The Blast - September 15, 2025

35 days until early voting begins
50 days until the November election
54 days until the 2026 primary candidate filing period begins
84 days until the 2026 primary candidate filing deadline

IN TODAY’S BLAST

• TDP HQ relocation drama

• Other TDP updates

• McCaul is out

TDP HQ RELOCATION DRAMA

The Texas Democratic Party will be moving its headquarters from Austin to Dallas as part of the vision presented by Chair Kendall Scudder. As a result, several staffers have said they will not be moving, setting the stage for layoffs later this year.

Scudder, an East Texas native who now hails from Dallas, was sworn in as party chair in March after longtime Chair Gilberto Hinojosa stepped down in the wake of the 2024 election. Scudder has attempted to refocus the organization as a party for the working class and on the Rio Grande Valley. However, critics say the decision to move to Dallas, leaving a lot of its young staff behind, is discordant with the party’s working class mantra.

On Saturday, the State Democratic Executive Committee, the party’s governing board, voted to decentralize the party’s operation, approving the move to Dallas. The plan includes satellite offices in Houston, Amarillo, Eagle Pass and Austin. The party also approved a $13,000 moving expenses budget to support staffers and general moving expenses.

However, the final product has been heavily massaged since Scudder first presented it back in early August.

Initially, the plan was to close the Austin office and not replace it. The idea to maintain Austin as a fifth office wasn’t formally considered until a Sept. 3 SDEC finance Committee meeting and finalized until Saturday. Staffers who wouldn’t be joining the party in Dallas had until Sept. 1 to submit their decision and would be out of a job come Nov. 1. That timeline changed to a Sept. 15 decision and a Nov. 15 termination with unemployment benefits, hence the resignations bubbling forth today.

The decision to keep an Austin office and cover moving expenses helped quell dissent from Austin-based members of the SDEC. However, the majority of the 100-plus member governing board are from outside Austin and support the direction of the party.

“This is just part of Chair Scudder’s vision for the party,” one SDEC member told The Blast.

Critics oppose relocating the headquarters to Dallas and point to Scudder’s Dallas background to explain the move to North Texas. (Scudder’s resistance to resigning his position on the Dallas Central Appraisal District was a point of contention during his candidacy.) But proponents, like Michelle Davis of the Lone Star Left Substack, argue that moving to Dallas would put the headquarters in a growing metro that can form a major fundraising base.

Dallas will house the party’s executive staff and communications team, Houston will be the home of the party’s coordinated campaign and Austin will cover Lege activities. Amarillo and Eagle Pass will be more general satellite offices, with another one pledged for the Rio Grande Valley.

Despite TDP leadership scaling back the hard pivot away from the capital city, many still oppose what they perceive as abandoning the party’s Austin-based staffers. The TDP staff’s union presented a seven-point request list, including that the SDEC postpone the vote by two weeks and approve job security and non-retaliation components. However, those matters were never formally discussed.

The union didn’t distribute its demands until 10:55 a.m., minutes before the 11 a.m. meeting. Additionally, the SDEC has historically left employment matters to the party chair. With not enough time to whip votes beyond knowing that the majority of the panel supported leaving Austin, there wasn’t enough appetite to try to break that precedent on short notice.

Scudder did not return The Blast’s messages.

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OTHER TDP UPDATES

Despite the infighting over the manner in which the Texas Democratic Party is splitting with staff members, the vision to launch satellite offices had nearly unanimous support from the SDEC. Additionally, the party is back in the black.

When Kendall Scudder was sworn-in in late March, the party was $500,000 in the hole. Kicking off Saturday’s meeting in Longview, he announced the party was now “debt free.” The quorum break spurred donations that helped erase the deficit.

Although the party is expanding from a central Austin office to five, even six, offices, those expenses aren’t expected to bloat the party’s budget. Offices like the Austin office will be shared with existing county party offices, and the Houston office will be shared with the Texas Majority PAC.

Another matter on the docket is the pending $150,000 salary for the party chair.

At the last convention, the party agreed to elevate the chair from a volunteer position to a salaried position, matching other nonprofits and advocacy groups. The pay isn’t set to kick in till 2026, when the party will hold its next chair election.

However, Gilberto Hinojosa has since stepped down and Scudder was sworn in mid-term. During Saturday’s meeting, one SDEC member requested that he be prorated that salary beginning now. That matter has since been kicked back to the SDEC’s Finance Committee, which will discuss the matter on Wednesday.

MCCAUL IS OUT

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul will not seek reelection, opening another slot in Texas’ game of musical chairs, particularly around Austin.

