I Never Meant to Be An Activist
As I prepare to leave my North Texas home of 18 years, I reflect on the last five.
For the first 52 years of my life, I didn’t engage in political activity; I never even put up a yard sign, nor donated to any political candidates except once when a cousin ran for Congress (he lost in the primary). Like so many others, the 2016 Presidential election changed me. The morning after that horrible night, when we saw a clearly corrupt and dangerous demagogue elected President, my wife and I determined we would work for change in our community, in our state, and in our country. We didn’t know how, but we would get involved.
Over five years later, I can say that yes, I did get involved.
I started out in 2017 going to protests — the first one I went to was in the first week of #tfg’s regime when he banned Muslims from entering the country, and several hundred of us showed up to support Muslims stuck in Immigration hold at DFW International Airport. I started learning about candidates for office; one of the first was a Congressman from El Paso with a funny name who wanted to be Senator. We also got involved in our 2017 city elections, supporting a city council candidate who had little chance of winning and in fact didn’t win but took enough votes to enable a far-right candidate to beat a moderate conservative. Oops.
In early 2018, I went to my County Democratic Convention as an observer but volunteered to be a county delegate to the State Convention, where I met a whole lot more activists and was introduced to the Democratic veteran community.
The State Convention was a rush, and I came out of it fired up. I got involved in several local campaigns, notably Sharon Hirsch for House District 66, Mark Phariss for State Senate District 8, and Lorie Burch for Congressional District 3. But I was really all-in with Beto O’Rourke’s Senate campaign, founding with several others and then running a statewide grass-roots group we called “Veterans for Beto.” My friend who I met at the Convention, Nancy Myers, broke me in on block walking, and I spent the rest of the summer and into the fall canvassing, phone banking, and organizing for Beto and my local candidates. Election Day found me, along with Nancy and my friend Elisa Massimino, canvassing for Beto in south Dallas and helping get people to the polls to vote.
Not winning ANY of those races in November 2018 was hugely disappointing, especially given they were all pretty close — Sharon lost by a mere 390 votes, and Beto by about 2 percentage points against an incumbent. Rather than discouraging me, I felt like maybe more work could lead to different outcomes. First, I became a precinct chair, so I could be directly involved in the governance of the County party. I volunteered to be an officer in my city’s new Democratic Club, Plano Area Democrats, and worked with my fellow board members to organize events to encourage political activism in Plano. I got involved in a nonpartisan group, StandUp4Plano, that focused on electing moderate candidates to city council and school boards, and encouraging overall good, moderate governance.
In mid-2020, just before the push to the 2020 general election, I was asked to run for and was elected to be the Communications Director for our County Democratic Party. I also helped to organize and run Texas Veterans for Biden/Harris, an official group of the Texas Democratic Party that aligned with Biden’s national campaign. In 2021, I took the next step and became a professional political consultant, managing two local campaigns, one for school board and one for city council.
And we finally had success! Out of five races for city council, the coalition I was part of won three, including Mayor! And out of four school board races, we won three. It was an amazing feeling to win.
In short, the last five years of my life, and in particular the last two, have been largely devoted to political activism. It has consumed my life outside of work, and at some point, it all really started to become overwhelming: physically, emotionally, and mentally draining. It’s hard work, there’s always more to do, and there is always someone, or typically several someones, who think you’re doing it wrong. That sort of conflict is tough for someone like me whose training and experience is to work towards consensus, not conflict, at least with supposed allies. By February 2022, mentally and emotionally exhausted, I stepped down from my Party role and dialed back my involvement in other roles.
Going back to about 2015, my wife and I had discussed moving from our current home in North Texas. We thought about living in a rural area, maybe with some land, maybe near one of the many lakes in Texas, and even bought a lot to build on. We ultimately decided against that and sold the lot, but we kept looking and decided that Delaware, with a mix of a better tax situation, better politics, and better climate-change resilience, would be a good place to be. Mentally I saw this move happening within a couple of years, but economics and circumstances resulted in the move happening now, before mid-2022.
Surprisingly, our move isn’t all about politics. If it was just that, I would prefer to stay and continue the fight. But the State Legislature has chosen to fund public schools on the backs of homeowners, and that means my property taxes have gone up 300% in the 18 years I’ve been in Texas. Even with Delaware’s state income tax, I’ll come out ahead, and once I retire, even more so.
But it also is about politics. The decline in state funding for schools is a political decision on the part of the Republicans who control the state government to provide a favorable tax situation for their oil and gas industry and other corporate donors. Gerrymandering and voter suppression means many Republican-controlled positions and districts aren’t competitive, so the Primary winner is often the winning candidate in the General. This means Republican candidates have rushed to the extreme right to appeal to an increasingly extremist base. The result has been a lack of governance and a stream of extremist laws banning abortion, allowing permit-less, open-carry of firearms, attacking trans children, and banning books and history education. Texas produces more energy than any other state, not just petroleum and natural gas but also solar and wind energy, but our state-managed power grid cannot reliably keep the lights on.
Intimidation of political opponents has become the norm, armed militants are common at political events and protests, and calls to violence and actual violence by the extreme right have become more frequent. Will there be widespread political violence? Hard to say, but history has shown that if we wait until it’s clear that it’s time to leave, it’s too late. I hope this never happens, but if it does, I want my family in a place where I can trust the police to not side with the armed militants — or to be the militants.
This move means I’ll be all but done with Texas politics, and will be leaving behind my many friends and allies here in North Texas and around the state. These are some of the best people I know and have ever worked with; people who had the courage to run for political office; people who embraced me as a newcomer who wanted to help; people who I’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with as we’ve confronted one of the most vicious and corrupt state Republican Parties in the country. These are people who I will never forget; there are too many to list but y’all know who you are. I will miss all of you terribly.
A truly ironic thing is that in the blue trifecta state of Delaware, the state representative for the district we’ll be living in is a Republican. He does not know what he’s in for. Here in Texas I’ve been harassed and cursed at; had the police called on me; confronted and been confronted by armed militants. Democrats in Texas have been fighting for years, every day, and I will bring that sense of urgency to my new home. My next mission will be to flip my new state house district. I’ve been fighting that battle for five years in Texas, and that fight will continue. I never meant to be an activist, but that’s what I am.
(All photos are my own)
