Mission: Texas

With Election Day less than a week away, Kate sits down solo with Liza Hameline, the Texas Democratic Party's voter protection director since August, to talk about what happens if Republicans try to steal the election and how Democrats are defending the vote before, during, and after November 3rd.  Liza, a longtime attorney, former election judge, and Dallas County precinct chair, explains how she built the largest voter protection operation in state party history from the ground up: an 844-TX-VOTES hotline that had to be rebuilt from scratch, more than 3,000 recruited volunteers, and five regional boiler rooms.  She also walks through how Texas elections actually work, from paper ballots to marking devices that never touch the internet, to help calm the fears and conspiracies circulating this cycle. What we cover: * Liza's path from commercial litigation and in-house regulatory work to election judge in 2020, and how Kendall Scudder asked her to lead the largest voter protection program the state party has ever built * Building from zero: a disconnected hotline, a first-ever midterm-scale program, and the "ground-up" strategy of training precinct chairs, county chairs, and caucus groups across all 254 counties * The 844-TX-VOTES hotline, poll watcher training, and the logging system that turns anecdotes into usable data, plus one-pagers and graphics to counter social media rumors * Recruiting more than 3,000 volunteers statewide, and why that matters compared to Trump's talk of sending a thousand people * The suspense list: why voters land on it, the statewide phone bank to fix registrations before the October 5 deadline, and how limited ballots work for voters who moved * How Texas voting really works: every county uses paper ballots, marking devices are not connected to the internet, only the electronic poll book is, and why votes can't be "switched" by hackers * Why voting in Texas is hyper-local and decentralized, and why no president can federalize or nationalize it * ICE and the polls: why federal officers are barred from polling sites, and why Liza worries more about enforcement in neighborhoods around them * What the boiler rooms will do on Election Day, and how Liza will run the North Texas room out of Dallas County * Legislative asks for 2027: three weeks of early voting, 24-hour and drive-through voting, same-day registration, and limited ballots on Election Day * The off-season plan: training Democratic election judges, teaching county chairs to demand returns and show up at commissioners court, and scaling voter protection to every election * Good news segment: Liza's son's wedding the weekend before early voting, and Kate's Vegas trip after launching her own law firm Voter resources: call the Texas Democratic Party voter protection hotline at 844-TX-VOTES, and visit mytexasvotes.com and texasdemocrats.org. Support the show: Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review. God bless Texas. 🤠

Alex flies solo this week to sit down with Evan Hunt, Air Force veteran and Democratic nominee for Congress in Texas's 3rd District, as early voting kicks off against Republican incumbent Keith Self. Evan traces his path from B-1 bomber missions over Iraq and Afghanistan to a defense industry career to political anger reignited by Trump's reelection, and lays out why he thinks this ruby-red Collin County-anchored district — one of the fastest-growing in the country — is more winnable than the maps suggest.  We also get into a viral clip of Self admitting he sees the district as "his seat," and Evan's platform built around anti-corruption reform: anti-gerrymandering legislation, congressional term limits, and a ban on stock trading for lawmakers. What we cover: * Evan's path from a 9/11-driven enlistment and 20-year Air Force career flying B-1 bombers to a defense industry career at Raytheon, and the furlough that pushed him toward private sector stability * How Trump's 2024 reelection and frustration with Keith Self's record pulled him back into politics after years of political disillusionment * The redrawn TX-3 map: 80% of voters still in Collin County, with Frisco carved out and five rural counties to the east (Hunt, Greenville, Sulphur Springs, Mount Pleasant) added — and why that dilutes rural representation * Keith Self's record: founding an "Anti-Sharia Caucus," refusing to debate, declining to bring home earmarked federal funding despite representing one of the fastest-growing districts in the country, and his on-air admission that "it's not my constituency, it's my seat" * A shared critique of wealth inequality and the tax code — why closing loopholes that let the ultra-wealthy pay lower effective rates than firefighters and teachers isn't about "taxing the rich," per Evan * Evan's definition of "working class" (anyone who has to earn income from labor) and how that reframes who the Democratic coalition should include * Campaign field data: over 30,000 doors knocked with a 60% favorable response rate, texting hundreds of thousands of voters, and why Evan believes a Tallarico-level swing could flip every competitive seat in Collin County * Evan's proposed first-term agenda: nationwide anti-gerrymandering reform (with a Senate partner in James Talarico), 12-year term limits, individual stock trading bans for Congress, and a Supreme Court code of ethics * His critique of national Democratic Party fundraising strategy — concentrating money in the top 40-50 races instead of investing in grassroots-driven campaigns like his own * Good news segment: watching his teenage kids go from politically apathetic to genuinely engaged over the course of the campaign, and Alex's annual Beavers Bend, Oklahoma trip marking how fast time moves with young kids Early voting runs through October 30th; Election Day is Tuesday, November 3rd. Check your registration and polling location at VoteTexas.gov. Support the show:  Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review. God bless Texas. 🤠

