I am running for the Texas House for three main reasons.

I am running because I believe strong public schools make us all stronger, and I am worried that our current Texas leadership is making our public schools worse instead of better.

I am running because I believe we are all better off when more of us are better off and that the Texas economy should work for all of us. I am worried that our current Texas leadership is out of touch with the real financial challenges more and more people in Texas are facing as they try to forge a path to the American Dream.

And, I am running because I think we are doing politics wrong and we need to do better.

We are squaring off against each other when we should be working together to square off against the problems of the day.

We are circling the wagons and treating people with different perspectives as the enemy. We should be drawing the circle wide and combining our insights and creativity to build the Texas we want.

We are too sorted out

We spend a whole lot of time these days with people who are just like us.

Our neighborhoods, churches, schools and other gathering spots are more sorted out than they used to be – same age with same age, same education with same education, same money with same money, same race with same race, and of course – same politics with same politics.

In all this sameness we lose the advantage of corrective feedback. We want our friends to like us, so, without even noticing, we get in the habit of agreeing with them. We hesitate to disagree, because we don’t want to become an outsider. As time goes by fewer and fewer people in the circle are willing to say, “Hey wait a minute – what about this?”

It is a well-documented psychological phenomenon that groups made up of only people who agree with each other become more extreme over time. To make matters worse, our social media feeds us a steady diet of reinforcement instead of challenging us with a variety of ideas. That adds to the echo chamber effect and nudges us farther and farther toward the extremes.

We gradually lose our appreciation for diversity of ideas and for looking at situations from different perspectives.

In time we become suspicious and even antagonistic toward anyone who disagrees.

We can’t imagine anything good or reasonable in what THEY are saying, and THEY are criticizing us, so it’s not too hard to slip into demonizing THEM.

Politics has always been a nasty, mudslinging business. There’s nothing new about that.

But in the same way today’s cars are faster and more dangerous than horses, and today’s guns are more powerful and dangerous than muskets — today’s media technology has made our political messaging more pervasive, more psychologically manipulative, and more dangerous than the media of the past. It both feeds on and accelerates our polarization. As a bonus – social media “conversations” allow us to ratchet up the nastiness because we can’t see the humanizing body language and tone of voice feedback we might get from face-to-face conversations.

In this environment it is easy to slide from disagreeing with each other into thinking of each other as enemies. And once the other side is “the enemy” it’s easy to justify – for the good of Texas! – doing whatever it takes to win and keep on winning. It becomes easy to believe we would be better off if we were all just one big monoculture of people who all see things the same way.

Monoculture is dangerous.

The problem is – monoculture is dangerous.

I’m borrowing the term “monoculture” from agriculture. It’s the practice of growing a single crop or plant species over a large area of land.

Do you remember learning in school about the Great Irish Potato Famine? It happened in Ireland from 1845 to 1852. A potato blight destroyed almost all of the Irish potato crop for several years. About a million people died. One of the causes of this terrible disaster was monoculture.

Monocultures were popular in agriculture because it’s easier and more efficient to grow a whole lot of the same crop. The problem is they are dangerous because crops with no diversity are far more susceptible to disease.

I often think of the Great Irish Potato famine as an important cautionary tale that can apply to politics and society in general.

The idea of a monoculture in politics is tempting because everyone would agree and decision making would be much faster. The problem is monocultures are dangerous because they are more susceptible to disease. In the case of politics, that disease can be extremism or corruption, or blind spots, or prejudice, or just allowing bad ideas to take root and spread without being challenged.

Diversity of thought and perspective makes us healthier, more resilient, and better able to adapt to changing circumstances.

Healthy, resilient democracy works like this: One group identifies a problem and a possible solution, then another group identifies weaknesses, blind spots, or unintended consequences of that solution. Then the groups work together to decide what to actually do. We make the final product stronger by stress-testing it up front with different points of view from people with different experiences and different knowledge.

That’s what I’m talking about when I say we work best when we work together. Working together doesn’t mean everyone compromises on everything. It means bringing different perspectives to the table, debating honestly, and building stronger solutions than either side would build alone.

Right now, it feels to me like we are doing politics wrong.

