RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Few topics ignite passion in Democrats like the idea of Blue Texas , or “Blexas” as the phenomenon is called. And with the match-up between Democratic state Representative James Talarico and scandal-plagued Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton polling neck-and-neck, the possibility of Blexas has been hard to ignore this midterm cycle.
Once a Democratic stronghold that produced the likes of President Lyndon B. Johnson and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, Texas voted Reagan in 1980 and has grown redder ever since. Not since 1994 have Democrats won statewide. Today, the caricature of the gun-toting, oil-loving Texas Republican has left a cultural mark on the GOP like no other.
To win in Texas would be to defeat the Republican psyche. Knowing that, Democrats have spent tens of millions in the state in 2018, 2022 and 2024, only to suffer repeated defeats in return. Texas Democratic Party leaders would say there’s a reason for that—those resources funded the top of the ticket while ignoring the absence of the political infrastructure and downballot energy needed to win statewide. This year, that’s changed.
“For the first time since '72, we've recruited a Democrat to run for every state and federal office,” state party Chair Kendall Scudder, 36, told Newsweek . “This year, we have our first coordinated campaign since '82, where all the candidates are folded into it, and what that's going to mean is that the next election cycle we're going to have infrastructure to work from.”
From Florida to Michigan and Minnesota, Democrats have proven this primary cycle that an energized organizing base can overcome an avalanche of dollars. Talarico currently outpaces Paxton—who has faced securities-fraud charges, whistleblower allegations and a 2023 impeachment attempt, all to which he has denied wrongdoing—in the fundraising race.
However, Republicans understand that losing Texas wouldn't just possibly lose them the Senate; it could threaten the very coalition they rely upon to win the White House. President Donald Trump's MAGA Inc. super PAC controls a $400 million war chest waiting to be unleashed for this very kind of race. If that were to happen, grassroots organizing could be the difference maker.
As a boy growing up in an East Texas farming family, Scudder was surrounded by Democrats. That's how things were in those days. But as the years passed, that community grew steadily red. Nonetheless, Scudder maintained his “populist [Senator] Ralph Yarborough-style views.”
A new deal Democrat rooted in rural America, Yarborough won East Texas by pledging to protect workers from Big Oil, Big Banks and Big Landowners. Scudder thought that same message could win over voters in the state’s deeply red 2 nd Senate District in 2018, so he decided to run for office. The message resonated enough to win him 41 percent of the vote, but it was not enough to overcome the institutional hurdles he faced when campaigning.
As Scudder noted, at that time there was no coordinated campaign, the term for a joint political operation where the state party and campaigns pool resources to support candidates up and down the ticket. There was also minimal local party infrastructure.
A charismatic candidate atop the ticket can rally a certain segment of voters, but there’s another segment at the bottom of the ticket that needs to be engaged directly. If a party doesn’t field candidates at the local level, which has been the case for the Democratic Party in many parts of Texas since ’72, they’re missing out on voters, making a statewide win far less probable.
In 2018, former Congressman Beto O’Rourke was that charismatic candidate. A prolific fundraiser, O’Rourke raised $80 million that cycle and came within 2.6 points of beating Senator Ted Cruz, showing Democrats across the country that the dream of Blexas was possible. However, he also became deeply aware of the state-level infrastructure needed to achieve that dream, and it was missing at the time.
“There was a chairman, there were county chairs and precinct chairs who were awesome and phenomenal and doing their best with the resources they had, but the resources were almost nothing,” O’Rourke told Newsweek . “We just had to do that all from scratch.”
In 2019, O’Rourke founded the person-to-person organizing group Powered by People. It filled the year-round organizing void that Democrats were lacking by building a network of thousands of volunteers dedicated to registering voters and speaking directly with people about the issues Democrats support.
O’Rourke made a second bid at statewide office in 2022, taking on Governor Greg Abbott. However, in a year that was unfavorable to Democrats, he lost the race by nearly 11 points despite raising over $67 million. In 2024, former Congressman Colin Allred took on Cruz but lost by 8 points while raising $80 million. Newsweek contacted the Republican Party of Texas for comment.
During that period, the state party had been under the leadership of Gilberto Hinojosa, who'd held the role since 2012. Newsweek contacted Hinojosa for comment. Scudder—who by that time had cut his teeth as chairman of the Dallas Central Appraisal District Board of Directors—sought the state party chairship in March 2025 and won. When he started, the party was $500,000 in debt and had one brick-and-mortar office in the state capital, Austin.
Today, however, Scudder said the party is not just debt-free with staff in Austin, it has also opened offices in Dallas, Houston, Amarillo and Eagle Pass. “I think that the power structure of the party had felt really comfortable with only having an office in Austin because they had learned how to build influence through proximity,” Scudder said. “But other people around the state weren't feeling that, and having these offices around the state...
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