Progressive Resurgence in Rural Texas
200+ progressives meet at LBJ Ranch, 1,000+ more join virtually.
Last Saturday, upwards of 200+ progressives packed in the LBJ Ranch to listen to a TX Dem Chair candidate forum organized by the Texas Progressive Caucus. Nearly 1,000 joined us virtually across various platforms.
The forum was for candidates vying to replace long-time Texas Democratic Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa. The election of a new State Chair is on March 29th.
This was by far the largest event I’ve seen in legit farm country, and I’m still slightly stunned by the turnout. Texas launched the progressive movement, and this is our home. Not only are we here to stay, but we’re showing up.
Being a progressive populist is as Texan as the open skies of the west and the piney woods of the east.
In the beginning, Texas was so populist that we didn’t even allow banks! Being a progressive populist is the most Texan thing a person can do. Texans have always had a populist rebellious streak.
In the late 1800s, fed up with the Robber Barons and the other oligarchs of the day, a group of Texans came together in Lampasas — a small town on the northern edge of the Texas Hill Country, just a few miles away from my family’s ranch.
So was born the National Farmers Alliance and Industrial Union, which evolved to become the Populist Party or People's Party. It fought for various causes, including graduated income tax, direct election of Senators, a shorter workweek, and public ownership of railroads and communication lines.
Third Parties can’t win in a two-party system, so the progressive populists started merging with the two major parties. Starting with the 1896 election, many progressive populists started slowly fusing with the Democratic Party with the nomination of William Jennings Bryan, while some others helped get progressive populist Theodore Roosevelt as VP on the Republican ticket (this is back when the GOP had some true populists in their ranks).
By the election of FDR and the New Deal, the progressive populists had become the Democratic Party. From FDR to LBJ, we passed Social Security, ended child labor, passed a 40-hour work week, Medicare, Medicaid, Civil Rights, Voting Rights, the GI Bill, rural electrification, road and other infrastructure building, caused a boom in union membership, and so much more.
To my fellow Texans: being a progressive populist means representing the best of Texas. It follows the best of our heritage while it is an act of defiance against the oligarchs and their puppets who wish to control us.
Ok, so what is a “progressive populist” anyway?
Being a progressive populist is simple: you put people before profits.
Progressive populists recognize the true threat to our freedom are the oligarchs. They are the ones who crush our family businesses. They are the ones who price gouge us. They are the ones who buy our politicians. They are the ones who rig the rules against us.
What is an oligarch, you may ask? They are the ones who use their power to control — not just influence, not just to have a say in things, but for domination. Oligarchs fundamentally want to monopolize our economy so they can monopolize their power. This isn’t so much about how much money someone has; there are a lot of really good, well-off people out there; this is about those who want to dominate us.
Government is a tool. As FDR would put it, government is simply community self-help. Lincoln put it as government does what we as individuals cannot do.
Think of government like a screwdriver—you can either use it to build something or you could stab someone with it. The screwdriver itself has no morality, but the hand that wields it does.
Under the reign of progressive populists, the people controlled the tools of government.
Now, it’s the oligarchs.
It’s our job to take our tools back.
So, you may be asking, then what makes a populist “progressive?” Well, there’s a simple answer to that as well:
Progressives see racism, sexism, and all other dog whistles as tools to divide and distract the people. The oligarchs want us to see the world as left vs right and not top vs bottom. That’s why they monopolized the mass media to have us fight each other instead of them—and sadly, that’s true for most outlets in the US, including many of the “liberal” ones.
For instance: four (4) companies have monopolized our food system. There’s no longer a free market in our food system; it’s now a monopoly market. This allows the monopolies to rig the rules, thereby causing thousands of family farms to go out of business while also price-gouging consumers. Meanwhile, our current Ag Commissioner is too busy playing “CuLtUrE wArRiOr” to give a shit. Ol’ Sid would rather talk about DEI, or whatever topics the oligarchs want him to talk about, instead of actually trying to create a free and fair market so that family farmers can stop going out of business.
