Texas Democratic Party

Based on Wikipedia: Texas Democratic Party

The Party That Lost Its State

Here's a political riddle: What party controlled Texas for over a century, produced one of America's most consequential presidents, held every statewide office for generations—and then lost it all?

The answer is the Texas Democratic Party, and its story is one of the most dramatic reversals in American political history.

Texas hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976. That's nearly half a century. The state hasn't elected a single Democrat to statewide office since 1994—the longest such streak of any state in the nation. For a party that once dominated Texas so completely that Republicans were practically irrelevant, this represents a fall from power that would make Shakespeare reach for his quill.

Before Texas Was Texas

The Democratic Party's roots in Texas run deeper than the state itself. Before Texas was even part of the United States, a group of powerful men calling themselves the "Texas Association" had already planted the seeds of Democratic politics in the region. These weren't just any settlers—they were successful merchants, doctors, and lawyers, many traveling from Tennessee. More importantly, many were close personal friends of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president and the man who essentially created the modern Democratic Party.

This matters because Jackson represented something specific: a populist vision of politics that championed the "common man" against entrenched elites, even while simultaneously supporting slavery and the forced removal of Native Americans. The contradictions baked into Jacksonian democracy would haunt the Texas Democratic Party for generations.

When Texas joined the Union in 1845—signed into statehood by President James K. Polk on December 29—the Democratic Party was already the dominant political force. Most settlers had come from Southern states, where white Americans held fierce loyalty to the Democrats. By 1848, the party had adopted a convention system for selecting candidates, establishing a political machine that would run largely unchallenged for over a century.

The Civil War Crack-Up

But cracks appeared early.

In the years leading up to the Civil War, Texas Democrats began abandoning the nationalism of Andrew Jackson in favor of states' rights—the political doctrine that individual states could ignore or override federal law. This wasn't abstract philosophy. It was about one thing: preserving slavery.

The party split. A minority of Texas Democrats supported staying in the Union. The majority were secessionists. When war came, the pro-Union Democrats either fled north, went silent, or converted to the Confederate cause. Those who stayed politically active backed the rebellion.

After the Confederacy's defeat, you might expect Republicans—the party of Lincoln and emancipation—to take control. They did, briefly. Republicans captured both the governor's office and the Texas Legislature in 1869. But their dominance lasted only three years.

Why so short? Because the Texas Democrats couldn't agree on how to treat the newly freed Black population. Some supported basic civil rights. Most opposed anything beyond simple emancipation—meaning freedom in name only, without voting rights, property protections, or legal equality. This disagreement fragmented the party temporarily, but by 1872, Texas Democrats had reunited around a common cause: ending Republican rule and restricting Black political power.

For the next hundred years, Democrats dominated Texas. Republicans became political afterthoughts.

The White Primary and Jim Crow

Here's where the story gets uncomfortable but essential to understand.

The Texas Democratic Party didn't just win elections. It actively excluded Black Texans from participating in democracy at all. The party instituted "white primaries"—elections where only white citizens could vote to select Democratic candidates. Since winning the Democratic primary was essentially the same as winning the general election in one-party Texas, this meant Black Texans had no meaningful voice in choosing their representatives.

This system lasted until 1953, when the Supreme Court case Terry v. Adams finally ended it. To put that in perspective: the Texas Democratic Party was explicitly, legally racist within living memory of many people alive today.

The party has since transformed completely, adopting what might be called liberal positions on race and civil rights since the 1960s. But this history matters for understanding what happened next.

The Great Realignment

The first real warning sign came in 1928. The Democratic presidential nominee that year was Al Smith—the first Catholic to run for president on a major party ticket. Anti-Catholic prejudice ran deep in Texas, and the state voted Republican for the first time ever in a presidential election. It was a preview of what was coming, though it would take decades to fully materialize.

The 1950s brought open warfare within Texas Democratic ranks. Liberal Democrats—who supported civil rights, unions, and federal social programs—clashed with conservative Democrats, who increasingly shared more ideology with Republicans than with their own party's national leadership. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, a native Texan and World War Two hero, carried the state in both 1952 and 1956.

The 1960s offered a brief revival. Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texas senator, ran for vice president in 1960, helping Democrat John F. Kennedy carry the state. Johnson became the most powerful Texan ever to hold the presidency after Kennedy's assassination in Dallas in 1963. His Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 transformed American society—and sealed the fate of his own party in his home state.

Johnson reportedly said after signing the Civil Rights Act that Democrats had "lost the South for a generation." He was being optimistic. In Texas, they've lost it for at least two generations and counting.

