I subscribe to the Texas Monthly, even though I live in Georgia. The stories in the TM range from news & politics, arts & entertainment, being Texan, food & drink, BBQ, travel & outdoors, and True crime. For the past twenty years, we’ve traveled to Round Top, Texas, twice a year to sell antiques at the Marburger Farm Antiques Show and the LaBahia Antiques Show. Because of the shows, we’ve known many people in Texas and loved traveling to this part of the country. I was drawn to the Texas Monthly, partly considering ourselves “Texans” once a month for the past 20 years. It’s a great magazine, and I recommend it to you.

Okay, so now about the scoundrels and weirdos. This is the subtitle of an article by Forrest Wilder titled ” This Election Season, Texas Isn’t Sending its Best Slate of Candidates. ” Given that one of the scoundrels running for office in the U.S. faces four indictments with charges totaling 91 felonies, I was intrigued by Wilder’s article. Here is what Forrest Wilder had to say about some Texas candidates:

The late Texan writer Molly Ivins famously quipped, “Good thing we’ve still got politics in Texas—finest form of free entertainment ever invented.” In these grim and angry days, “entertainment” is perhaps not the first word to come to mind. Insurrection, violence, Ted Cruz’s podcast—none of these brings the warm fuzzies. Current events have assumed a surreal, almost hallucinatory nature: Did Greg Abbott really seem to lament that shooting unarmed immigrants was off-limits? Did a state representative really propose a duel to big-hatted agriculture commissioner Sid Miller? Did actual neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes really meet with some of the most powerful Republican operatives in Texas?

Still, we must muster the courage to stare into the abyss, to find levity in the madness. Even if We the People aren’t always having a great time, the candidates seeking to lead us often seem to be having a blast. This primary season offers an unusually large crop of scoundrels, weirdos, and ne’er-do-wells to contemplate, particularly on the ever-lively Republican primary side—prompting the perennial question, Where do they find these people? Attorney General Ken Paxton deserves special credit for the slate of candidates he’s endorsed to challenge fellow Republicans who supported his impeachment on corruption charges: an overripe smorgasbord of January 6 rioters, internet trolls, and MAGA true believers. Revenge, it seems, is a dish best served with a side of WTF.

Bookmark this story—I have a feeling we’ll be hearing more from these folks. 

This Election Season, Texas Isn’t Sending Its Best Slate of Candidates by Forrest Wilder, Texas Monthly, February 8, 2024