford technical training.

• It’s whether your parents can retire.

• It’s whether someone can work 50 or 60 hours every week and still be unable to afford rent.

Parents shouldn’t work 60 hours a week and still not be able to afford groceries.

That should not be controversial.

This Is Ultimately About Power

Here’s where three years of interrupted European vacations finally brought me.

The fundamental question isn’t really whether you like unions.

It’s who gets power in an economy.

• Corporations organize.

• Industry associations organize.

• Billionaires organize their money.

• Companies hire lobbyists.

• CEOs hire lawyers.

• Industries create PACs.

• Corporations spend millions convincing lawmakers to write policies favorable to them.

• Nobody tells ExxonMobil it should negotiate with the Texas Legislature individually without its lobbyists because collective action would be unfair.

So why do we treat workers organizing together as something fundamentally suspicious?

If corporations and billionaires are allowed to organize their money, lobbyists, lawyers, and political power, why shouldn’t Texas workers be able to organize their power too?

Billionaires have bargaining power because of their dollars. The rest of us have bargaining power through our labor and our vote!

And that may be the most important lesson organized labor ever taught America:

One worker has a complaint. Thousands of workers have negotiating power.

And one voter can be ignored. Millions of voters cannot.

Happy Labor Day.

Now please enjoy your mattress sale, or better yet. Take the day off, and thank a labor worker for your day off.

Nancy Thompson

PS> If you are curious like me the state with the highest percentage of Union workers is Hawaii at nearly 25% of the workforce. Alaska is #3 which is surprising for a Red State. Texas is 40. All but two of the bottom 25-50 states are Red States.

My immediate response? Honey, don’t we all?

I hear some version of this all the time. Which races can actually win? Where will my time make the biggest difference? Why should I spend my Saturdays knocking doors for someone who probably isn’t going to win? And I get it. We all want to be on the winning team. We want to wake up the morning after Election Day knowing all those doors, phone calls, texts, postcards, donations, and hours paid off.

But this way of thinking about Texas elections has always bothered me because it misses something incredibly important: Texas Democratic politics is a numbers game, and everyone has a role to play. Even the candidates who lose.

Yes, I said it. Even the losers matter.

A Democrat running in a difficult district may not win that particular seat, but that candidate is knocking on doors. They are meeting voters. They are introducing themselves to neighbors who may not have heard directly from a Democrat in years. They are talking about public schools, healthcare, property taxes, water, affordability, and whatever else matters in that community. And most importantly, they are giving people a reason to show up and vote.

Because when that voter goes to the polls, they don’t just vote in one race. They vote up and down the ballot.

That means the Democrat running an uphill race in a deep-red district may be bringing voters to the polls who also cast ballots for Democrats running statewide. And when our statewide races can come down to relatively small shifts in turnout and margins across millions of voters, activating another 1 or 2 percent here and another 1 or 2 percent there can become incredibly important.

One candidate finds 50 voters here. Another finds 200 there. Another knocks on the door of someone who hasn’t voted in four years. Another talks to a Republican woman who is furious about what is happening to her public schools. Another reaches a young voter who has never voted before. Another finds a family who has lived in that neighborhood for 20 years and says, “You know, nobody running for office has ever knocked on our door.”

Those votes add up.

Suddenly, those so-called “losing campaigns” don’t look quite so unimportant anymore. They look like infrastructure. They look like organizers. They look like voter activation. They look like thousands of little tributaries feeding one giant blue river across Texas.

So I asked this potential volunteer a different question: What is your personal goal?

Is it knocking doors? Meeting people? Building community? Getting Democratic messages into neighborhoods that rarely hear them? Helping public education? Turning out women? Reaching young voters? Finding those few extra people who might otherwise sit this election out?

Because once you know your goal, you don’t necessarily need to find the perfect campaign. You need to find a campaign where you can do the work.

And this is where Girl Math Democracy comes in.

Ladies, you know where I’m going with this.

You are going to need new sneakers. Obviously.

Go shopping. Find yourself a cute pair of walking shoes. This is democracy. We cannot be expected to save it with inadequate arch support.

Then put on your steps app and give yourself a goal. Maybe you want to walk a marathon between now and Election Day. That’s 26.2 miles of democracy. Maybe you want to hit 50 miles. Maybe 100. Maybe you want to knock 500 doors. Maybe you want to walk every Saturday between now and November 3. Whatever it is, make the goal about your contribution, not whether someone else wins or loses.

Then start walking.

Walk for the candidate who has a great chance of winning. Walk for the candidate in a toss-up. And yes, walk for the candidate taking on Goliath in a district everyone has already written off. Because that candidate might find the voter who helps elect a Democrat statewide.

That door still counts.

Now, obviously, if we’re doing Girl Math Democracy correctly, the sneakers are only the beginning. You need the VOTE T-shirt because that’s basically a uniform. You probably need the sweatshirt because November mornings can be chilly. New water bottle? Hydration is essential to democracy. Put all your voting stickers on it. Cute crossbody bag? Obviously. You need somewhere to put your phone, voter literature, sunscreen, lip balm, snacks, and the tiny bit of sanity you have left after someone answers the door and wants to discuss chemtrails for 20 minutes.

You can buy these on mothersagaisntgregabbott.com/shop

Girl math.

But here’s the deal: you have to earn it.

By Election Day, I want those cute new sneakers to look terrible. I want them dirty. I want them scuffed. I want the soles worn down. I want you to look at those shoes on November 3 and know exactly what happened to them.

You wore them out trying to change Texas.

Not because you were guaranteed to win. Not because someone told you that you picked the perfect race. Not because a spreadsheet said your candidate was the most important person on the ballot. You did it because democracy is built by people who show up. You did it because communities matter. You did it because voters matter. You did it because candidates willing to run uphill races deserve people willing to walk uphill with them.

And you did it because every voter we activate has the potential to help Democrats all the way up and down that ballot.

So stop worrying quite so much about whether you’re volunteering for the “right” team. Find the team doing the work. Find the candidate talking to voters. Find the campaign building community. Find the place where you can make a difference.

Then buy the shoes. Buy the VOTE shirt. Get the ridiculous water bottle. Track the miles. Knock the doors. Earn the scuffs.

Because this election cycle, Girl Math Democracy is all the rage.

And if you spend $150 on a pair of sneakers and knock 1,000 doors in them, that’s only 15 cents a door.

Basically free.

See? Democracy.

But make it Girl Math. Buy the cute Door knocking outfit and sneakers. Then go get’em.

