Kamala Harris and Colin Allred: Why We Need Them Now to Break Through for Texas and America
“A vision for leadership that unites, that empowers and that brings justice — Texas and America need better and we need it now.”
First, I want to state my case and say that I am Texan through and through. A cowboy, a country boy, and a true supporter of the 2nd Amendment. I absolutely love this state. I love waking up in the morning and breathing in the glorious Texas open air. There ain’t nothing like it, and there ain’t nothing that beats it. But also as someone who grew up in a very small town in Texas, specifically the infamously known Jasper, Texas, I’ve seen how national politics, race and power coalesce in small southern towns.
The small community I grew up in is quaint and quiet most of the time, but it’s also painful for me, my family, and multiple others. The lynching of James Byrd, Jr in 1998 caused an international uproar and sickeningly, the culture of race-based murder still throbs in America to this day. In 2013, my own brother, Alfred Wright, was found dead in Hemphill, Texas under suspicious circumstances after being missing for 18 days. Because of what was done to his body and how mutilated it was when it was found, I and my family are still convinced to this day, over a decade later, that he was murdered by racists; and like far too many Black families in America, we are still waiting for justice.
Alfred’s murder, James Byrd’s murder, and so many more like them are incidents only in that they are just one event among thousands of others that are equally true: racial injustice in this country extends into small-town Texas. America needs new leadership: leadership that will fight for equality, for justice, and for the future. It’s time to elect leaders for Texas and America who will make their voices heard.
That’s why I’m supporting Kamala Harris and Colin Allred over Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. They are the kind of future-oriented, inclusive leadership that’s ready to turn the page beyond the politics of fear and division to a new chapter of progress.
Why Evangelical Christians and Small-Town Voters Support Trump and Cruz
In small towns across Texas and across much of America, white evangelical Christians still vote for Donald Trump and for Ted Cruz. They’re not doing it because they’re committed to religious orthodoxy or even necessarily economic policy. They’re doing it because they’re committed to a way of life — a way of life that many of them have always known.
For many of them, they feel under attack because they’re white, and they feel under attack because they’re Christian, and they feel under attack because they’re traditional. But what does “traditional” REALLY mean to these people?
It’s not family values or faith-based beliefs, either. When they say ‘traditional’, they’re often talking about a time when the social order was patently men ran things; queer people, for example, were either invisible or oppressed; and minorities who acted in any other way than the bland, milquetoast white that was expected publicly were often marginalised if not utterly crushed. ‘Traditional’ for many of them means going back to a time before people were able to ‘talk back’, before ‘political correctness’ tainted their spaces, before their way of life went unquestioned, before diversity was a valuable commodity, when progress was something they could embrace and welcomed because it wasn’t threatening the privileges they had long enjoyed.
It’s not just about jobs and taxes; it’s about the fear of America itself changing. An issue and term I like to call “domination anxiety”: the fear that white, Protestant Christian, once-hegemonic movements no longer own the country. If America isn’t white, if America isn’t Protestant Christian, and if America isn’t the America they always knew it to be, perhaps America cannot be America?
To Trump, it’s just the melancholy of the rationalising imagination. But to his most ardent supporters, Trump’s “Make America Great Again” AKA MAGA message celebrates a specific kind of America, one where racial and cultural dominance of a certain race is a given.
For a lot of these voters, especially in the countryside, Trump and Cruz have become defenders of tradition. But the tradition they are defending is one that has perennially excluded and denigrated people of color, immigrants, and queer and trans communities. Their way of life is threatened, but what is threatened is a system of advantage that has always privileged the lives of whites over the lives of others.
Ted Cruz has willingly served as an accomplice by effectively extending Trump’s predatory racism and cynical tribalism into the vast state of Texas. Cruz’s vote to overturn the 2020 election and his speeches urging ‘fighting’ state legislators ahead of January 6, 2021 were evidence that Cruz cares more about holding onto power than protecting the interests of working Texans. And, as revealed in his response to the 6 January attack, Cruz is more than content to promote dangerous lies that demonstrate that he is unfit to lead the state into the next term.
Trump’s Racist Rhetoric and the Insurrection of January 6
Trump made his political reputation by appealing to his base’s fears, resentments and prejudices. “Those Mexicans are murderers and rapists”, he said of immigrants; “Muslims should be banned from the US”; white supremacists are ‘very fine people’.
Throughout his presidency, Trump’s strategy for seeking re-election rested on crafting ‘others’ — those who didn’t fit into his dream of an America dominated by white supremacy. His slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about American greatness according to a fantasy where white supremacy reigns.
That rhetoric came to a head on 6 January 2021, when a Trump-led mob of insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol on his lies that election services had been rigged. Their act was not only an assault on an American institution and the wider rule of law… It was an assault on democracy itself. Ted Cruz didn’t denounce the deceptive claims that precipitated the assault on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 but instead stood by Trump’s side on the Senate floor and voted in favor of overturning the election results, which in itself should be disqualifying.
Texas Has a History of Progressivism: It’s Time to Return to It
It’s so easy to forget though, but deep partisan divide wasn’t always the norm in Texas. I still remember conversations with my mother where she says “the year you were born, our state was different. We had hope, we were proud, and we were making progress. Yes, our state has a rich tradition of progressive political leadership, most notably through Governor Ann Richards. As she said about everyday Texans: ‘If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.’ And leading from the center meant not protecting the status quo but bringing more people to the table.