Instead of trying to find ways to look at our challenges from different perspectives and to strengthen our responses with diversity of thought – it feels like we are just pushing for the victory of one disease-prone monoculture over the other.

A monoculture of either party would be bad for Texas – and bad for America.

We need at least two parties. (It probably wouldn’t hurt to have more.)

Democrats are not immune from the monoculture temptation. Any group can drift toward ideological “purity,” exclusion, and treating disagreement as disloyalty. I have certainly been criticized many times by people in my own party and friend-group for not being quite “angry” enough at what someone else said or not “pure” enough in something I said. In Texas today, however, it just so happens that one particular branch of the Republican Party has the upper hand, and I believe they are leading us in the wrong direction when it comes to a healthy, diverse democracy.

In 2020, the Texas GOP filed a lawsuit to throw out 127,000 drive-thru votes from Harris County. To me, that lawsuit is an example of the shift in the Republican Party of Texas toward a monoculture approach.

The newly retired Speaker of the House at that time was Republican Joe Straus. He opposed the suit saying, “The Republican Party needs to return to a place where we win with ideas and persuasion rather than trying to intimidate and silence our fellow citizens.” Straus, who served as speaker from 2009 to 2019, was known for coalition building and for his belief that every voice should be heard. He could see the monoculture coming and he warned against it.

Unfortunately, Straus’s style of leadership had already fallen out of favor. The current Republican leadership did not heed his advice to return to, “a place where we win with ideas and persuasion.” Instead, it seems to me they adopted “intimidating and silencing” as acceptable methods in service to their cause.

Here are some examples:

1. Running primary opponents against fellow Republicans who opposed school vouchers – In the 2023 legislative session a handful of conservative Republican House Representatives opposed school vouchers. They voted against vouchers because their constituents did not want them. Our current state leadership wanted school vouchers and so, during the 2024 Republican primaries, they spent millions running primary opponents against these incumbents from their own party. This is a clear example of eliminating diversity of thought even within their own party, even when that diversity of thought represented their own voters. To me, this is the clearest example that current Republican state leadership is dangerously devoted to monoculture.
2. Mid-Decade Redistricting – The ideal political district to me would be one where every vote counts. That is difficult to achieve even under the best of circumstances, and almost impossible given that our current state leadership is actively working against it. The purpose of the recent mid-decade redistricting was to jigger the map to make sure Republicans maintained control of the U.S. House – not by making a convincing case for their priorities to the most voters — but by manipulating the district lines. This kind of gerrymandering is legal and both parties have done it through the years. It’s a bad idea no matter who is doing it. It’s a step away from working together and towards entrenching a monoculture.
3. Eliminating minority party committee chairs – Historically in the Texas House, the majority party appoints at least a small number of minority party chairs to legislative committees, usually when a representative from the minority party has relevant expertise in the committee subject. In 2025, Republican leaders set about to eliminate Democratic committee chairs entirely – regardless of relevant expertise or experience. When party loyalty matters more than relevant expertise, that is a welcome mat for bad decision-making.

These are just three examples. There are others, but I think these make the point. These are strategies that go beyond the usual efforts to persuade people to vote for one party instead of the other. These are efforts to make sure one party stays in power, and that the members of that party “toe the line” or face punishment by primary. That is moving toward monoculture.

This kind of unfortunate behavior may result in short-term wins for the party, but it is not in the best long-term interest of the state and our people. It makes us more vulnerable to blind spots, extremism, corruption and unintended consequences.

What can we do to make it better? First, work on ourselves…

I think there are at least two important kinds of response: personal and structural.

On the personal level, we all have to decide what we are going to do to try to depolarize our politics. I am personally committed to having face-to-face conversations with people who have a variety of points of view. It’s not always easy to find people who want to talk – but I am committed to making the effort. As a result, I have had some terrific conversations, and admittedly, some terrible ones! Even in the good ones, we don’t often change each other’s minds, but we understand each other better, and we come away understanding that good people can disagree with each other.

I try to read and listen to different points of view. I’ve read books from folks as different from each other as Bernie Sanders and Pete Hegseth. I try to listen to the President’s speeches directly instead of just watching the cherry-picked clips that show up later in social media. I avoid sharing political memes. I try to keep the tone of my rhetoric in check. I try to focus on the issues. I try to avoid making blanket statements about what all “Liberals/Democrats” or all “Conservatives/Republicans” believe.