The Slow Collapse

Johnson carried Texas easily in 1964. But by 1968, Democrat Hubert Humphrey barely squeaked out a win in the state. In 1976, Jimmy Carter became the last Democratic presidential candidate to win Texas—helped by being a Southern moderate in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal that destroyed Republican credibility.

Then came 1978. Bill Clements won the governor's race, becoming the first Republican governor of Texas since Reconstruction—that brief period after the Civil War when federal troops enforced equal rights in Southern states. The dam had cracked.

By the 1990s, Republicans had established a strong foothold. By the 2000s, they dominated. George W. Bush, son of President George H.W. Bush, served as governor before winning the presidency in 2000. Rick Perry succeeded him and served as governor for a record-setting fourteen years.

Today, Republicans control both chambers of the Texas Legislature with comfortable majorities. They hold both U.S. Senate seats. They control every statewide elected office—governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller, land commissioner, and more.

Who Are Today's Texas Democrats?

The Texas Democratic Party of 2025 bears almost no resemblance to the party of white primaries and states' rights. It now supports positions that would have been unthinkable to Texas Democrats of the segregation era: abortion access, cannabis legalization, LGBTQ rights, gun control, and expanding Medicaid—the federal-state health insurance program for low-income Americans.

The party's base has changed completely. Black Texans, Hispanic Texans, young voters, and urban residents form the core of Democratic support. The party's strength concentrates in the major cities: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso all have Democratic mayors. Several major counties are governed by Democrats, including Harris County (Houston) under Lina Hidalgo and Dallas County under Clay Jenkins.

But here's the challenge: Texas isn't just cities.

Rural Texas remains deeply Republican. Suburban Texas—those fast-growing communities between city centers and rural areas—has been the battleground, and Republicans have generally held it. Perhaps most concerning for Democrats: Hispanic Texans, once a reliable Democratic constituency, have shifted toward Republicans in recent elections. In a state where the Hispanic population is growing rapidly, this trend threatens Democratic hopes of ever recapturing statewide power.

The Beto Moment

In 2018, something remarkable happened. A relatively unknown congressman named Beto O'Rourke challenged Republican Senator Ted Cruz. O'Rourke was everything Cruz wasn't: charismatic, skateboard-riding, fluent in Spanish, and energetic in a way that drew comparisons to the Kennedys.

He lost. But he lost by only about 200,000 votes in a state of nearly 30 million people.

For Democrats, this felt like a breakthrough. Political analysts began talking seriously about Texas becoming competitive—perhaps even flipping to the Democratic column in presidential races. The "Beto moment" generated enormous fundraising, national attention, and genuine hope that Texas's long Republican era might be ending.

It hasn't worked out that way. O'Rourke ran for president in 2020 and dropped out early. He ran for governor in 2022 and lost by eleven points. The 2024 elections saw Republicans strengthen their hold on the state.

Still, Democrats point to demographic trends: Texas is becoming more urban, more diverse, and younger. All of these factors theoretically favor Democrats. The question is whether these changes will translate into votes faster than Democrats lose ground among Hispanic and suburban voters.

How the Party Actually Works

Understanding the Texas Democratic Party requires understanding how party organizations function in American politics. They're not like political parties in parliamentary systems, where party leaders choose candidates and enforce discipline. American parties are more like networks—loose coalitions of candidates, activists, donors, and voters who share general values but don't take orders from anyone.

The Texas Democratic Party, headquartered in Austin, serves primarily as an infrastructure provider. Its permanent staff trains candidates in fundraising and grassroots organizing. It maintains communication channels—a website, social media accounts, email lists reaching millions of followers, and text messaging groups that push out updates and mobilize supporters.

The party operates through a convention system. Every two years, Democrats gather first at precinct conventions (your immediate neighborhood), then county conventions, then the state convention. Each level selects delegates to the next. The state convention is where real decisions happen: adopting the party platform, certifying candidates for the general election ballot, and electing the State Democratic Executive Committee.

That committee—the SDEC—includes one man and one woman from each of Texas's 31 state senate districts, plus a chairman and vice-chairman. It's the governing body of the party between conventions.

In presidential election years, the state convention also selects delegates to the Democratic National Convention, where the party's presidential nominee is officially chosen. Texas sends the second-largest delegation to the national convention—281 people total, including 262 delegates and 19 alternates. Only California sends more.

The current party chair is Kendall Scudder, elected in 2025 after the resignation of Gilberto Hinojosa, who had led the party since 2012. Hinojosa was a former school board trustee and county judge from Cameron County, on the Mexican border. His departure and Scudder's election represent an attempt to rebuild and refocus after a disappointing 2024 election cycle.

The Numbers Game

Let's look at where Texas Democrats actually hold power.

