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Ep. 24: Clayton Tucker - Ag Commissioner, Food Monopolies, and Water Scarcity
62 Plays6 days ago
In this episode of Mission: Texas, Kate and Alex sit down with Clayton Tucker, fifth-generation Texan rancher and the Democratic nominee for Texas Agriculture Commissioner — the candidate running to lower your grocery bill, protect Texas water, and bust the monopolies rigging the system.
We discuss how just four corporations control the entire U.S. meat supply, why AI data centers are draining Texas water and driving up utility bills, and what the Ag Commissioner can actually do about it. We also get into the immigration workforce reality, the 254-county strategy debate, and why the long game to flip Texas starts local.
*We recorded this episode right before the primaries, in which Republican nominee Sid Miller lost to Nate Sheets.
In this episode:
- Why monopolies — not tariffs — are the real driver of food inflation
- How 4 corporations control the entire U.S. meat supply
- What the Texas Ag Commissioner can actually do to bust monopolies
- AI data centers, Texas water rights, and bipartisan pushback
- The 254-county strategy debate and the long game to 2030
- Jim Hightower's legacy and how Clayton got "voluntold" to run
📲 Follow us on Instagram, TikTok & Facebook @missiontexaspodcast for weekly clips and highlights from every episode.
💛 Love what we're doing? Support independent Texas media on Patreon and help us keep the long game going, because this isn't about one cycle. It's about building a movement.
📩 Contact: missiontexaspodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Mission Texas
00:00:00
Speaker
Howdy. This is Mission Texas. A political podcast about winning Texas by 2032 or else we may lose the White House for a generation. I'm one of your hosts, Alex Clark.
00:00:13
Speaker
And I am Kate Rumsey. Other podcasts may focus on the day-to-day the next election. But we are keeping the eyes of Texas on the bigger prize.
Meet Clayton Tucker
00:00:23
Speaker
What happens after the next census?
00:00:27
Speaker
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Mission Texas. I'm so excited because today we're going to be joined by Clayton Tucker, fifth generation Texan rancher, Democratic nominee for Agriculture Commissioner. I can say that because he doesn't have a primary opponent. He is the nominee.
00:00:41
Speaker
He is running to lower food prices, stand up to corporate monopolies, protect Texas water and rebuild rural communities just like the one I grew up in, Sherman, Texas.
00:00:51
Speaker
Clayton Tucker, welcome. So glad to be here. We got a little baby goat joining us today as well and happy to have some good conversations. Well, I want to jump right into it. um Tell us a little bit about yourself um and kind of how you came to be. What's your origin story and in in politics? Like, how does someone find themselves running for agriculture commissioner?
00:01:15
Speaker
Well, had you told me I was going to be running for office when I was younger, I would have called you crazy. My family is very not political. My family is actually very introverted. So they kind of think what I'm doing is a little weird.
00:01:26
Speaker
But, you know. But, yeah, come from a family land passes, family farm. And, you know, I actually grew up in a fairly conservative household. Half the family was Republican. The other half were very conservative Democrats.
00:01:40
Speaker
So... But they were all very economically populous. That's the one thing that really united them. And I ended up living abroad for a couple years. I lived mostly Taiwan, but kind of hopped around East
Economic Challenges in Farming
00:01:52
Speaker
Asia.
00:01:52
Speaker
And there I just saw how cheap food was, but also like how much better quality the food was. I saw family farms where the average farm was like one acre or maybe 10 acres.
00:02:04
Speaker
And the farmers were doing well. They were like truly middle class ways of life. I come back to the United States after getting the You're the oldest child of the oldest child. What you're doing is cute, but you need to come back.
00:02:14
Speaker
welcome back And a lot of my farm buddies are they're bankrupt. They're broke. You know, they had to sell the farm. ah You know, the a lot of folks my age, you know, would say, oh, I really want to get into farming. But it's just it's a path to poverty. I just literally cannot afford to do it.
00:02:32
Speaker
And there was this little thing of I suddenly found myself a little bit allergic to a lot of processed foods in the United States, which I did not have growing up. So I ended up starting me to like research like, well, why are farmers going broke? Why am I no longer able to process food?
00:02:48
Speaker
And just really learned about calling spade a spade here. This is the corruption of all these monopolies. You all these monopolies that just rig the system, they bottleneck the system, or they just outright dominate it.
Populism and Monopolies
00:03:00
Speaker
And it's true throughout the entire industry. But not only do they dominate the price gouge everyone, they do actually had a lot of harmful chemicals. A lot of these food processors are formerly big tobacco. So, you know, they do what big tobacco does.
00:03:12
Speaker
You know, that kind of got me started in politics. I ran... for Texas state Senate in 2020. It was the Texas Hill country. i knew I was going to lose. It was an 80-20 district. I was just taking the piss out of Republicans.