Yours in resistance.

Nancy

In April 2022, Mothers Against Greg Abbott released our first political ad. I knew absolutely nothing about launching a political ad. Nothing.

I was counting on someone else’s expertise, and instead of teaching me how to do it, that person spent hours making the entire process seem impossibly complicated while making me feel like I was the problem for not already knowing how to do it.

I still have a joke from that period. I point at my computer and yell:

“OH LOOK! THE LEARNING CURVE!”

And then I point to a picture of Mount Everest. Because that is exactly what it felt like.

But here’s the thing I eventually learned: Mount Everest wasn’t actually Mount Everest. I just didn’t have a map.

Four years, multiple ads, viral successes, expensive lessons, awards, spectacular wins, and a few “well, we’re never doing THAT again” moments later, I know a hell of a lot more than I did in April 2022.

So I’m giving you the map I wish someone had given me.

Because candidates, campaign managers, activists, county parties, grassroots organizations, and frankly anyone with a camera and something important to say should not have to believe political advertising is some mystical art form controlled by consultants in expensive shoes.

You can learn this.

I did.

First: Make Something People Actually Want to Watch

From the beginning, our philosophy at Mothers Against Greg Abbott has been storytelling. We use satire. Humor. Emotion. Sometimes a gut punch.

From Nothing Changes and Whose Choice to First Day of School and, more recently, Monsters, our ads tell stories, usually from a woman’s perspective.

They aren’t the standard canned political ad.

You know the one.

• Candidate walks thoughtfully through field.

• Candidate gazes meaningfully at factory.

• Candidate talks to person wearing a hard hat.

• American flag appears.

• Candidate folds arms.

• “Together, we can build a brighter tomorrow.”

Please make it stop.

Politics is full of people spending enormous amounts of money creating advertisements that look exactly like every other political advertisement.

If you want people to remember your ad, give them something worth remembering.

Thirty Seconds Is Your Friend

We started out making two-minute ads. Then I learned how much it costs to buy two minutes of streaming advertising. That was educational.

Thirty seconds is generally the sweet spot for a political ad. But if you can tell a compelling story in 15 seconds? Congratulations. You have captured a golden unicorn.

I want to know whether we can make a 60-second version, a 30-second version and a 15-second version of an ad

And I always want a landscape 16:9 master because we can turn that into vertical 9:16 and 4:5 versions for social media.

Don’t make one video.

Make a creative library.

Before You Release It, Watch It Three Times

This is one of my favorite tricks.

1. Watch your finished ad once and simply enjoy it. Don’t analyze it. Then take a couple of minutes.

2. Watch it again with your eyes closed. Can you understand what’s happening from the sound alone? Does the music work? Are there awkward pauses? Can you hear every word? Does something suddenly sound wrong now that you aren’t distracted by the visuals? Take notes.

3. Then watch it a third time with one question in mind: Where would I swipe away? Be ruthless. Where does the energy drop? Where does the story slow down? Is there a shot you’re keeping because it is beautiful rather than because it moves the story? A surprising amount can be fixed in editing with pacing, music and sound.

And remember, that audio track may eventually become a radio ad, so it needs to work too.

Also don’t forget to buy music or sound rights if it is not FREE. Otherwise, you will load a video with zero sound on your launch day after it’s discovered.

Don’t Blow the Ending

Your end card matters.

What do you want the viewer to do?

• Vote?

• Visit a website?

• Donate?

• Learn something?

• Remember a candidate’s name?

Your call to action should be obvious.

And please remember your legally required “Paid for by” language and whatever other disclaimer requirements apply to your race, organization, and jurisdiction. The most beautifully produced political ad on Earth isn’t improved by a compliance emergency.

Captions Are Not Optional

People watch social video everywhere.

• At work.

• In waiting rooms.

• In bed next to someone who is asleep.

• In bathrooms, although we should probably collectively agree not to investigate that statistic.

Your ad needs captions. I create multiple caption files, including SRT files, platform-ready versions (Facebook needs it’s own FB version), text transcripts and burned-in captions. We also create Spanish-language captions when appropriate.

I use Rev.com, but the important point isn’t which service you use.

The important point is this:

Your ad should work with the sound on AND with the sound off.

Then create a thumbnail. Think of it like a tiny billboard. Not seventeen words. Not your organization’s entire mission statement. Make me curious enough to click.

Now Build Everything Around the Ad

This is where campaigns frequently make the mistake. They finish the video. They post the video. They send an email saying:

“OUR NEW AD IS LIVE!!!”

And then everybody sits around watching the view counter like they’re waiting for election returns.

No.

The video isn’t the campaign.

The video is the beginning of the campaign.

In the days leading up to launch day, create still images, quote graphics, teaser graphics, short clips, thumbnails, press assets, and a press release. One 30-second advertisement should give you enough material for days of content. If you spent thousands of dollars producing an ad and used it once, you didn’t get your money’s worth.

Test It Before You Fall in Love With It

Whenever possible, test your advertisement with people who haven’t seen it.

I have used Swayable because they have options for relatively fast testing. Depending on the testing you choose, this can add several thousand dollars to your budget, but the information can be incredibly valuable.

And there’s another reason I like testing.

People who worked on an advertisement are terrible test audiences. We know the script. We know the joke. We know why that shot is there. We’ve watched the damn thing 147 times. The audience hasn’t.

Their reaction is the one that matters.

Give Yourself a Week. Two Is Better.

This is another lesson I learned the fun way. Launching an advertisement properly takes preparation. I would give yourself at least a week. Two weeks is even better.

• Choose your launch date.

• Write your press release.

• Prepare your graphics.

• Create your different video formats.

• Get your captions finished.

• Prepare your social posts.

• Get your paid advertising accounts and compliance requirements squared away.

• And then build your launch toolkit.

Build an Amplification Toolkit

Before a major launch, I want 50 to 100 trusted people who actually care about the issue to know the advertisement is coming.

• Candidates.

• Elected officials.

• County parties.

• Issue experts.

• Creators.

• Mothers volunteers.

• Community leaders.

• Local activists.

• Partner organizations.

But here’s the important part:

You do NOT want 100 people posting exactly the same sentence at exactly 9:01 AM.

That isn’t a movement.

That’s a hostage video.

Give people the ad, the big idea, three sourced facts, several possible approaches, relevant graphics, links, accounts they might want to tag, and the launch time. Sample text for different social media channels.

Then tell them:

Put this in your own voice. Tell people why YOU care about it.