In Congress, Democrats hold 12 of Texas's 38 seats in the House of Representatives—roughly a third. Both Senate seats have been Republican since 1993. The last Democrat to serve a full Senate term from Texas was Lloyd Bentsen, who left office in 1989 to become Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton.

In the Texas Legislature, Democrats hold 11 of 31 seats in the state Senate and 62 of 150 seats in the House of Representatives. These numbers matter because they fall short of the one-third threshold needed to block certain legislative actions. Republicans can largely pass whatever they want.

On the State Board of Education—which oversees Texas's massive textbook market and has often been a battleground over issues like evolution and historical revisionism—Democrats hold five of fifteen seats.

At the local level, Democrats control the major urban counties and cities. This means they run the governments that affect the daily lives of most Texans—police, roads, parks, public health, and local courts. But state law increasingly limits what local governments can do, as the Republican legislature has preempted local policies on everything from fracking to plastic bag bans to minimum wage increases.

What Texas Democrats Want

The party's current priorities reflect both national Democratic concerns and specific Texas issues.

Medicaid expansion sits at the top of the list. When the Affordable Care Act—sometimes called Obamacare—passed in 2010, it offered states the option to expand Medicaid coverage to more low-income adults, with the federal government covering 90 percent of the cost. Most states accepted. Texas, under Republican leadership, refused.

This decision left approximately one million Texans in a coverage gap: too poor to afford private insurance, but not poor enough to qualify for traditional Medicaid, and unable to get subsidies for marketplace coverage because those subsidies were designed assuming everyone would have access to expanded Medicaid. Democrats have made closing this gap a signature issue, arguing it's both humane and economically smart—Texas hospitals eat huge costs providing uncompensated emergency care to uninsured patients.

Raising the minimum wage is another priority. The federal minimum wage is seven dollars and twenty-five cents per hour and hasn't increased since 2009. Texas uses this federal floor. Democrats argue that this rate is unlivable in a state where housing costs in major cities have skyrocketed.

Education funding remains perpetually contentious in Texas, where the school finance system has been declared unconstitutional by courts multiple times. Democrats advocate for more state funding to reduce reliance on local property taxes, which create vast inequalities between wealthy and poor districts.

In December 2023, the Texas Democratic Party became the first state party organization in America to call for a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict—a position that put it ahead of the national party and reflected the views of younger and more progressive members, though it created tensions with other Democratic constituencies.

The Historical Irony

There's a profound irony in the Texas Democratic Party's trajectory.

The party that once enforced white supremacy through law and custom now depends on voters of color for its survival. The party that championed states' rights to preserve slavery now advocates for federal power to protect civil rights. The party of rural Texas is now the party of urban Texas.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party—originally the party of Lincoln and emancipation, the party that governed Texas during Reconstruction and tried to establish equal rights for freed slaves—now dominates the same rural, white, Protestant areas that once formed the backbone of Democratic Texas.

This reversal wasn't inevitable. It resulted from conscious choices by leaders in both parties over decades: the Democratic embrace of civil rights in the 1960s, the Republican "Southern Strategy" that courted white voters uncomfortable with integration, the changing demographics of Texas as immigrants arrived and cities grew, and the cultural sorting that has increasingly made party identification less about economics and more about identity.

What Comes Next?

The future of the Texas Democratic Party remains genuinely uncertain.

Demographics appear to favor Democrats—Texas is becoming more urban, more diverse, and younger every year. But demographics are not destiny. Republicans have proven adept at winning Hispanic votes in South Texas, maintaining suburban support, and turning out rural voters at high rates. The assumption that a more diverse Texas automatically means a more Democratic Texas has not held up.

The party faces strategic questions. Should it moderate its positions to compete in suburban areas, potentially alienating its progressive base? Should it double down on mobilizing urban voters and hope that turnout improvements can overcome geographic disadvantage? Should it focus on local races where Democrats can win, building a bench of future candidates while waiting for statewide competitiveness?

For now, the Texas Democratic Party remains what it has been for three decades: a party strong enough to matter but too weak to govern. It controls the state's major cities while Republicans control the state itself. It wins millions of votes while losing every statewide race.

Whether that changes depends on factors largely beyond any party organization's control: migration patterns, economic conditions, cultural trends, and the choices made by both parties at the national level. The Texas Democratic Party's story isn't over. But its glory days as the undisputed ruler of Texas politics belong firmly to history.

That history—from the Texas Association to Andrew Jackson's disciples to white primaries to Lyndon Johnson to Beto O'Rourke—reminds us that political parties are not permanent fixtures. They evolve, transform, and sometimes lose their grip on the places that once seemed like their birthright. Texas Democrats learned this lesson the hard way. The question now is whether they can write a new chapter—or whether they'll remain a powerful minority in a state their predecessors once owned completely.