00:03:24
Speaker
And we outperformed Biden and a number of other folks because, again, I ran fearless. I ran this is who I am. And, you know, hopefully you can run a little bit more localized than ah someone like Joe Biden burn across the country.
00:03:39
Speaker
I mean, so I was telling you beforehand that my dad grew up in the Hill Country, has a very similar background. And what I find interesting is that my grandparents from who grew up in, kb you know, raise kids in Kerrville. My dad showed sheep, ah had chickens and cows.
00:03:55
Speaker
They were LBJ Democrats. And it seems like you're you're bucking the stereotype when you think of a Texan, you think, maybe you think a cowboy, maybe you think a rancher or somebody who like is like you who has a farm. And yet you don't really think progressive. Right. Like, so can you tell me more about that? Like, how do you see that, especially in terms of helping out our agriculture community?
00:04:17
Speaker
What I will say about farmers, and this is just from my experience, from conversations I've had because I'm in that's i'm with the Texas Farmers Union as well. I'm their secretary. is that while
Role and Impact of Agriculture Commissioner
00:04:28
Speaker
farmers are generally more socially conservative, maybe they're a social traditionalist is usually how I like to frame it.
00:04:36
Speaker
Economically, they're the biggest populist you will ever meet. They are far more economically populist than anyone. in tech And that's for a reason. Texas started the whole economic populist movement, literally five miles from my family ranch, started the entire progressive populist movement that gave us everything that we enjoy today, from women's suffrage to social security.
00:04:57
Speaker
And when you talk about economic populism, then you went over a lot of farmers. And, you know, Trump and the Republicans talk a really mean game as economic populist. To me, they're all frauds because no economic populist would ever let billionaires get richer or let monopolies get bigger.
00:05:17
Speaker
But they talk a mean game. And what we've been focusing on and what really connects us with a lot of folks is is really returning the Democratic Party to its populist roots is a party was the host. It was the home of populism.
00:05:30
Speaker
So, yeah, that's well what we're working to do. Well, I'm on board with all that. and And I think you've already set the table as to why we should all care about these issues. Help us understand the connection to your race.
00:05:42
Speaker
A lot of people, if I'm honest, myself included, we actually don't have a really strong grasp on what the office of the agriculture commissioner does. why should Why should we care about that office in this race specifically?
00:05:55
Speaker
i always like the joke that you don't have to raise cattle to be a stakeholder in Texas agriculture. That's my brand of humor and I'm here for it. and yes Let's keep it coming. So to understand the ag...
00:06:08
Speaker
Commissioner, you really need to understand three things, food, land and water. Because if it's about food, land and water, chances are i will have a major involvement. 80% of my budget is literally feeding school kids. It is school lunches.
00:06:23
Speaker
So we're going to be going pretty aggressive on like really cleaning up our food system, making food more affordable. Monopolies are the number one cause of food being so unaffordable.
00:06:34
Speaker
Tariffs get the blame. Tariffs have had an impact. I'm not going to say they didn't, but the true knife in the back are monopolies. And so we're going to really go after them, clean make food more affordable.
00:06:47
Speaker
You know, some of our early research shows that food prices
Corruption and Political Dynamics
00:06:50
Speaker
could drop by 25%. They could drop more, you know, plus or minus a little bit. That's how much these prices are rigged. As far as land, is this really helping my generation get back into farming?
00:07:01
Speaker
average farmer is around 59, 60 years old. so you know in 10 years if we don't get young folks back in the farm and it's not going to be good last bit is just protecting our water a lot of these ai data centers coming in i mean they just use an absurd amount of water we're building them in the driest part of the state overall east texas is getting some of them but it's really west texas that's getting them and they're just going to jack up our util our utility bills power bills water bills And we're going to be putting in programs where, you know, they want to build these things. They cannot cause any sort of inflation.
00:07:38
Speaker
i mean, I just think it's so interesting how powerful this role is. And yet people don't really talk about it. so I'm I'm curious, though, like, how have you seen the role misused in the past several cycles and the people who have been in it? I'm i'm assuming you're you're anticipating who your Republican opponent will be.
00:07:58
Speaker
Yeah, well, winner a when Greg Abbott calls you corrupt, do you know it's pretty bad. So Sid Miller is one of the most corrupt politicians in Texas. And again, that really, really says something. Yeah. Yeah, when I was doing the research on this race, I was shocked.
00:08:15
Speaker
how little I knew about just how spicy the Republican primary is that Governor Abbott has endorsed as an incumbent's opponent. That doesn't happen very often. you Like you say, you know it's bad.