This week Mission: Texas sits down with Emily Roth, a Houston mom suing the state and Spring Branch ISD after Ten Commandments posters went up in her kindergartner's classroom. Emily walks through her exhaustion of the school district's grievance process, the decision to ground her lawsuit in Texas law — the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the newly passed parental rights constitutional amendment — rather than a federal establishment clause claim, and why she sees this as fundamentally a parental rights issue rather than an anti-religion one. We also talk about Microactivism, the platform she built to turn overwhelmed parents into organized, two-minutes-a-week activists. What we cover: * How a single email objecting to the posters escalated into three grievance hearings, a unanimous school board rejection, and ultimately a lawsuit * Why the posters' language (kill, adultery, manservant) raised concerns for a five-year-old learning to read, and the broader argument about age-appropriate content in classrooms * The strategic decision to sue under TRFRA and the parental rights amendment — both championed by Republican lawmakers — rather than bring a traditional establishment clause case * The current state of the case: a denied temporary restraining order, the state's procedural "plea to the jurisdiction," and Emily's attorneys preparing a motion for summary judgment * Why the specific Ten Commandments version posted isn't even the Catholic version, and the pushback Emily has received from religious parents across denominations, not just secular ones * The broader pattern connecting the posters to Texas's social studies TEKS requiring the Ten Commandments be taught as a source of American law, alongside book bans and curriculum changes * Microactivisms.org: Emily's platform delivering a weekly, location-filtered two-minute civic action, plus a tool that generates official TRFRA legal notice letters — used by parents in more than 100 Texas school districts * The parallel to Bo French and the Railroad Commission race — why conservative voters should also be wary of the precedent this sets for any future majority-religion community Good news segment: the overwhelming, mostly positive public response to the lawsuit; Emily's Hill Country fall break with her daughters; Kate's trip to Notre Dame's campus with her daughter; Alex's raffle-won Puerto Vallarta trip narrowly dodging a hurricane, and his Election Day plans driving to Austin for GOTV work Support the show:  Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review. God bless Texas. 🤠 Support Emily and sign up at microactivism.org