Progressive populists, in short, see oligarchs as the enemy and thereby want to limit their power via monopoly-busting and other means, while also seeing racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination as a divide tactic politicians use to keep people distracted as they send more kickbacks to the oligarchs who own them. At the end of the day, all people, regardless of our differences, want the same thing—to live a good life, to provide for their families, and to spend time with the ones they love. Only by rejecting Republican dog whistles and coming together as a people can we guarantee that right for all.
How does the Texas Progressive Caucus fit into this movement?
The Texas Progressive Caucus (TXPC) is a continuation of the progressive populist movement, and we intend to return progressive populists to power.
In May 2022, a new group of Texas progressives officially formed the TXPC. Our original team was as diverse as the great state of Texas, with Kristi Lara, Emad Salem, Aftab Sibbiqui, Julio Acosta, LaTonya Whittington, Trish Contreras, Mitzi Rusk, Mia Aleman, Lauren Tenney, and others helping put the TXPC together.
Our mission is simple: to build and strengthen all levels of the Democratic Party in Texas to (re)turn Texas progressive. Above all else, we are a party-building organization.
Why party building? For 100+ years, Democrats in the South only had themselves to fight. Whoever won the primary won the election. The joke was even a dead dog, if it were a Democrat, would win — hence the term “yellow dog.” So when the GOP took power in the South, Southern Democrats had no historical knowledge or traditions of fighting Republicans to win, but they sure did remember how to fight themselves!
In the 1990s, there was a progressive populist caucus. Sadly due to infighting and some other missteps, the establishment crushed them.
The TXPC works to change the internal culture and system of the Democratic Party away from infighting and towards fighting the oligarchs and their politician puppets.
During the 2022 State Democratic Convention, lightning struck—despite being brand new and with no one really knowing us, we hosted one of the largest caucus meetings during the whole convention. It was beyond standing room only; people had to listen from outside!
At that convention, we supported progressives running for various offices, such as the SDEC, rules committee, platform committee, etc. Overall, we had decent success.
Then came 2024. Angel Viator Smith, JT Beebe, and Trish Contreras joined our Executive Committee. We expanded our mission to include helping progressives running for the Texas House and Texas Senate, where we helped three (3) progressives replace corpocrats. And then came the 2024 Texas Democratic Convention in El Paso.
At this convention, we passed the most pro-working class and pro-peace platform in Texas Democratic history, we passed a rule to turn the State Chair position into a paid position, and between our happy hour and our convention caucus, nearly 1,000 people attended our events. The only drawback is that we didn’t properly prepare for the establishment to use a quorum break to defeat some of our more progressive rules, such as Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) for the State Chair.
As proper Texans, we didn’t give up the fight — in fact, we pushed for RCV in a following SDEC meeting and passed it for the upcoming State Chair election on March 29th.
Lightning had now struck twice for us.
Party to the People; People to the Party
On January 25, we hosted the first in-person forum for the State Chair election at the heart of the Texas progressive populist movement—the Texas Hill Country (where the LBJ Ranch is located).
Admittedly, we didn’t think many people would drive out there—it is a long way from the cities. But lo and behold, 200 people showed up—so many that we had to ask people to turn off their phones as they were nearly crashing the cell tower that our livestream depended on. Over 1,000 joined us online, not including the multiple watch parties hosted around Texas.
We have 10 candidates vying for the State Chair position. They include in order of their filing:
Rev. Steve Miller
Rabbi Misha ben-David
Kendall Scudder
Darceal Tobey
Delia Parker-Mims
Aaron Arguijo
Patricia Olivares
Patsy Woods Martin
Meri Gomez
Lillie Schechter
Scudder, Parker-Mims, Arguijo, Oliveares, and Woods Martin joined us. We’ll release more information about them soon. Sign up for our newsletter for further updates.
To watch the recording, click here.
The TXPC will be endorsing a candidate soon for State Party Chair. Be sure to become a member to vote in our endorsement poll!
Stay strong,
Clayton Tucker
I love to read this! Admittedly, I’ve had a pretty low opinion of Texas for a while now, based on MSM news and my own liberal beliefs, but this movement needs to sweep the country. Sounds as if there’s a lot of momentum behind you and actually a long, rich tradition of progressive populism in Texas,so I wish you luck. Something must change in this country and progressive policies might just do it. Down with oligarchs!
Impressive. And an example for us all