• The candidate should sound like the candidate.

• The teacher should sound like the teacher.

• The mother should sound like the mother.

Authenticity is the point.

Launch Day Should Feel Like a News Event

Here’s roughly how I like to structure a major launch.

At 8:00 AM, press materials go out.

At 8:30 AM, the advertisement premieres across Instagram, Facebook, Threads, X, Bluesky, YouTube, TikTok, and wherever else your audience actually lives.

Same story. Different platform language. Do not blindly paste the same caption everywhere. This is what I launch on each platform:

• YouTube - regular video and SRT file, and I load a separate Spanish-version video separately.

• Instagram - Burned captions file

• BlueSky - Link to YouTube or burned captions file

• Facebook - Regular and load the Facebook SRT File

• Threads - Burned captions file

• TikTok - Burned Captions file

• Twitter/X - Burned captions file.

I set up my desktop, and I have separate windows for each platform and my phone. I have everything up and loaded, and I start pressing post one right after another.

From 9:05 to 9:30, your inner circle starts sharing and discussing it.

From 9:30 to 10:30, candidates and other relevant voices begin adding their perspectives.

If the ad is about schools, a candidate shouldn’t merely write:

“Great ad from Mothers Against Greg Abbott!”

They should say something like:

“I hear this at doors every week. Parents in my district are watching their neighborhood schools lose teachers while Austin politicians celebrate vouchers.”

See what happened?

The ad just became local.

From 10:30 to noon, community organizations, activists and experts help carry the conversation.

At noon, release another asset.

Maybe it’s the strongest 10-second clip.

Maybe it’s a graphic.

At 2:00 PM, drop the strongest fact.

At 4:00 PM, highlight reactions or news coverage.

Then between 6:00 and 8:00 PM, give the story another push with a second clip, behind-the-scenes footage or a response.

You’re not posting once. You’re creating multiple doors into the same story.

Every Platform Has a Different Personality

This is something campaigns desperately need to understand.

Instagram is visual. Give me emotion, movement, captions, faces and a powerful opening frame. Reels should be vertical and native to the platform.

Facebook is a discussion room. Don’t just post your ad. Ask a question people can answer from their own experience.

“Texas parents and teachers: What has changed at your public school in the last five years?”

Now the comment section becomes part of the story.

Threads is conversational. Don’t dump your press release there.

Start a discussion.

X is the argument machine. Give people a strong, factual proposition they can quote, challenge, discuss, and build upon.

Bluesky is about communities. Find the feeds, journalists, activists, experts, and communities already discussing your subject. Don’t ask, “How do I game Bluesky?”

Ask:

“Which existing conversation does this belong in?”

YouTube is your library. The full ad lives there. So do your Shorts, longer explanations, and derivative content.

And don’t sleep on the title and thumbnail.

“Mothers Against Greg Abbott Education Ad 2026” isn’t a title.

It’s a filing cabinet.

“Texas Schools Are Closing. Abbott Had 11 Years.”

Now I want to know what happened.

The Ad Isn’t Dead Tomorrow

This may be the biggest lesson in this entire article.

Never allow launch day to be the end of the campaign.

Day One: Full advertisement, short clip, strongest fact.

Day Two: Behind the scenes, candidate reaction, expert reaction.

Day Three: Another clip, audience reaction, fact check.

Day Four: Localize it. “Here’s what this means for Abilene.”

Day Five: Tell a personal story.

Day Six: Humor. Meme. Reaction.

Day Seven: Give people something to do. “Help us put this in front of another 100,000 Texans.” One advertisement can become 15 or 20 pieces of content.

Create once. Distribute many times.

Paid Media Should Feed What’s Working

Organic distribution tells you something extremely valuable:

What is resonating?

Don’t automatically dump the entire paid budget behind your favorite cut.

Test.

Try three openings.

Maybe one starts with outrage.

One starts with curiosity.

One starts with a personal economic consequence.

Then compare them under comparable conditions.

And please test one variable at a time.

If you change the hook, headline, audience, thumbnail, and call to action simultaneously and Version B wins, congratulations.

You have learned absolutely nothing.

Stop Worshipping Views

Views are nice. Views also don’t tell you everything.

I want to know:

• Did people stop?

• How long did they watch?

• Did they finish?

• Did they share it?

• Did they comment?

• Did they save it?

• Did they visit the profile?

• Did they click?

• Did we gain followers?

• What did a completed view cost?

• What did meaningful engagement cost?

• And one of my favorite measurements:

• How many shares did we generate per 1,000 views?

Because I’d rather have 50,000 people watch something that thousands of them feel compelled to send to friends than 500,000 passive impressions nobody remembers tomorrow.

My 40-Point “Should We Even Launch This?” Test

Before releasing a major ad, score each of these from one to five:

• Do the first three seconds stop you?

• Is there one obvious message?

• Does it create emotion?

• Would someone send it to a friend?

• Is there a quotable line?

• Does it create conversation?

• Does it work without sound?

• Is there a clear action?

Maximum score: 40.

My completely unofficial Mothers scale:

Under 25: Don’t launch it yet.

25–30: Fix it.

31–35: Strong.

36–40: Clear the runway.

It’s not scientific. It is, however, much cheaper than spending $50,000 promoting a boring advertisement.

Sometimes Your Opponent Gives You the Sequel for Free

Here’s where politics gets fun.

Suppose Abbott, Patrick, Paxton, an industry group or an opposing campaign attacks your advertisement.

Don’t immediately rush into defensive mode.

Ask:

Can their response become Content #2?

• Screenshot it.

• Respond.

• Fact-check it.

• Make a graphic.

• Cut another video.

  • “Apparently Greg Abbott saw our ad.”

  • “He didn’t like it.”

  • “Unfortunately for him, he didn’t dispute this part...”

Congratulations. They may have just handed you a second news cycle. Send flowers. Just kidding.

Things I Would NOT Do

• I wouldn’t buy fake engagement.

• I wouldn’t use fake accounts.

• I wouldn’t have 100 people paste the same comment.

• I wouldn’t post identical creative and copy everywhere.

• I wouldn’t make claims I couldn’t back up.

• I wouldn’t turn every post into a fundraising solicitation.

• I wouldn’t confuse controversy with persuasion.

• And I would never sacrifice credibility because somebody promised me they could make something “go viral.”

I’ve also had mixed experiences paying influencers. The last time I tried it, I wasn’t thrilled with the results. So paid influencer amplification isn’t something I’m automatically recommending as part of this strategy. I’d much rather build relationships with people who genuinely care about the subject.

