Marcus and Madeline are back together — 13 days out from Election Day — and they’ve brought in Brianna Brown, Executive Director of Texas Organizing PAC (TOP PAC), to break down what’s actually happening on the ground in Texas.
Brianna has been organizing Black and Latino communities across Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio for 16 years. She makes the case for why Texas is the new Georgia — a majority-of-color state still governed by leaders whose priorities have nothing to do with the people who live there — and why this cycle feels different. Early voting lines in Duncanville turned her away on day one. High-opportunity voters are showing up at the doors already locked in. TOP PAC knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors this cycle, and what they’re hearing is energy that Brianna says she hasn’t seen in a midterm before.
They dig into why Texas leads the nation in uninsured residents (a stat that hasn’t changed in 13 years), the Koch Brothers’ Libre Initiative and how it has built real infrastructure in South Texas, the redistricting fight that started in Tarrant County and went national, and why the culture war playbook keeps losing when organizers simply ask: “Was it a trans person who raised your gas prices?”
On the statewide races: Brianna’s take on James Tallarico’s path to attorney general, why Gina Hinojosa has a real advantage as the race’s demographics align with what Texas actually looks like, and why — money notwithstanding — she’s more bullish on Texas right now than she’s been in 16 years.
","author_name":"Marcus Flowers / Madeline Summerville"}