McCaul, the former chair of the House Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security committees, is tied as the second-most senior member of Texas’ House delegation. Speaking on ABC’s “This Week” yesterday morning, he said he won’t seek a 12th term.

“I am ready for a new challenge in 2027 and look forward to continuing to serve my country in the national security and foreign policy realm,” McCaul said in a statement.

Several insiders had suspected McCaul would be retiring. His brand of foreign affairs-focused leadership has fallen out of favor among Republicans in the Trump years and he failed to secure a waiver to continue this year as Foreign Affairs chair after hitting his term limit. Perhaps the most telling sign was that McCaul raised only $75,000 in the first half of the year, far shy of his usual benchmark.

The Texas delegation is looking at a major shakeup in Austin alone. Republican Chip Roy is running for attorney general, and Democrat Lloyd Doggett got edged out of his district after the mid-decade redistricting. Morgan Luttrell, R-Magnolia, says he’s not running for reelection, and decisions are expected for Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, and Al Green, D-Houston.

No one has yet jumped into the race to succeed him. However, it became a Trump+23 district in this summer’s redraw.

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• Attorney general: Speaking at the LBJ School today, Republican Aaron Reitz said he would file lawsuits on his first day to remove José Garza of Travis County and Sean Teare of Harris County as district attorneys. [h/t Kevin Daley]

• TX-08: Chad Wolf, former acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, endorsed Jessica Steinmann as the successor to U.S. Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Magnolia. Wolf and Steinmann both work at the America First Policy Institute.

• HD-88: Plainview business owner John Browning announced a primary challenge to state Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian. King served as House State Affairs Committee chair this year, where conservatives have singled him out as a bottleneck for their priority legislation.

• HD-108: Attorney Sanjay Narayan announced a primary challenge to state Rep. Morgan Meyer, R-University Park. Meyer has been censured by the Dallas County Republican Party and awaits a decision on punishments from the State Republican Executive Committee.

• State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Allen, on Saturday said the first bill he’ll file in the 90th legislative session will be to erect a statue of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk on the Capitol Grounds.

• As Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh faces pressure from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and others for his handling conservatives’ complaints against professors, state Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, shared audio purporting to show that Welsh was notified by a student about an alleged threat to “silence” a conservative student.

The Rio Grande Valley has gone high-tech, taking a leading role in the state’s space, advanced manufacturing and health care economy. What’s next for the next generation of RGV workers?

On Sept. 25, Texas Tribune Editor-in-Chief Matthew Watkins will talk with local business, education and political leaders to discuss how to prepare the region’s young people for the homegrown jobs of the future.

Speakers include:

• Guy Bailey, president, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

• Andrea Figueroa Benton, director of community relations, NextDecade / Rio Grande LNG

• LJ Francis, member, Texas State Board of Education

Doors open at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville at 11:30 a.m. and the one-hour conversation begins at noon. The Tribune will provide lunch.

RSVP today

We’ll also be in Edinburg on Sept. 24 for a conversation with local business leaders about how to best preserve the Valley’s economic miracle. Learn more and RSVP.

• Gov. Greg Abbott will hold a career training bill signing tomorrow in Forney at a lab owned by state Rep. Keith Bell, R-Forney. State Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, and state Rep. Gary Gates, R-Richmond, will join them.

• Your lead Blast writer will be on a roundtable at the American Association of Political Consultants Southwest Regional Conference tomorrow at the University of Texas at Austin.

Do you or someone in your office have a new job you’d like mentioned? Email us.

• Zak Covar is Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows’ chief of staff, effective immediately. He replaces Robert Duncan, who is returning to the Texas Tech University System. Covar began as deputy chief of staff in January.

• U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Richmond, has been appointed to the Select Subcommittee on January 6. He’ll join U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, on that panel.

• Ryan Mindell, who resigned as executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission in April, began working at FanDuel as government relations director in July, the Tribune’s Ayden Runnels reports.

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“Federal loopholes may have opened the door for sports betting alternatives that skirt Texas’ gambling ban” by Ayden Runnels of The Texas Tribune

“Faculty, advocacy groups fear Texas A&M firing threatens academic freedom” by Alex Nguyen of The Texas Tribune

Campaign watch: “Facing ethics hearing, Nirenberg says he regrets unreported gift and improper campaign photos” by Andrea Drusch of the San Antonio Report

Thus begins the oppo dump: “Wesley Hunt’s roll-call vote absences tick up as he weighs 2026 Senate run” by Audrey Fahlberg of National Review

Do you or someone in your office have a birthday you’d like mentioned? Email us.

(Sept. 15) U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso
(Sept. 16) U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, and former San Antonio mayor, HUD secretary and twin Julián Castro.

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Disclosure: Texas A&M University, the Texas Tech University System and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.