Why Democrats Need To Run On Raising The Minimum Wage

Seventeen Years on #7.25 does not help Texans with the 8th largest economy in the world.

The day after the Primary, every candidate needs to sign a pledge and do a presser about raising the minimum wage in Texas. We need to show Texans we care about their future. Define the issues of 2026! Make affordability #1 with solutions.

Greg Abbott loves to brag that Texas has the eighth-largest economy in the world. He says it so often, you would think he keeps the ranking framed next to his mirror and prays to it every morning. Yet here we are. Texas workers are still stuck with a minimum wage from 2009, $7.25 an hour.

That is the same year we were all renting DVDs from Blockbuster, Twitter was just born, Twilight books all anyone talked about, President Obama was inaugurated, and Taylor Swift was in her Fearless era.

Texas has an economy big enough to impress global economists but a wage floor small enough to embarrass anyone who has ever opened a grocery bill. If this is what success looks like something is very wrong with the definition. But it’s about to get a lot worse.

OTHER STATES

Many US States are legislatively bumping up their minimum wage in January 2026:

• Arizona $15.15

• California $16.90

• Colorado $15.16

• Connecticut $16.94

• Hawaii $16

• Maine $15.10

• Michigan $13.73

• Minnesota $11.41

• Missouri $15

• Montana $10.85

• Nebraska $15

• New Jersey $15.92

• New York $17 (NYC) and $16 (Upstate)

• Ohio $11

• Rhode Island $16

• South Dakota $11.85

• Vermonth $14.42

• Virginia $12.77

• Washington $17.13

Seventeen years. That is how long Texans have waited for the wage to move even one penny. Meanwhile rent, groceries, insurance, utilities, childcare, tuition, and pretty much everything else have climbed like ivy up a brick wall. Texans are working just as hard as ever, but the math is not mathing. You can have the eighth-largest economy in the world, but if a full time worker cannot afford an apartment near their job, that is not a miracle. That is mismanagement.

These 18 States still pay $7.25 per hour:

• Alabama

• Idaho

• Indiana

• Iowa

• Kansas

• Kentucky

• Louisiana

• Mississippi

• North Carolina

• North Dakota

• Oklahoma

• Pennsylvania

• South Carolina

• Tennessee

• Texas

• Utah

• Wisconsin

• Wyoming

Wages are at the heart of the affordability crisis

This is the heart of our affordability crisis. Start with wages and suddenly everything else makes sense. Why are families drowning under bills. Why are teachers and nurses working extra jobs. Why are young people leaving Texas. Why does every conversation about the cost of living begin and end with a sigh. Because the wage floor has been frozen in time while the cost of life has skyrocketed.

Here is the part politicians hope you never say out loud.

Raising the minimum wage is one of the fastest ways to make life more affordable for millions of Texans. Other states figured this out years ago. Conservative states. Red states. Florida raised theirs through a statewide vote. South Dakota did it. Arizona did it. Nebraska did it. Their economies did not collapse. Their small businesses did not perish. Their people simply got a little breathing room.

So why not Texas. Why are Texans forced to fight the cost of 2026 with a wage from 2009. Because our leadership is building an economy for corporations not for people. They brag about GDP while ignoring the human beings who create it.

Imagine if Democrats ran on this issue together. A clear promise. A simple message. Raise the wage and lift the state. Give Texans a fair shot at the lives they are working for. Connect affordability not only to property taxes and grocery stores and housing but to the foundation underneath it all. When work pays what work takes families stabilize. Neighborhoods improve. Small businesses thrive because people have money to spend. The whole state grows.

This is not charity. This is economic common sense. The minimum wage has not increased in seventeen years. We do not live in the same world we lived in then. A wage frozen in time does not match the economy Texans are living in now.

Democrats have an opportunity this cycle. People feel squeezed. They feel frustrated. They feel like no matter how hard they try, they are still falling behind. That feeling is not imaginary. It is structural. And it is fixable.

A party that says out loud what everyone already knows. $7.25 is not a fair shot. A party that argues for a Texas where hard work pays off. Not just for corporations or CEOs but for every family. Every worker. Every town. Every community.

Abbott can brag about his eighth-largest economy. We can talk about the Texans who actually built it. And we can offer them something better than a wage from the Blockbuster era.

If we want to lift Texans up, we start by lifting their wages.

Because affordability is not a slogan. It is a paycheck. And Texans deserve one that lets them live in the state they love.

Yours in resistance,

Nancy Thompson