Reporting Texas
News and features from UT-Austin's School of Journalism
byLucas Armbruster
Inside the Travis County Democratic Party headquarters on Banister Lane, a constant hum of overlapping voices fills the room. Volunteers sit at folding tables, holding their phones and watching their laptop screens automatically cycle through numbers using Scale to Win, a cloud-based predictive phone dialing system.
“This is really an important time, and I’m really hoping for some change,” said George Vance McGee, a Travis County Democratic Party volunteer who returned to phone banking this election cycle after decades away from the headsets.
In the days before the Nov. 3 election, this high-volume dialer setup at Banister Lane represented the traditional, centralized approach of campaign field strategy. The Travis County Republican Party ran a different operation, highlighting two contrasting voter-mobilization strategies in Central Texas.
For phone banking volunteers, the challenge isn’t just navigating technical difficulties, but also weathering the emotional consequences of cold outreach. Out of every 10 calls dialed, only two or three result in an actual pick-up. The rest vanish into voicemails, disconnected numbers, or incorrect records.
byAdele Doat
A frenzied crowd of supporters met Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico as he emerged from the Whataburger on Guadalupe Street after an October campaign rally at the University of Texas at Austin. Whataburger is not the only emblematic Texas food brand Talarico has featured on his Instagram profile in the final stretch of the 2026 midterm election campaign. Last week, he also stopped by a H-E-B grocery store, a Mr. Taco restaurant and a Buc-ee’s. In contrast, Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton, meanwhile, has centered his social media presence on rallies featuring an abundance of American and Texas flags.
byErika Gonzalez
In the weeks leading up to December 2025, Cortena Williams, owner of a Burleson water damage restoration company, was reviewing proposals and preparing agreements she said could help build up her business. After years trying to establish herself in an industry dominated by larger contractors, she had moved closer to contracts with major public institutions, thanks in part to the state’s Historically Underutilized Business Program designed to help businesses owned by minorities and women compete for public contracts.
But then the Texas comptroller’s office issued emergency rules restructuring the HUB program and stripping women- and minority-owned businesses of their HUB certifications. Instead, the program’s focus shifted to helping businesses owned by veterans.
“The comptroller’s actions ended those conversations overnight, not because I wasn’t qualified, but because they eliminated a program that gave me a path to compete,” Williams said.
byNatalia Rodriguez
Ronald Reagan went from actor to governor to president. Donald Trump went from real-estate developer to reality TV star to president. Now, two Texas celebrities, Bobby Pulido and Mark Texeira, hope to join that list as they run for U.S. Congress without holding any prior office.
“Name recognition is huge,” says University of Texas Rio Grande Valley professor Richard Longoria, whose research focuses on celebrity politics. “It’s one of the biggest predictors for people that study electoral politics. Getting a lot of media attention and being well known is a huge advantage, but by itself is not enough.”