Greetings all. A lot of remarkable things happened in this election. None may be more significant than our extraordinary triumph in Texas.
Look at these results in a state we had not won a statewide race in thirty two years. It still doesn’t seem real.
Our good friend, Kendall Scudder, the mighty state party chair of Texas dropped by earlier today of a live discussion of their historic wins across the state. Here is some of what he told us:
I think ‘26 is going to be remembered the year of the Texas Democrat. And I know that sounds egocentric for me to say it, but genuinely, you know, when this election started, we were all reeling after the 24 election. People felt so defeated and had been kicked in the teeth. I mean, just trying to figure out what are we even going to do here?
Texas Democrats stood up. We fought back. My delegation became political refugees and ran off and with great personal sacrifice. And we taught this country how to fight.
More from Chair Scudder:
This Hopium crew –– y'all were so helpful to us when we were standing up against the world's only trillionaire by ourselves. I am just so grateful because this win was y'all's, and I'm just proud to be on y'all's team. So I want to say that first. Thank you for everything. It was a huge night.
One of the things that we did is we set up a research consortium. And that research consortium was doing polling. About a week and a half ago, we got numbers back that showed that this was going to happen. Called it within the margin of error in every single race. And I looked at the team and said, well, the consortium's broken. I was like, oh, we broke it. So we did kind of know it was happening, but we just couldn't really believe that it was happening.
This has been a lot of people working for a long time to build around the state, but particularly the last two years, we've just been slogging away to make sure we had precinct chairs, county chairs, that we did our party's first coordinated campaign that we had done since 1982, where we were sharing data, working together, and all on one unified team. We ran some really interesting low propensity turnout programs that I think will be replicated around the country. And we had really great candidates that were all working together. When you share on the back end on your data, it allows you to be efficient with dollars.
More:
We didn't just win all 18 statewide offices, including a lot of judicial benches that will create some systemic change here, we also flipped the Texas House. We also flipped the Texas State Board of Education where 70% of textbooks in this country are printed –– in Texas. What we put in our curriculum is very important for the rest of the country. We now have a State Board of Education that believes that science is a thing.
The Chair leaves us with this:
We're laser focused on figuring out how to make this work and deliver in a real way. And I hope all Democrats across the country are locked in. Sometimes it's like keeping frogs in a bucket without a lid on it. Y'all need to focus. We got people to help. And if we do it, man, I think there's nothing ahead of us but a bunch of opportunity.
For a deeper dive on the national significance of Texas flipping blue check out my conversation with Tom Bonier yesterday:
I could write pages and pages about the significance of us flipping Texas but I’d rather you watch or listen to our conversation with this remarkable leader who just helped lead one of the most consequential political campaigns in modern American history.
Once again, congratulations everyone. We did an awful lot of good this week, and have earned a restful weekend - Simon
Kendall is the son of a mental health professional, paramedic, and corrections officer whose dedication to service and community instilled in him a drive to leave the world better than he found it.
As a teenager, he worked at his local Dairy Queen to help support his family while also doing political activism on behalf of his LGBTQ+ family. He earned a Political Science degree from Sam Houston State University, then moved to Dallas, working in affordable housing and real estate analytics before opening his own land acquisitions firm.
Kendall has long worked to elect Democratic candidates statewide. As the Texas Democratic Party's Vice Chair for Finance, he improved the party's financial transparency and strategic planning. He has also served on Dallas' Civil Service Board, the Apartment Association of Greater Dallas' legislative committee, and as co-chair of the Greater East Dallas Chamber of Commerce's Young Professionals.
At the height of the pandemic, he filed a criminal complaint against Attorney General Ken Paxton to protect Dallas County residents' access to safe, in-person voting.
Kendall holds a Master's in Political Management from George Washington University. He and his wife Carly live in East Dallas' Junius Heights Historic District, where he plays pickleball, volunteers with the Funky East Dallas Democrats, and serves as a Dallas Police "Volunteer in Patrol." He served as Dallas Central Appraisal District Board Director, Pos. 2, from Spring 2024 until his election as Chairman in March 2025.
