The Texas Template

"Texas has a long tradition of expanding democracy, for whites, for landowners, for the wealthy, while systematically excluding everyone else. It’s not a bug in the system; it’s the system itself." — Gregg Cantrell, "The Many Faces of Texas Political Culture"

We were driving through the night to reach the border. I was to begin a my first job in Texas as a radio news director in the Rio Grande Valley. As was to be expected of a young man from Michigan, I was oblivious to South Texas politics and what had happened in Jim Wells County in 1948. The road down, Highway 281, was two lanes and took us through downtown Alice, the county seat where Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson conspired with corrupt County Judge George Parr to steal the Democratic Primary for the U.S. Senate. Parr, and his father, Archer, had held dominion over the politics, government, and tax money of five border counties for decades. LBJ knew where to turn when he realized he could not win the nomination without additional votes, which historical research proved were fraudulent and did not exist.

A few months before we passed through Alice in 1975, Parr had turned his own cold hand against himself and committed suicide on his ranch with a .45 caliber pistol, which was found on the seat next to him in his car. After facilitating LBJ’s theft of the election, and enabling the future president to win the Senate seat, Parr’s illegal activities were protected from investigation with Johnson’s political influence and presidency. LBJ had died of heart attack just two years previous, though, and the feds quickly accelerated long dormant investigations of Parr’s tax evasion and personal use of public funds. His protection was gone, and like his father, George Parr, he was indicted, too. Contemporary reports indicate he had failed to show up for an arraignment at a U.S. District Court in Corpus Christi, and a search by FBI agents found him deceased by self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

The Parr Machine maintained political and economic control over Duval, Jim Wells, Brooks, Starr, and Zapata counties in South Texas to an almost incomprehensible degree for three-quarters of the twentieth century. In the case of LBJ and the missing Box 13, fraudulent votes of the dead were added to totals, and all elections were overseen by Parr loyalists. Nobody won a campaign unless they agreed to Parr’s terms of subservience. Political opponents were threatened, beaten, and even killed. His deputies, nothing more than “pistoleros,” harassed any political opposition. He controlled local jobs in county government and public schools and any acts of disloyalty meant being fired or losing potential business opportunities. Contractors and vendors had to agree to pay Parr kickbacks to win project work. Any nascent investigation of his corruption at the local level was stopped because of his control of law enforcement and judges.

As is the case with much Texas political history, Parr’s story fascinated as much as it shocked. My politics had emerged from the anti-Vietnam War protest movement and a low-income household environment that was forced to rely on government assistance. I came to believe that social service programs were essential to improving some American lives and that the proper petitioning of the federal government could affect change. Those opinions evolved as a consequence of walking the streets of Washington, D.C. with other war protestors and watching my mother come home with government cheese, powdered milk, and eggs. There were times when 60-hour work weeks as a waitress and nickel-and-dime tips were not enough to feed her six children.

Those convictions were still mostly untested even after beginning to read widely about the JFK assassination. The Vietnam War seemed to be almost part of a deal LBJ had constructed with the military and its contractors in the wake of Kennedy’s murder. We seemed to be turning away, though, from imperialist falsehoods and even rank evil when a Georgia peanut farmer drove the farm roads of Iowa to turn the state’s obscure caucuses into a nominating platform for the White House. The first national political story I covered was a 1976 Jimmy Carter rally and speech at Archer Park in downtown McAllen. He was making a final campaign swing up through the center of Texas and an enthusiastic crowd cheered as he spoke in fluent Spanish, though there were a few smiles at his use of Castilian pronunciations. Carter may have been either too idealistic or excessively naive to deal with the American presidency.

What followed his administration was the demonizing of government by Ronald Reagan, who gave this country the “Me Generation.” The ethic was get what you want and claim it as your own and any failure to succeed belongs to you, not the economic constructs of capitalism in which you labor. Corporations got tax cuts, labor’s back was broken, and the middle class slipped further down the economic ladder. Texas turned in his direction when the president defined his supporters here as “Reagan Democrats,” which accelerated the state’s transition to Republican rule after Bill Clements became the first GOP governor elected since the Civil War Reconstruction era. Karl Rove and his cipher George W. Bush cemented Republican domination in 1994 with the defeat of Ann Richards, and the Texas state legislature and the governor’s mansion have been in their hands to this day, which is why the state is a mess. Politically, who can they blame other than themselves?

Too often, I convince myself that MAGA Texas politicians have taken the Parr family’s petri dish out of the historical closet and studied it for tips on how to destroy democracy for fun and profit, and Trump is learning from their research. By the time Greg Abbott rolled up to the governor’s desk in 2015, a corrupt system was in place and the only question was how far to push it. The answer turned out to be don’t stop pushing until you are defeated, and if you don’t relent or play by any rules, losing elections can also be eliminated. Abbott has turned Texas into a proving ground for the hardest edges of Republican politics, like privatization, deregulation, culture wars, and the slow strangulation of public institutions. He governs by cutting business deals as well as political ones, redrawing districts, and rewriting the rules until winning is no longer about votes, but about the lines on a map.

Texans live in a state now where the slogans about freedom and opportunity sound good on TV, but the view from the ground tells a much grimmer story. At the behest of Trump, Abbott and his Texas MAGAt legislators are scribbling congressional district lines to rig the 2026 election in their favor. The map is comical in its distortions, which are designed to suppress minority influence and turnout, reduce Democratic efforts to hopelessness, and continue authoritarian rule of the state and its long decline from historic promise. After the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, brought into existence by Texan LBJ, Abbott and Trump decided they could act outside the bounds of the U.S. Constitution and gerrymander districts in mid-decade even though the law declares that should only happen after the conclusion of each ten-year census of the population.