In 2025, I organized McLennan County Talks. As a part of that project, we held 20+ bi-partisan discussions on topics from water, to public education, to the foster care system, to small business, to gang violence – and many others.

Those are some of the things I am trying to do personally to help reverse the trend from polarization and demonization and ideological “purity” politics to deliberation, civility, and practical problem-solving.

I think we need to elect leaders who take seriously the responsibility to listen and lead with civility and with respect for those who agree with them and those who disagree.

I’m not talking about being wimpy or being a push over. I am talking about focusing on issues, practical trade-offs and reasoning – not personal jabs, exaggeration, and fear-mongering. There are good and bad examples of these kinds of leaders from both political parties.

…Then work on the structures.

There are also structural things we should do to make sure we maintain a system that supports considering different points of view and working together.

The first is to take a hard look at our re-districting rules. At the very least, we should limit re-districting to once a decade after the census unless there is some very compelling reason to do otherwise. (Note: Just making your side more likely to win is not a compelling reason.) Even better would be to appoint a bi-partisan board responsible for drawing new maps when they are needed.

We need to keep a sharp eye on our education system. Decisions about curricula and essential knowledge and skills for subjects like history and social studies need to be made with bi-partisan input and input from teachers. Students need to learn media literacy skills such as evaluating sources, understanding bias and perspective, fact-checking/cross-checking, and recognizing misinformation and disinformation.

Lady Bird Johnson used to say, “The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.” We need to teach our young people to treasure the clash that comes from diversity and freedom, and to distrust the silence and fake peace of monoculture.

We need to block efforts like Pat Curry’s bill to make school board and city elections partisan. Injecting partisanship into local elections just drives us farther apart; it doesn’t help us work together. If anything, we should make more of our countywide elections non-partisan, especially in smaller counties. There’s no reason for the Tax Assessor, or the county clerk, or local judges to be partisan positions. Those jobs should be based on competence, experience, and objectivity, not party loyalty.

We work best when we work together.

I don’t believe Texans have forgotten how to work together.

It wasn’t that long ago when Joe Straus and others like him believed in winning with ideas and persuasion rather than trying to intimidate and silence those who challenged their ideas.

I think most Texans want the same basic things. Safe communities. Strong schools. Good jobs. A fair chance to build a good life. Our representative democratic government, in the best case, is one of the tools we use to accomplish those things.

We won’t agree on everything. We shouldn’t.

Healthy systems aren’t built by everyone thinking the same way. They are built by people willing to listen, challenge each other, and learn from each other.

Strong schools, a stable economy, and healthy democracy all depend on people being willing to solve problems together. That’s what keeps us moving forward. We work best when we work together.

References
Grayer, A. (2020, November 2). Former Republican Texas House speaker calls GOP effort to throw out drive-thru votes ‘patently wrong.’ The Week. (Former Republican Texas House speaker calls GOP effort to throw out drive-thru votes ‘patently wrong’ | The Week)

Harvard Kennedy School. (n.d.). Explainer: Understanding the mid-decade redistricting push in Texas. (Explainer: Understanding the mid-decade redistricting push in Texas | Harvard Kennedy School)

Monoculture and the Irish Potato Famine: Cases of missing genetic variation. (n.d.). (Monoculture and the Irish Potato Famine: cases of missing genetic variation)

School voucher supporters make gains in Texas House runoffs. (n.d.). (School voucher supporters make gains in Texas House runoffs)

The Texas Tribune. (n.d.). Conservatives clinch longtime goal of booting Democrats from leadership ranks in Texas House. (Conservatives clinch longtime goal of booting Democrats from leadership ranks in Texas House – The Texas Tribune)

The Texas Tribune. (n.d.). Majority House GOP rebuke Phelan, call to ban Democratic chairs. (Majority House GOP rebuke Phelan, call to ban Democratic chairs)

The Texas Tribune. (n.d.). Texas House approves GOP congressional map after twoweek delay from Democrats’ walkout. (Texas House approves GOP congressional map after two-week delay from Democrats’ walkout – The Texas Tribune)