And About “Going Viral”...

Here’s something nobody particularly wants to hear.

It’s harder now.

What worked like absolute bonkers for us in 2022 does not necessarily work in 2026.

• Platforms have changed.

• Algorithms have changed.

• Political content distribution has changed.

• Audience behavior has changed.

• Which means we have to change too.

You cannot build a communications strategy around crossing your fingers and hoping Mark Zuckerberg wakes up feeling generous.

• Build your own distribution network.

• Build your email list.

• Build your volunteer network.

• Build relationships with candidates.

• Build relationships with organizations.

• Build relationships with creators and community leaders.

• Build an audience that actually wants to hear from you.

• Because algorithms change.

Relationships travel with you.

You Are the News

This may be the most important thing I’ve learned since that first terrifying launch in April 2022.

• You don’t have to wait for someone to decide your story is newsworthy.

• You can create the story.

• You can create the video.

• You can create the conversation.

• You can give candidates and activists the tools to carry it into their communities.

• You can take one 30-second advertisement and surround the internet with the larger story.

• A campaign with $100,000 can buy impressions.

But a movement with candidates, mothers, volunteers, creators, activists, county parties and community leaders can create something money alone cannot guarantee:

Conversation.

So here’s my rule for 2026:

DON’T JUST DROP THE AD. SURROUND THE INTERNET WITH THE STORY. YOU ARE THE NEWS.

• Create once.

• Cut many times.

• Launch natively.

• Amplify authentically.

• Measure everything.

• Feed the winner.

• Keep the story alive.

And if you’re staring at your computer right now, feeling like the learning curve looks suspiciously like Mount Everest?

I promise you this:

There is a trail.

You just need someone to show you where it starts.

Pic of me last week at probably my last film shoot ever. What a ride it has been!

Yours in resistance,

Nancy Thompson

If you can donate to our ads, please go here: DONATE

A Timeline of our Greatest Hits:

Thank you,

Yours in Resistance,

Nancy Thompson

Two weeks ago, I was at the DNC meeting in Austin, and almost the minute I walked in, a rural Democrat pulled me aside. She was upset. Apparently, an influencer had posted something bashing me for buying billboards, saying billboards don’t work and telling people not to donate to PACs that spend money on them.

I hadn’t seen the post, and frankly, people are allowed to disagree about campaign strategy. God knows Democrats have turned disagreeing about campaign strategy into an Olympic sport. But what struck me wasn’t the criticism. It was how upset this rural Democrat was. She looked at me and essentially said, “Doesn’t she understand what those billboards mean to us?”

And there it was.

Because a billboard in Ft. Worth is advertising. A Democratic billboard in rural Texas can be something entirely different. It can say: You are not alone.

The first billboard I ever bought was in 1995 for a Dell Computer campaign. So I’ve been doing this for a while. When Mothers Against Greg Abbott started buying political billboards in 2022, however, I was a little rusty. Luckily, I had creative agency friends who knew exactly what they were doing, and together we launched more than 60 billboards across Texas during the 2022 campaign season.

We didn’t just throw random messages on giant rectangles and hope democracy happened. We thought about locations, traffic, audiences, messages, and candidates. We learned pretty quickly that people noticed them. Candidates noticed. Volunteers noticed. Republicans definitely noticed. But most importantly, Democrats living in communities where they rarely saw anything representing them noticed.

That last part matters more than people sitting behind laptops analyzing campaign tactics sometimes understand.

Imagine being a Democrat in a Texas county where Republicans dominate almost every elected office. You drive around town and see Republican yard signs, Republican flags, Republican bumper stickers, Republican candidates and Republican messaging. Then one morning you’re driving to work and suddenly there it is: a giant Democratic message.

Maybe it’s the face and name of a local Democratic candidate. Maybe it’s about public schools. Maybe it’s about protecting water. Maybe it simply says, “Texans Over Billionaires. Vote Democrat.”

For someone in Austin, Houston or Dallas, that may just be another political advertisement. For someone who thought they were one of twelve Democrats left in their county, it can feel like somebody planted a flag.

We’re here. We see you. And there are more of us than you think.

That is not something you can entirely measure with a click-through rate.

One of the mistakes we make in modern politics is assuming that if something can’t immediately be tracked through a digital dashboard, it doesn’t have value. How many people clicked? How many emails did we collect? How many donations came directly from it? Those are useful measurements, but campaigns also spend enormous amounts of money building something much harder to quantify: familiarity.

A voter sees a candidate’s name on a billboard Monday. They see the candidate’s social media ad Wednesday. A mailer arrives Friday. They see a yard sign Saturday. Then they walk into the voting booth and see that name again.

Suddenly that candidate isn’t a stranger.

That’s advertising. Billboards aren’t supposed to close the sale all by themselves. They’re part of the drumbeat.

There is also the tiny geographical detail that Texas is freaking huge. We have 254 counties, rural communities, small towns, highways stretching hundreds of miles and voters who aren’t perpetually online. Political strategy in Texas cannot be designed as though everyone lives in a densely populated neighborhood with high-speed internet and spends six hours a day scrolling Instagram.

You know what Texans do have?

Roads. Lots and lots of roads.

And we spend a ridiculous amount of time driving on them.

That’s one reason outdoor advertising can be particularly useful in communities where campaigns struggle to reach people through traditional Democratic channels. A billboard doesn’t require someone to follow your account. It doesn’t care about an algorithm. It doesn’t land in a spam folder. Nobody can hit “Skip Ad.” Nobody can scroll past it. And it doesn’t disappear because a billionaire woke up one morning and decided to change the social media algorithm again.

It just stands there. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, doing its job.

Billboards are particularly good at doing a few simple things repeatedly. They build candidate name and face recognition, especially for down-ballot candidates who don’t have millions of dollars to introduce themselves. They reinforce messages voters may already be seeing on television, through mail, online or at their doors. They work beautifully for simple reminders like “Early Voting Starts Monday,” “Vote All the Way Down the Ballot,” or “Texans Over Billionaires.” They can introduce an issue, establish a campaign’s presence in a community and create repeated impressions among commuters who travel the same roads every day.

Digital billboards give us even more flexibility because messages can be changed quickly. A campaign can highlight a candidate, switch to an early-voting message and then move into a final GOTV message without replacing an entire physical board.

There is another benefit people rarely talk about: candidates freaking love their billboards.