Americans ought to conduct a close study of Texas to understand where this will lead the rest of our nation. Hardship has become public policy down here. Discrimination against the majority minority continues. Abbott suggests this is how you protect taxpayers and defend freedom but when you travel this vast state between the Rio Grande and the Red River, it’s easy to see what his words and actions have really purchased. In the past 50 years of exploring and writing about Texas, I have, l am almost certain, been within every one of its 254 counties either riding a motorcycle, driving a news van, flying, taking the train, and even a boat. A half dozen of those counties are bigger than some states, and one, Loving County, is the least populous in America with only about one hundred residents. Outside of the Australian continent, there is no place I have ever found more fascinating, even a little bit haunting, and it is being diminished daily by the people holding public office.

Texas has more uninsured children than any state, estimated at 950,000 in 2023. Nearly half could be covered under existing programs, but they aren’t, because Abbott’s administration has made staying enrolled harder under Medicaid, not easier. Over 400,000 kids were dropped from Medicaid last year without proper review. Visit a nonprofit clinic in Houston or the Rio Grande Valley, and you’ll see kids struggling to breathe through untreated asthma, teens living with pain that could be eased by a cheap prescription. Their parents will show you the letters of eligibility revoked without explanation. The richest state in the union by many measures has made an art form of telling its children: You’re on your own. We lead the nation in the number of rural hospitals closed in the last decade, too. The latest figure is twenty-one, which is a consequence of Abbott and Republicans refusing to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act. It would look too much like a victory for “Obamacare,” the president who passed a law to provide about 25 million more Americans health insurance.

Schools in those small towns, which used to be the pride of the community, have turned into staging grounds for Abbott’s culture war. Ten Commandments in every classroom. State-funded Bible courses. And the universal voucher program, a billion-dollar pipeline from public coffers to private schools, most already serving wealthier families. In San Saba, out on the northern edge of the Edwards Plateau, the superintendent does the math on how many teachers he’ll lose this year because of the voucher drain. Meanwhile, in Dallas, a private academy cashes its state check, but raises tuition anyway. Public schools resort to selling baked goods to cover costs. Abbott has sold the concept as “school choice.” But out here, they call it gutting the future.

The governor’s biggest stage has been the border. His operation Lone Star has consumed more than a 10 billion dollars in taxpayer money, caused a 50% spike in police chases, and at least 106 dead, which included innocent bystanders like a 7-year-old who had gone out for ice cream with her grandmother. There has been no demonstrable proof his obsession with immigrants has had any impact on illegal entry. Latino drivers are targeted at disproportionate rates, deepening the divide between border communities and the state that’s supposed to serve them. Floating barriers in the Rio Grande have compounded a humanitarian crisis at the border with razor wire strung across the water, killing migrants, tearing apart the riverbank, violating international treaties with Mexico, and desecrating tribal lands. Abbott calls them deterrents while the people who live along La Frontera see it as political theater with a body count.

The unmentioned dead also include soldiers of the Texas National Guard, endlessly deployed with little to do other than string razor wire. Nine suicides have been reported and two overdoses, linked to mission stress, and one soldier drowned. Families insist multiple other deaths are related and blame lack of pay, poor conditions, and mental health neglect. Suicide rates among the Operation Lone Star soldiers is believed to be three times higher than those of regular servicemen and women. Three state troopers have died by suicide and accident, one in a helicopter crash conducting an aerial survey. The Texas governor has not publicly mentioned any of the fallen service members by name, held a memorial service, or even reached out to their families, according to reporting conducted by the Military Times.

Abbott also continues to play shell games with the state’s tax burdens. In the legislature, he has leadership ignore funding for state responsibilities and pushes it down to local city, county, and school districts, which drives up property and sales taxes. Texas has the 6th highest property taxes in the country with an effective rate of ~1.7 percent with some counties above 2 percent, and a combined state and local sales tax average of 8.2 percent, 12th highest in all the land. Although the governor brags about a lack of income tax to attract newcomers, property owners and consumers are taxed disproportionately to make up the shortfall. This regressive approach benefits the wealthy and businesses while placing a heavier load on middle and lower income families.

None of this happens, of course, without money. Designed neglect, led by Greg Abbott, is fueled by oil and gas fracking billionaires, brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, and their ideological compadre Tim Dunn, a Christian evangelist who wants to end secular government. Dunn has called public schools “satanic” and wants to impose biblical law into government. He and the Wilks brothers have ties to white nationalist Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier. The three men have spent tens of millions of dollars funding Greg Abbott’s campaigns and political action committees to facilitate the implementation of his radical policies. They are unelected, but are viewed as the most powerful men in Texas government and politics. The Wilks and Dunn and their money are the reason this state passed one of the most onerous anti-abortion laws in the U.S., which is forcing women and health care providers daily into crisis situations. Environmental regulations are also victims of the three power players. Oversight has been gutted, pollution is worsening, and Texans, in return, get poisoned rivers and higher asthma rates, but their drilling businesses continue to increase profits.

Sound familiar? This is no longer just a Texas story. It’s a template. Abbott’s brand of governance is clearly to privatize what works, starve what’s public, and use cultural wedge issues to distract from the damage. The playbook is portable. Other governors are already importing it. The same political architecture that turned Texas into a one-party state with gerrymandered districts, voter ID laws, and legislative strong-arming has been refined in our state for export. Elections are decided before voters even go to the polls. What you see in Texas today, children without care, towns without hospitals, rivers without water, democracy without accountability, is taking deep historical root in Washington under Trump. And it could be coming soon to a state near you.

Greg Abbott has shown them the way.