From the beginning, Richards fought for policies that would support working families and uphold women’s rights and opportunities, leading Texas on a path toward greater and more inclusive prosperity. Her vision of Texas was as a place that could perfect itself, becoming more just, fair, and equitable. This is the kind of leadership we need once again: leadership that fights for justice, not division.
Harris and the candidate for US Congress in Texas’s 32nd District, Colin Allred, in some ways mark a return to the progressive ideas and spirit that once placed Texas at the forefront of opportunity in the United States. Harris has literally spent her whole career fighting for the people. Whether as a prosecutor, a senator or, now, a vice president, she has tried to lift up those who are deemed less than — whether those who are marginalised, working-class families, or those whose civil rights are endangered. She fights the good fight, moving the needle on issues that promulgate criminal justice reform, protect voting rights, and further efforts to support families and worker rights.
Colin Allred, a child of the Lone Star State and a former NFL player who quit football to go to law school and become a civil rights attorney and now US Representative, has experienced the limits of wanting to work hard and get by. The son of a single mother, he’s spent his career working to secure voting rights, access to health care and good-paying jobs across Texas. Standing in stark contrast to Ted Cruz, Allred represents the kind of principled, considerate leadership Texas deserves — and needs. Allred’s is a Texas that works for all Texans, not just billionaires and brazen bullies.
Why Cruz Has Failed Us
Consider the simple fact that, over the years he’s been in the Senate, Ted Cruz is the last person you’d ever hire as a governor. Every shred of evidence we have about his character and his priorities — as unavoidable as it is — has accrued over years to paint a picture clear as day. Cruz has consistently placed his political ambitions ahead of the lives of Texans. His disastrous attempt to fly to Cancun mid-winter storm catastrophe, for his family vacation, speaks volumes about his character and priorities. More importantly, Cruz’s resistance to meaningful healthcare and gun violence reform, especially when his counterpart Sen John Cornyn has quietly lead the GOP to work with some Democrats to pass bipartisan gun legislation, suggests to Texans that he prioritises his own political career and self-interests over their interests and wellbeing.
Perhaps worst of all, Cruz peddled Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, standing with the man who inspired an insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th 2021, rather than with democracy itself. Texas voters don’t need leaders who are ready to forsake our democracy for personal and political gain anymore.
It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way
But it doesn’t have to stay this way. Texas can be a leader in the fight for equality, justice and opportunity for all. We can elect leaders who will fight for us — who will bring Texans to the table rather than leaving them out on the street. We have a chance to make Texas — and America — better by honoring our revolutionary ideals of e pluribus unum — out of many, one. As Kamala Harris’ slogan says, “We Are Not Going Back.” We mustn’t go back, because there is no path forward where freedom and opportunity for everyone is reachable.
My Brother Alfred Wright Deserved Better
This fight is personal, because my brother Alfred Wright deserved better. He deserved to live in a state and to live in a country where the color of his skin did not put a target on his back, especially because he chose to be married to a white woman. He and so many other names of those taken from this earth far too soon, remind us of just how much work we have to do dismantling those historic systems of racism and inequality that are still hurting Black Americans and others today.
On another personal note, just this Summer, my family and I experienced a mass shooting at a Juneteenth celebration this year in Round Rock, Texas and recounted our story of the trauma. Juneteenth is a day of hope. Juneteenth is a day of freedom and celebration of a better America. It was supposed to be a day of family, a day of great music, great food, and celebration of progress… a true day of liberation. Not a day of trauma and active shootings. Not a day of being in the hospital on an IV drip and surviving bouts of vomiting from the terrifying sound of gunfire. Not a reality of grabbing my partner and children and thinking, “this could be it for us.” Not a reality of seeing bleeding bodies on the ground or first responders doing CPR next to us. This is our reality: a country riddled with violence and hatred not just between different groups and nations, but within itself. This is the reality we wish to change. It is a reality we seek leadership to fight for, to change.
It’s Time to Take Action
The time to act is now. You want change? You vote. Voter registration in Texas ends in just a few days on October 7th, and you can register online here by printing a voter registration form, filling it out, and mailing it to your local election office. You can also register to vote in person if you prefer. Early voting runs in Texas from October 21st through November 1st; and Voting day is November 5th. The senator we need to replace, Ted Cruz, has put his own ambitions ahead of our families, and we need to replace him with a better leader in Colin Allred. We must “vote Blue” down ballot so that the plans of the future can be written in stone with Democrat legislators, rather than Republicans.
AND we must also do the same by electing the leader who wants to give more rights and freedoms to the American people, rather than taking them away. (like Trump’s Conservative Supreme Court did with Roe v. Wade) That is why we MUST have Kamala D. Harris lead our nation, and NEVER return to the divisive rhetoric, hate/fear-mongering, and repulsive white supremacist racism that Trump and his “swamp” represents.
Wherever you are in Texas, swing states, other states, and allied territories please make the choice that honors my brother Alfred’s life, that honors the countless others we have lost to hate and violence, and that honors the vision of leaders such as Ann Richards.
Please. Vote for the future — Vote for a Texas in which everyone has a chair. And Vote for an America in which everyone has a seat at the table. Choose Hope. Choose a better future. “Vote Blue” down ballot in 2024.