And I love watching them see one for the first time! They take pictures underneath them. Their volunteers take pictures. Supporters share them online. County parties post them. People text pictures to their friends. Suddenly one billboard becomes social media content, fundraising content, volunteer content and earned attention.

It’s an instant candidate glow-up.

But there is something deeper happening too. Imagine running as a Democrat somewhere Republicans have dominated for decades. You’re knocking doors. You’re raising $25 at a time. You’re attending county fairs and candidate forums. You’re putting hundreds of miles on your car. You’re doing events where six people show up and three of them are related to you.

Then one morning you drive down the highway.

And there is your face.

Twenty feet tall.

Someone invested in you. Someone believes your race matters. Someone believes Democrats should compete in your community.

Tell me that doesn’t put a little gas back in the tank.

I called a candidate after we posted a billboard with their name and send them a photo and they called me with tears in their eyes. I told this candidate, “I just want you to know I see you and how hard you are working.”

Republicans are doing it!

And here’s the part of the anti-billboard argument that always makes me laugh: Republicans use billboards too. They have for decades. Political campaigns, corporations, hospitals, universities, lawyers, restaurants and basically every Buc-ee’s within 400 miles use outdoor advertising for the same fundamental reason.

Repeated exposure builds familiarity.

So asking, “Do billboards work?” is actually the wrong question.

The better question is: What are we trying to accomplish, who are we trying to reach, and is a billboard a good tool for that particular job?

Sometimes the answer will be no. Sometimes digital advertising makes more sense. Sometimes mail does. Sometimes television, texting or canvassing is the better investment. But in a state as geographically enormous and politically diverse as Texas, declaring an entire communications medium useless is silly.

And this is ultimately why that conversation at the DNC meeting stayed with me.

Political professionals tend to talk about voters as numbers. Persuasion universes. Turnout scores. Impressions. CPM. Precinct performance. All of that matters. I use data too.

But voters are human beings.

And human beings want to know they belong to something.

When Democrats disappear from rural communities, we shouldn’t be surprised when voters conclude Democrats don’t exist there. You cannot rebuild a party in places where the party is invisible.

That doesn’t mean putting up a billboard and declaring Mission Accomplished. It means showing up. It means knocking doors, running candidates, holding events, rebuilding county parties, talking about local issues, supporting organizers and giving people something they can participate in.

And yes, sometimes it means putting up a gigantic freaking sign next to the highway that says:

WE’RE HERE.

Billboards don’t replace organizing. They amplify it.

I would never tell a campaign, “Forget field. Forget volunteers. Forget digital. Forget mail. Just buy a billboard.” That would be ridiculous. Billboards are one tool in a much larger toolbox.

But Democrats aren’t exactly suffering from too much visibility in rural Texas. Quite the opposite.

For years, we’ve talked about rebuilding Democratic infrastructure outside the major cities. Well, infrastructure begins with presence. People need to see us. Candidates need to know someone has their backs. Volunteers need to feel like they’re part of something bigger. And voters need to know they aren’t the only Democrat driving down that highway.

So yes, we’re going to keep organizing. We’re going to keep knocking doors. We’re going to keep making videos. We’re going to keep training candidates. We’re going to keep talking to voters.

And every once in a while, we’re also going to put our message on a giant sign beside a Texas highway.

Because sometimes democracy needs a conversation.

And sometimes? Democracy needs a 48-foot billboard.

If you want to DONATE To Billboards across Texas, you can donate here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/momsbillboards?refcode=Substack

Here’s where we currently have billboards:

My tips on buying Billboards:

1. Most billboard companies are owned by Republicans, so first check to see who will work with you.

2. Digital Billboards are the most flexible. You can change the images easily, and you don’t have to pay for a vinyl-printed billboard. You can also negotiate. I was able to run my billboard on every digital billboard in one town for less than if it stayed on just one billboard.

3. Ask for deals. You never know when they'll say YES.

4. If you do print a vinyl, you should be able to reuse your vinyl on another board. Ask the billboard company.

5. Think strategically: where do you need name recognition? What areas can you turn blue or purple? Where is the location? Is there a stop light? What side of the street is the billboard on? What’s the traffic pattern? Does the candidate match the messaging for that area?

Yours in resistance,

Nancy Thompson

Dear Mothers and Others,

Five years ago, if you had asked me whether one protest outside the Texas Capitol would turn into anything, I would have laughed and said, “No way.”

Today, I just want to say thank you.

Thank you for believing in Mothers Against Greg Abbott. Thank you for believing in me. Most of all, thank you for proving that ordinary Texans really can make an extraordinary difference.

Back then, during COVID, I had just closed my stationery business. I was planning to go back into the workforce when the pandemic changed everything. I never intended for that protest to catch fire the way it did.

But it did.

My background in marketing helped me figure out the next step, and together we built something I never imagined possible. The last five years have not been easy. Democratic politics has plenty of gatekeeping. There are always people waiting for you to fail. Sometimes the obstacles feel as big as Mount Everest. But this movement has taught me something I never expected.

• Lead with gratitude.

• Share what you know.

• Never gatekeep.

• Look people in the eye and let them know they matter. Because at the end of the day, whether they’re a volunteer, a voter, or a first-time candidate, most people simply want to know that someone sees them. I do.

Over the last five years I’ve hosted more than 300 candidate webinars, helped produce dozens of political ads, built brands and messaging campaigns, interviewed hundreds of Democratic candidates, created voter education resources, and worked alongside some of the most dedicated volunteers I’ve ever met. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built together.

But the accomplishment I’m most proud of isn’t an award, a billboard, or a viral video. It’s when a candidate tells me, “You’re the reason I decided to run for office.” There is no greater compliment than knowing you’ve helped someone believe they could make a difference.

Since the 2024 election, I’ve been quietly working behind the scenes with candidates, county chairs, donors, and campaign leaders to build something bigger than any one organization.

• Today that network includes more than 230 Democratic candidates, county chairs, and campaign teams sharing messaging, research, and strategy every week.

• I wrote the Democratic Playbook and shared it freely.

• I host weekly messaging meetings.

• We’ve built AskMe2026.com

• We’ve created the Monsters ad.

• We’re putting up billboards across Texas in Midland, Abilene, San Angelo, Belton, and more communities every week.

Because I have one goal.

Help Texas Democrats win.

No gatekeeping. No keeping “secret sauce.” Just sharing everything we’ve learned so more good people can succeed. And none of it would have been possible without you. Thank you for standing with us these past five years.

