About last night …

I don’t know what to say. Last night — really, all year — I refused to get my hopes up about flipping a Texas Senate seat, much less the Governor’s mansion. I’ve been telling friends outside of Texas for years now that Texas is secretly purple, to not give up on us, just look at how many more Texans than New Yorkers voted for Kamala and Joe, and if we could just get out the low-propensity voters to the polls, this could be the year … And yet every election, I’ve been disappointed. We’ve come close, so close, but it’s always ultimately been a disappointment. And I wasn’t going to allow my heart to be broken again.

And so I can not begin to tell you how utterly shocked I was when we learned by 9:30 last night that not only had James Talarico won his Senate seat, but that Gina Hinojosa had kicked Greg Abbott out of the Governor’s mansion after 12 long years. And that they won by 12 and 7 points, respectively. SEVEN POINTS. TWELVE POINTS. This was NOT CLOSE. But then this morning I learned we Texans threw the whole lot of them out: we took back lieutenant governor, and attorney general, comptroller, railroad commissioner, land commissioner, agriculture commissioner, we gained 4 Supreme Court seats (AND I KNOW ONE OF THEM! HER KID PLAYED ON MY KID’S BASEBALL TEAM!), and we flipped the House. WE FLIPPED THE MOTHERFLIPPIN’ TEXAS HOUSE!

It turns out people don’t like masked goons stealing their grandmas and brothers and friends off the street and shipping them out to detention centers … or worse. And people don’t like data centers being built near their farms, stealing their water and energy. And people don’t like it when their sisters and daughters are refused medical care and die from preventable sepsis. And people don’t like it when their schools are stripped for parts. And people don’t like it when their children aren’t safe at summer camps from horrific flooding. And people don’t like it when billionaires buy our beaches and build rocket platforms next to their homes. And people don’t like it when razor wire is put in our rivers. And people don’t like it when you are horrifically racist towards our students. And people don’t like it when you destroy our beautiful parks for your unnecessary border wall. And people don’t like it when gas costs twice as much, and they can’t fill up their dualies. And people don’t like it when tariffs and a needless war in Iran raise the prices of fertilizer, seeds, and substrate, and they can’t afford their farms and ranches. And people don’t like it when they freeze to death because our electricity grid is a failure. And people don’t like it when you import inferior beef into our country, undercutting our ranchers. And people don’t like it when you say it “could have been worse” after 19 of our babies and two of our teachers are slaughtered inside our schools while the cops stood by and did nothing.

And people don’t like it when their elected officials are impeached, convicted felons who use our tax money to pay off their former employees, who make sweet deals for pedophiles, who somehow own 15 homes on a government salary, who took nearly 900 trips while in office that weren’t linked to state business, who party with fugitives in Dubai, who spend the 250th birthday of our country in London with their mistresses, and steal pens.

Weird.

The truth is that what happened in Texas is two things that seem contradictory:

Lightning struck in that the Democrats had great candidates up against literal cartoon villains who were happily aligned with the most unpopular President in modern history, in an almost unimaginably hostile national political environment for Republicans.

And this is the result of years of hard work by dogged community organizers, volunteers, people like Beto O’Rourke who laid this foundation, and our minority communities who never gave up on us; people who made sure folks were registered and made it to the polls, even when our government made it so much harder for all of us to vote.

Both things are true: it was a once-in-a-blue-moon election that was the result of more than a decade of unrelenting work. And now we’re blue.

 

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But look, this isn’t going to fix everything. Our newly elected officials are going to have to work to fulfil their promises and make lives better here, and it won’t be easy. Texas still has large swaths of red; the Texas Senate did not flip; they still have five Texas Supreme Court seats; and there are plenty of federal judges in our state who can make trouble. But it is a DAMN fine start, and it felt really good to wake up in Texas this morning.

What I hope, what I prayed for before I even got out of bed, is that my fellow Texans remember what this morning felt like, all because they voted — and that they seek out this feeling in every election.

Because it turns out I was wrong: Texas isn’t secretly purple. When Texans vote, when we show up, Texas is a deep, dark, beautiful blue. And when we vote, when we show up, we make not just our state a better place; we change the whole country for the better.