Last night, Texas Republicans passed the final piece of their legislative gerrymander and approved a slightly modified version of their original proposal for the state’s new congressional map. Using their party-line power, Texas Republicans aggressively gerrymandered...
Joe brings over a decade of experience as a political operative and creative strategist to Texas Signal, where he serves as our Senior Advisor and does everything from writing a regular column, Musings, to mentoring our staff and freelancers. Joe was campaign manager for Lina Hidalgo's historic 2018 victory for Harris County Judge and is a passionate sneakerhead.
Musings: Failure to Launch
Enigmatic actor and self-described “poet-philosopher” Matthew McConaughey did a fresh round of press last week, and while the talented thespian has assertively kept the door ajar on a potential bid for Governor of Texas, he has also assertively kept afloat the most...
Redistricting Update
In part three of this series originally published exclusively for our Patreon members, we bring you a quick update on the latest with redistricting. You can support our work by joining our Patreon today. Now that they’ve released the maps they hope will rule Texas...
NextGen’s Big Adventure
A packed room at the University of Houston caught a glimpse of the next big thing happening in Texas on Saturday, and the ceremonies felt decidedly different from those that have come before it. That’s because the organization hosting the day’s proceedings is no...
Musings: Beto can beat Greg Abbott
It is often said that showing up is half the battle, and that is often true in American politics but especially so in Texas, where Democrats have anxiously waited all year for word about if, and according to new reporting when, Beto O’Rourke might join the 2022 race...
5 big questions about the redistricting session
With the third special session of 2021 getting underway tomorrow, Texas politics is again heating up to a boiling point. This set of maps may determine the fate of our district lines for the next decade, and we’re expecting a busy session. We’ve begun to see glimpses...
Musings: How to Beat Greg Abbott, revisited
Way back in early February, I made a bold proclamation: despite his decades in office in millions in his campaign coffers, Governor Greg Abbott was eminently beatable in 2022. Here we are, half a year later, and from my perspective as an extremely pissed-off...
Musings: Timid Souls
With a group of Texas House Democrats returning to the floor of the statehouse in waves over the past week, my mind keeps going back to the epic “Man in the Arena” speech by Teddy Roosevelt. The speech, which Roosevelt gave in 1910 while touring Africa and Europe...
Musings: Broken
I just want to state for the record up top that this is an opinion piece, and I’m speaking for myself. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my career in politics everything you have to give up to help people get elected to do big things for people, and I can...
Musings: President Biden, Senator Manchin, come on down
Few United States Senators have ever, or perhaps will ever, operate from a position of privilege quite like Bobby Kennedy had when he was elected to represent the state of New York in 1964. The son of one of the wealthiest families in American history, the youngest...