00:08:27
Speaker
It's interesting. A lot of the conservative groups... are getting behind Sid. A lot of the Republican politicians are getting behind his opponent. So we'll see. Thankfully for us, we have we have no primary. So we are off to the general already.
00:08:42
Speaker
But I want to make a point clear about this because we're We're not, I'm not really running, I'm running against Sid, but I'm also not running against Sid. Because to me, him and frankly, a lot of other politicians, I would say the vast majority of other politicians, including some on the Democratic side, to be fair, are more puppets than anything else.
00:09:03
Speaker
They don't do what the actual people want. They do what their donors tell them to do, what the corporations tell them to Who we're really campaigning against are the puppet masters, the people who pull all the strings.
00:09:14
Speaker
which in our case is largely a lot of these monopolies and other know someone told me ah it's the political mob you have the monopolies oligarchs and billionaires Yeah, yeah and I think that makes a lot of sense. And it kind of fits into the framing of our show, which is not to be so caught up in the individual day to day or even the cycle to cycle.
00:09:35
Speaker
There's some bigger problems afoot, right? Going into into corporations, monopolies and a consolidation of power that has been a trend for years now, decades even, is a bigger problem than any one election cycle.
00:09:48
Speaker
And I think it's helpful framing for us to think about it this way, that it's not left versus right, that it's top versus bottom. Because there's a lot more that unites us against these monopolies and they want us to realize.
00:09:59
Speaker
Oh, you know, this whole division, this whole culture war is manufactured by and large. I'm not saying we wouldn't have our natural disagreements. That's that's fine. In my view, there's nothing wrong with being a conservative. There's nothing wrong with being a progressive.
00:10:11
Speaker
You know, you just live the way you want to live. But it's a lot of these, you know, the elites are really pulling the strings. And some folks are starting to pick up on it, both left, right and center.
00:10:24
Speaker
So, you know, we're just really trying to focus on that populism.
Combatting Monopolies and Improving Food Supply
00:10:27
Speaker
Because I do think that's the key. We have to go populist, at least economically. Can you help us understand a little bit more though about the monopolies that you're talking about and how, like, who is it? How are they affecting prices? Because there's so many parallels, I think, as Alex is saying, across other industries, hospitals, rural hospitals.
00:10:45
Speaker
My dad, big parallel again, he was a pharmacist independent and he's getting squeezed out by these privatized like pharmacy benefit managers. And he ended up having to sell his pharmacy because he couldn't make money anymore. And so can you help us understand that a little bit more?
00:11:01
Speaker
Sure. So every industry is monopolized. Let's talk about food first and then I'll go into farming. So the average grocery store has 557 brands plus or minus.
00:11:14
Speaker
There's only 10 actual corporations behind it all. I always think a fun ad would... You remember that movie? I can't remember what it's called. Where like someone puts on the glasses and then they see you like behind the advertising, like the actual truth behind everything. can't remember that.
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah, we'll remember right after we're done filming. But yeah, kind of do like one of those, but where someone's at a grocery store, puts on their glasses and realizes, oh, everything's Tyson. So we say you go buy some chicken, right?
00:11:40
Speaker
And you see five different brands. It's all Tyson. Like Tyson just dominates the industry. And chances are, even if they're different prices, they're different price points. It's chances are it's from the same farm. It could even literally be the same chicken.
00:11:56
Speaker
The movie is called They Live, dear listener. They Live. There you go. We really like movie references on this podcast. so We like it. Well, I'll see what others I can throw in. So for me, four corporations control the entire system.
00:12:09
Speaker
JBS, Cargill, National Beef, and Tyson. They control pork. They control chicken. For those two, it's outright domination. They're chipping away at beef, and beef is next on their list. And eventually, they'll go for goats and sheep after that.
00:12:23
Speaker
He's showing the sheet the goat that is in his lap for our listeners. Yes. They're not watching it yeah Yes. but um If you're not watching, if you can find the video. I'm holding a baby goat the whole time.
00:12:34
Speaker
Anyway, so four corporations control our entire meat. Two corporations, really one corporation now controls almost all of our seeds. know, a good example is every tomato you buy is from one corporation.
00:12:47
Speaker
Doesn't matter the farm, doesn't matter the brand. One corporation has a complete monopoly on all tomato seeds. And you know what they charge for those seeds? Those seeds are worth more than gold.
00:12:58
Speaker
Wow. Because they can. And this is Monsanto? Monsanto bear. They used to be two, then they merged. um Our government... And again, i criticism or criticism is due. This is on both sides of the aisle. It has just been free reign, let everyone merge. It's fine. Biden is actually the first to actually try to stop some.
00:13:20
Speaker
So, you know, credit will credit is due for bo President Biden. He actually, he wasn't aggressive enough, in my opinion, but he did try to stop some. But yeah, this, everything is monopolized. And it's the reason, and because of it's it's a monopoly market, and monopolies make the rules, and they they inflate prices. This is what they do.