Here’s to the next five.

With gratitude,

Nancy Thompson
Founder, Mothers Against Greg Abbott

P.S. Five years ago, one handmade sign started this movement. Today we’re interviewing candidates, training campaigns, buying billboards, and helping Democrats compete across Texas. If you’d like to celebrate our fifth anniversary, would you consider making a $5, $25, or $50 donation today? Every dollar helps us build the next five years.

Our Anniversary Sale on mothersagainstgregabbott.com/shop/

Upcoming Events around Texas:

• August 7 - Johnson City - Community Social 6:30 pm

• August 8th: San Antonio - Back to School Giveaway

  • 9 am - 12 pm 650 VFW Blvd, San Antonio, TX 78214

• August 8, Denton - The People’s Cookout

  • 11 am - 2 pm at Briercliff Park Pavilion, Denton, TX

• August 8 - Caldwell County Democrats HQ Grand Opening

  • 10 am at 219 N Main Street, Lockhart, TX

• August 13th - Johnson-Hill Young Dems Monthly Meeting with Holly Taylor

  • 7 pm at 205 South Main Street, Cleburne Texas

• August 19 - Wilson Co, Floresville - We the People Rural Rally

  • 7 pm - 9 pm 600 SH 97 West, Floresville

• August 28th - Johnson City Community Social

  • 6:30 - 9 pm in Johnson City Go here to sign up

• August 29 - Travis County -Together for Victory - Pooja Sethi General Election Kick off

  • 10:30 am - 12:30 PM at Travis County Coordinated Campaign Office

• September 13 - Bastrop Tri-CountyGOTV

  • 2-5 pm at Bastrop Convention Center, 1408 Chestnut St B, Bastrop

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

Ninety-nine days before Election Day can feel overwhelming. Every campaign suddenly realizes there aren’t enough volunteers, enough money, enough time, or enough coffee. The candidates who thrive over the next three months aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones with the best plan.

Here’s the first thing I tell every candidate:

Print a monthly calendar.

Not your phone calendar. Not Google Calendar.

A real paper calendar that your entire team can spread across a table.

Then block off four uninterrupted hours for your campaign team. Bring markers, sticky notes, snacks, and your entire team together. You’re going to build your roadmap to Election Day.

The biggest secret?

Don’t plan forward. Plan backward.

Start with Election Day and work your way back.

Step One: Build Election Day First

Ask yourself:

• Where do you want to spend Election Day?

• Which polling locations will you visit?

• Who will be with you?

• Who is responsible for checking on volunteers?

• Who will solve problems when they inevitably pop up?

• Who is watching social media?

• Who is coordinating your poll greeters and sign crews?

Election Day shouldn’t be chaos. It should feel like a well-rehearsed production.

Step Two: Map Out Early Voting

Election Day is no longer just one day.

Early voting is where many elections are won.

Block every early voting day on your calendar and build a specific plan for each one.

Ask yourself:

• Which polling locations need volunteers?

• Which days require extra visibility?

• Who is greeting voters?

• How will you remind supporters to vote early?

• What events can you hold during early voting?

• What printables do you need and when do you need them. Put printing deadlines on the calendar.

The goal is simple:

Get your supporters to vote as early as possible.

Every vote cast early is one less voter you have to worry about on Election Day.

Step Three: Build Your Ground Game

Now work backward week by week.

Schedule your door-knocking calendar now.

Map every precinct in your district.

Decide:

• Which precincts come first?

• Which neighborhoods need multiple visits?

• Where do you need more volunteers?

• Which areas are persuasion targets?

• Which areas are turnout targets?

Don’t wait until October to recruit volunteers.

Start asking today.

Every volunteer you recruit in July becomes exponentially more valuable by November. Ask volunteers to ask their friends to join them.

ASKING IS FREE! Don’t forget that!

Step Four: Plan Your Phone Banking

Phone banking isn’t just about asking for votes.

It’s about reminding people to vote early, vote all the way down the ballot, and support Democratic candidates from top to bottom.

Build weekly phone bank nights now.

Recruit callers early.

Train them before the rush begins.

Step Five: Organize Poll Watching

Poll watchers are one of the hardest volunteer positions to fill because they require planning and commitment. Start recruiting now.

Identify:

• Who can work all day?

• Who can cover shifts?

• Who understands election rules?

• Who needs training?

Don’t wait until the week before the election.

Step Six: Plan Your Signs

Campaign signs don’t magically appear. Estimate how many you’ll need at polling locations during early voting and on Election Day.

Think through:

• Printer deadlines

• Storage

• Transportation

• Installation

• Pickup

• Volunteers

A sign without someone assigned to place it is just expensive garage décor.

Step Seven: Mail Smarter

Nothing frustrates voters more than receiving campaign mail after they’ve already voted. Plan your mail program backward.

If you want voters to receive a piece before early voting begins, work backward from the delivery date.

Aim for mail to arrive Wednesday through Saturday before early voting starts.

Ask yourself:

• How many pieces can you realistically afford?

• Should you partner with other Democratic candidates to reduce costs?

• Which voters are most important to reach?

Every mail piece should have a purpose. Ideally, you should plan for 3 mailers between now and election day. We will go over mailers in another post.

Step Eight: Know Every Media Deadline

One of the biggest surprises for first-time candidates is discovering that advertising deadlines often arrive weeks before voters ever see the ads.

Research every deadline now.

Television.

Radio.

Digital advertising.

Streaming.

Print.

Billboards.

Many media buys require creative approval weeks in advance.

Create one master calendar with every deadline highlighted.

Future you will be incredibly grateful.

Step Nine: Start Daily Team Meetings

A campaign without communication quickly becomes a campaign full of surprises.

Even a 20-minute morning meeting can change everything.

Meet every morning at 8:00, 8:30, or 9:00 a.m.

If daily isn’t realistic, meet at least three times each week.

Review progress every morning.

Your agenda should include:

• Field updates

• Fundraising progress

• Data and voter targeting

• Social media content

• Community events

• Democratic Party events

• Volunteer recruitment

• Press opportunities

• Problems that need solving today

Campaigns are won through hundreds of small tasks completed consistently. Campaigns that don’t have daily or weekly meetings don’t win elections. Sorry, that’s a hard truth!

Step Ten: Build Your Communications System

Good communication saves campaigns.

Create one master contact list that includes:

• Immediate campaign staff

• Volunteers

• County Chairs

• Precinct Chairs

• Democratic clubs

• Allied organizations

• Other Democratic candidates

• Vendors

• Consultants

• Friendly media contacts

Program everyone’s phone number into your phone today.