This week Mission: Texas sits down with Chanda Parbhoo, a longtime South Asian community organizer in Dallas who built SAAVETX (the state's largest South Asian voter outreach organization) from five moms into a grassroots force with nearly 600 volunteers and over half a million voter touches heading into this election. Chanda traces the decade-long effort to build civic infrastructure for a community that didn't have any, unpacks the fallout from Bo French's attacks on UT Austin students, and makes the case that South Asian Texans — roughly 2% of the electorate in a state Beto lost by 2.5 points — are an underinvested, up-for-grabs constituency that could decide close races. What we cover: * SAAVETX's origin story: a 2017 Facebook post asking for 200 South Asian Texans to organize that drew 6,000 signups in six weeks, built on zero funding * The data gap SAAVETX uncovered — officials claiming only 10,000 South Asian voters existed in a community far larger than that — and building the state's first South Asian civic infrastructure from scratch * Growth from grassroots group to C3/C4 nonprofit, a White House invitation during the 2024 gun violence initiative, and becoming the largest South Asian outreach operation in Texas * Turnout numbers: from 20% in 2014 to 60% in 2018 to roughly 70% today — consistently two to three points above the state average * McKinney's Islamic center city council fight and the broader pattern of "storming" local government meetings that started in Frisco * Why South Asian voters are an effective target for the GOP's "boogeyman" strategy, and the community's historical instinct to "put your head down" rather than engage politically * Why door-to-door outreach works best when canvassers share community identity, and the importance of leading with empathy and specific issues rather than generic appeals ("I like butter chicken" doesn't cut it) * The diversity within "South Asian" and "AAPI" as categories, and why blanket outreach strategies fail * Top issues for the community: public education funding, property taxes, healthcare access (22% of the community works in healthcare, 6% owns small businesses), and rising medical misinformation driving providers toward early retirement * The Bo French controversy — his comments on UT Austin students on top of a documented history of racist statements — and Chanda's frustration that Republicans who criticized him are still planning to vote for him * Voter suspense lists, re-registration efforts, and SAAVETX's work tracking patterns in voter roll purges * Good news segment: being recognized unprompted at a convention by people who follow SAAVETX's work, and Kate's ACL Fest trip with her daughter, spotting Talarico merchandise throughout the crowd Support the show:  Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review. God bless Texas. 🤠 Support SAAVETX:  https://saavetx.org

To mark Mission: Texas's one-year anniversary, we bring back our very first guest, reelected Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder, to check in on everything that's changed since our debut episode. Kendall reflects on a grueling year and a half in the chair, reports back on the three goals he laid out in that first conversation — message discipline, infrastructure, and statewide presence — and walks through the actual math behind flipping the Texas Senate.  We also get real talk on why he ignores public polling, what a full statewide-to-county candidate slate could look like in 2028, and the massive voter protection operation the party is standing up before and after Election Day. What we cover: * A one-year reflection: the toll of a nonstop news cycle, the RNC in Dallas, and gratitude for his wife's patience while he ran the party * Grading his three original 2026 goals — on-message candidates, precinct chair recruitment (1,000+ trained, aiming to outnumber Republicans), and decentralizing party offices into five regional hubs across the state * The first full federal-and-state Democratic ballot slate since 1972, the filing-fee barrier for down-ballot recruitment, and plans to go even deeper into county races next cycle * Giving red-district candidates free access to the voter file this cycle — an $800K budget hit — and using post-election data to decide whether to do it again * The actual math on flipping the Texas Senate: holding Reamit's seat and flipping three more, with internal numbers showing Bob Hall down to Keenan Colbert and other close races in Bryan-College Station and Harris County * Why Kendall refuses to trust public polling, rooted in the brutal 2010 midterm "shellacking" he lived through organizing in East Texas * The case against writing off "unwinnable" districts — using his own 2018 Senate run and Keenan Colbert's redrawn SD2 as proof that candidates and redistricting math can shift a seat's viability * Why Texas Democrats matter nationally regardless of outcome: forcing Republicans to spend an estimated $220 million defending Texas that they'd otherwise deploy in other Senate battlegrounds * The party's post-election plan: the country's largest state voter protection program, five regional "boiler rooms," a 24/7 voter protection hotline (844-TX-VOTES), and bracing for Republican legal challenges and a possible special session if Democrats win * Good news segment: Mission: Texas hitting 52 episodes and an ACL Fest trip with Kate's daughter; Alex's son's second birthday, a school-bus-themed party, and a State Fair trip to complete the family's "iconic Dallas landmarks" photo tradition with Big Tex. Kendall shares news about his relaunch of his podcast.  * Kendall's closing marching orders: talk to the people closest to you, vote early (October 19th) to get off campaign contact lists, and become a monthly recurring donor to sustain a year-round party Support the show:  Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review. God bless Texas. 🤠