You’ll thank yourself later.

Step Eleven: Coordinate With Other Democrats

Texas Democrats cannot afford to campaign alone.

Set up meetings with all your County Chairs. Meet with candidates.

Ask questions like:

• Which festivals should we attend together?

• Which parades are coming up?

• Which rodeos?

• Which community events matter most?

• Can we share volunteers?

• Can we share mail?

• Can we split advertising costs?

Start local.

Build relationships within your district first.

Then work your way up the ballot.

We’re stronger when we campaign together.

Step Twelve: Get Your House in Order

Before things get busy:

• Update your website.

• Add every endorsement.

• Make donation links easy to find.

• Confirm event calendars.

• Organize campaign photos.

• Prepare volunteer signup forms.

• Review your fundraising plan.

When asking for donations, be specific.

Instead of saying, “Please donate,” explain exactly what their money accomplishes.

For example:

• $10 helps us send 100 text messages.

• $50 prints literature for a weekend of door knocking.

• $100 helps us reach thousands of voters online.

People are more likely to give when they understand exactly what they’re helping accomplish.

Finally... Don’t Gatekeep

One of the best lessons I’ve learned in Texas politics is this:

Share information.

Share ideas.

Share templates.

Share lessons.

Texas Democrats are often trying to do a lot with very little.

Helping another Democrat doesn’t make your campaign weaker.

It makes our movement stronger.

None of us wins alone.

The candidates who understand that usually build the strongest organizations, recruit the best volunteers, and leave behind something bigger than one election.

Because campaigns aren’t just about winning votes.

They’re about building the Democratic infrastructure Texas will need for years to come.

Let’s go win this thing!

Nancy Thompson

Mothers Against Greg Abbott

One of the biggest mistakes first-time candidates make is assuming campaign finance reports are just paperwork for accountants. They aren’t. Campaign finance reports are one of the most valuable opposition research tools available, and the best part? They’re free. Most candidates glance at them for five minutes. Smart candidates spend an afternoon digging. The difference can completely change how they understand a race.

Think of campaign finance reports like reading your opponent’s playbook before kickoff. They reveal who is investing in the campaign, what they’re spending money on, which consultants they trust, and often where they’re feeling vulnerable.

The trick isn’t just reading the report. It’s learning to read between the lines.

Follow the Money, but how do you do that?

Go to the TEC, FEC, and Transparency USA websites:

• Transparency USA: https://www.transparencyusa.org/tx/

• Texas Ethics Commission: https://www.ethics.state.tx.us/search/cf/SimpleSearch.php

• Federal Elections Commission: https://www.fec.gov/data/elections/?state=&cycle=2026&election_full=true

Glance at it and see what stands out. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Who is giving them money?

• Do you notice any patterns from reporting period to reporting period

• Are they funded by Developers, oil and gas, real estate, private school voucher advocates, trial lawyers, unions, Out-of-State PACS, Ideological groups, In-state PACs, and small donor dollars?

• Does your opponent say they are fighting for working families but then 80% of their money comes from millionaires and PACs? The money tells you who gets the first phone call on Election Day.

• Who isn’t giving? Who did they get endorsements from? Did they donate? What organizations never donated? Did local leaders and businesses stay away? Silence can be revealing.

• Look at dates of donations. When did they suddenly see a flood of money? Did fundraising stall? Are they relying on one fundraising event rather than grassroots support? A healthy campaign has steady fundraising.

Read and Track Expenses

Who is getting money: any polling companies, consultants, direct mail, digital ads, opposition research firms, text messaging companies, etc? Where is the money being spent?

Who is getting paid? Remember campaigns are ecosystems. Look at recurring payments, consultants’ names, and whether the consultants are local or DC-based? Are any family members getting payments? What vendors are repeatedly billing large amounts? Sometimes you will discover the same consultant is working for multiple races, helping explain why several candidates have similar messaging.

Cash on hand matters. It’s not about how much you raise; it’s about how much you have on hand going into the last quarter. Campaigns run on cash!

Compare multiple reports. Look at all the reports for the current and past cycles. You may be able to track a few similarities.

Compare the candidates to their messaging. Read everything. Their social media, their website, their speeches, and then compare to their financial reports.

Every election cycle has its major players. Rather than memorizing names, learn how to identify recurring donors, PACs, industries, and consultants. Build your own watch list. It will become far more valuable than someone else’s.

Build a Donor Map

Create a simple spreadsheet with the following columns:

• Amount donated

• Donor Name

• Occupation

• Employer

• Industry

• City

• Date given

• Wikipedia link (if applicable)

• Google search links

• Connections to elected officials

• Any board positions that may apply

• NOTES:

Expand the donor Map

• List previous political donations

• Company website

• LinkedIn (if applicable)

• State Contracts

• Were they appointed to any board positions

• Family relationships

• Related PACS

A Word of Caution

These are real people, and just because someone donates doesn’t automatically mean they are buying influence. Avoid making claims you can’t support. But show facts and let voters connect the dots. Don’t trade your credibility for a headline.

Here’s a list of terms you need to become familiar with:

• COH - Candidates and Office Holders

• JCOH - Judicial Candidates/Office Holders

• GPAC - General Political Action Committee

• SPAC - Specific Political Action Committee

• JSPC - Judicial Specific Action Committee

• CEC - County Executive Committee

• LEG - Legislative Caucuses

• PTYCORP - Party Contributions from Corporations or Labor Unions

• SCC - Supreme Court Candidates/Office Holders

• SPK - Speaker

How to be a sleuth on Google?

Search combinations like:

• “Donor Name” + lawsuit

• “Donor Name” + board of directors

• “Donor Name” + SEC filing

• “Donor Name” + campaign contribution

• “Donor Name” + PAC

• “Donor Name” + nonprofit

• “Donor Name” + lobbying

Many of the best discoveries happen outside the finance report.

Look for Relationships

Campaigns rarely exist in isolation. Ask yourself:

• Do several candidates share the same consultants?

• Do they use the same mail company?

• Do they share donors?

• Do they all receive checks from the same PAC?

• Do they start using identical messaging at the same time?

Politics is a very small world. Patterns matter.

Every campaign leaves breadcrumbs. The candidates who learn to follow them don’t just understand their opponents better. They understand the race better. Campaign finance reports aren’t paperwork. They’re one of the best investigative tools in politics.

Happy digging.

Nancy Thompson

“Democrats need better messaging.”

Usually what follows is a discussion about slogans, logos, colors, fonts, TikTok videos, or whether we should say “working families” instead of “middle class.”

None of those things are the real problem. Our problem isn’t messaging.

Our problem is that we’ve allowed someone else to decide what the conversation is about. And once your opponent controls the conversation, you’re already losing.

Think about the last few years in Texas.

How much time have we spent talking about drag queens?

• Bathrooms.

• Library books.

• Critical Race Theory.

• Woke.

• Flags.

• Pronouns.

• Disney.

• Bud Light.

• Whether a teacher used the wrong word.

How much of that affects the average Texan’s daily life?

Almost none of it.

Now think about what Texans actually complain about while standing in line at H-E-B.

• “My insurance just went up again.”

• “I can’t believe what groceries cost.”

• “My property taxes are ridiculous.”

• “Our hospital closed.”

• “My daughter can’t afford a house.”

• “My electric bill is insane.”

• “My kid’s school keeps losing teachers.”

That’s the real election.

But too often Democrats leave that conversation because Republicans have convinced us to chase theirs instead.

Every hour spent arguing over a manufactured controversy is an hour we’re not talking about why Texas keeps getting harder to afford.

And that’s exactly where Republicans want us.

Republicans Understand Something Democrats Often Forget

Republicans don’t expect every voter to remember every policy.

They expect voters to remember a story. Their story changes over time, but its structure almost never does.

• There is always a villain.

• There is always a threat.

• There is always a promise that only Republicans can protect you.

• It’s simple.

• It’s emotional.

• And they repeat it until everyone else starts repeating it too—including Democrats.

Democrats often make the opposite mistake.

• We answer every accusation.

• Correct every statistic.

• Respond to every tweet.

• Fact-check every interview.

• Issue another press release.

• By the end of the week we’ve spent all our energy talking about issues Republicans selected.

We didn’t choose the battlefield. We walked onto theirs.

Stop Playing Defense

One of the biggest mistakes candidates make is believing they have to answer every question exactly as it’s asked.

You don’t.

• A reporter asks a question.

• An opponent throws an accusation.

• A voter raises a concern

Answer it honestly. Then bridge back to what matters.

Imagine someone asks:

“What do you think about the latest culture war controversy?”

A campaign that loses spends five minutes debating the controversy.

A campaign that wins says:

“Texans deserve leaders focused on lowering insurance costs, fixing our schools, and making life affordable again. That’s what families are talking about where I live.”

Same question.

Completely different conversation.

That’s not dodging. That’s leadership. Leaders decide what deserves attention.

Republicans Have Owned Texas for More Than Twenty Years

Here’s something Democrats rarely say enough. Republicans campaign like they’re the opposition. They’re not.

They’ve controlled statewide government for over two decades.

When people complain about:

• property taxes...

• insurance premiums

• the electric grid

• water shortages

• healthcare

• maternal mortality

• having to drive 2 hours to get to nearest hospital or doctor

• school closures

• jobs being taken over by AI

We need to ask them if they know who’s been running Texas?

Republicans

The point isn’t to attack Republicans personally. The point is to remind voters that records matter. And Republicans are sitting on worse records than Democrats; it’s just that we do a really shitty job of calling it out.

Dear Texas Republicans, you don’t get to run the state for twenty-plus years and still campaign like someone else is responsible. Those days are OVER!

Photo credit to Centre for Ageing Better

Democrats Need One Story

Sometimes I think Democrats have forty different campaigns happening at once.

• Healthcare.

• Schools.

• Housing.

• Water.

• Infrastructure.

• Workers’ rights.

• Women’s rights.

• Voting rights.

• Climate.

Each issue is important. But voters don’t organize information that way.

People remember stories. So give them one.

Here’s mine:

Texas families are working harder than ever, but life keeps getting more expensive because the people running our state are looking out for powerful insiders instead of the families who built Texas. This means my family pays more in Taxes and my kids are getting less and I am sick of it.

Suddenly every issue connects.

• Insurance.

• Housing.

• Healthcare.

• Schools.

• Property taxes.

• Water.

• Corruption

• Education

They’re no longer separate debates. They’re chapters in the same story.

Simplicity Isn’t Dumbing Things Down

One of the biggest misconceptions in politics is that simple messages are simplistic.

They aren’t.

Simple messages are memorable. Nobody remembers your seven-point housing policy. They remember how you made them feel and whether you understood their life.

They remember whether you sounded like someone who lives in their neighborhood instead of someone who writes white papers.

Talk like your neighbor at H-E-B and don’t forget to wear your “Ask Me Who I am voting for shirt” and bring a few candidate trading cards. Don’t talk like a legislative policy director.

The Election Starts Long Before Election Day

Here’s the part that gives me hope.

Republicans aren’t better storytellers because they’re smarter. They’re better because they’re disciplined. Discipline is something Democrats can learn.

Imagine every Democratic candidate in Texas, whether they’re running for school board, city council, the Legislature, Congress, or statewide office, telling the same basic story.

• Life costs too much.

• Government should solve problems.

• Freedom means making your own decisions.

• Texas should work for families—not insiders.

Different voices. Different communities. One narrative.

That doesn’t erase our diversity. It amplifies it.

Because voters don’t need a hundred disconnected messages. They need a reason to believe we’re all rowing in the same direction and that we as Democrats are relatable.

That’s how conversations change.

Conversations are how elections are won!

Now I am determined that the only way we can win this at this part of the game is not to wait for TMP, James Talarico, or Gina Hinojosa to save us, but to work from the bottom of the ticket up, go super local, and work our way up the ticket. We need to recruit our friends and neighbors to knock on doors with us and tell them about candidates. We need them to recruit their friends and so on and so on. But the relational marketing we need the most isn’t coming from an app; it’s coming from getting our asses off the couch and talking to people, telling them our story about why we are volunteering to help get Democrats elected and be seen as relatable in our communities and not the picture that Texas Republicans are trying to paint about Democrats.

I get called radical a lot. And trust me, there is nothing radical about me at all. The most exciting thing I do is sometimes I run and get a Dr. Pepper. My life involves taking kids where they need to go. Helping my special needs son and packing orders. Hardly a radical. But a very frustrated Mom who wants Texas Democrats to get their shit together and win elections. Losing means more innocent people die due to Republican policies.

I guess if wanting people to live is radical, so be it. I thought it was just being a good Christian.

Nancy Thompson