00:13:38
Speaker
like I think learned a little bit of about Monsanto when I was in college, like patented. They would patent these seeds and the seeds would like blow into other people's land. And then and then they would like choke off their crops and then they would get in trouble because they had the patented seeds and cause all these issues.
00:13:55
Speaker
They've taken farms that way. It's actually a little bit worse than even that. So Monsanto, let's use cotton. As example, and by the way, we're very close to not having cotton anymore in Texas.
00:14:07
Speaker
ah Cotton prices are just real bad. So Monsanto makes a cotton seed and with that seed comes a very specific type of pesticide, a very specific type of herbicide, fertilizer and all that.
00:14:19
Speaker
And if one farmer in one area uses that seed, that pesticide will spray to other fields, killing anyone who tries not to use a manzanto seed. So once one farmer starts, it forces the entire area to use it.
00:14:34
Speaker
It creates a very powerful feedback loop. So it's, it's really hard to escape that system. was gonna ask just like, can you help bridge us to what your role would then be able to do? Because I think as, as I'm hearing you, it's, it's the power of your budget, in a way like you can spend money, not on these monopolies. and What are the policy levers? is it Is it just, is it just the appropriations that you have? Or are there other levers that you can pull to to change behaviors in the market?
00:15:03
Speaker
yeah Oh, I'm glad you asked. So we were talking to a, there's this guy, want to say his name Austin Frederick or maybe Frederick Austin. He wrote a book called, he wrote a book on monopolies. It's really fantastic book.
00:15:18
Speaker
We were talking to him not too long ago and he said, Texas is actually extremely unique. Where in Texas, the agro commissioner alone can start busting these monopolies. I can't get all of them. We're going to have to have a good attorney general.
00:15:31
Speaker
We're going to have both state and federal. We're going to have to have a good um USDA. But as a commissioner alone, we can start busting some them up.
00:15:42
Speaker
And I'm going to try to simplify this because it's a little it's not too complicated, but, you know, put it simply. There's a lot of attention that's paid to how NAFTA and a lot of free trade deals send all of our manufacturing abroad.
00:15:57
Speaker
Right. I think we all everyone left, right and center knows that NAFTA and free trades in our factories abroad. What's not paid attention to is how that did the exact same thing to our agriculture. We lost about a quarter million farms since free trade and Reaganomics.
00:16:13
Speaker
And these monopolies want it that way. The monopolies want to import cheap food. They get more money by importing. What we would do as Texas Agriculture Commissioner is essentially mandate that any food served at Texas public schools has to be from Texas farmers, from Texas ranchers, and processed by Texans themselves, particularly Texas companies.
00:16:35
Speaker
That alone breaks the monopoly system because it fully returns it here. We might be able to put like preferential treatment on you know things that are cooperative, like a cooperative processor. I know of a couple of folks south of San Antonio who there's a JBS processor down there that are really like thinking like maybe we should form our own processor so we don't have to deal with these monopolies.
00:16:59
Speaker
So we would approach them like form your own processor. processor, and we will guarantee you business and just kind of rebuild that supply chain. If we rebuild supply chains locally in Texas, the monopolies will start to break. it sounds like it would make us more resilient as well to not be relying on someone else's supply chain.
00:17:17
Speaker
I think if COVID taught us anything and it did teach us a number of things, it's, you know, supply chains are very, very fragile. So on the ones that, you know, are literal life and death, like food, you know, we and every other country, in my opinion, needs to be sovereign in our own food. Like if you can't feed yourself, you're going to find yourself in trouble one day. It's only a matter of time.
00:17:38
Speaker
And it's not like the electric grid where, you know, we can't receive power from other states during a snowstorm. um if If we really needed to buy some food from other countries or other states and and within our country, we could. But it would be great if Texans could feed Texans Texas food. Because, I mean, even from like a Maha perspective, like, you know, the crunchy moms ah out in the suburbs, uh,
00:18:04
Speaker
We all know that the closer the source is, the less travel it has to make to your plate. As a general matter, it's more nutritious, right? oh absolutely. like let's just Let's just put it out there. like For the ordinary person who's not like a policy nerd, is not already bought in on politics one way or another, like what does this mean for their daily lives? like How does it improve their nutrition? How does it make their grocery prices cheaper? or You tell you saw us, what is this going to look like? Yeah.
00:18:33
Speaker
It's going to look like two big things. First off, your grocery bills are going to drop. Food is completely unaffordable. i The other day, i bought two bags of groceries at $120. And that's just not... You know, all my kids have four legs. I don't have any of the two-legged kind yet.
00:18:49
Speaker
So... Like, I can't even imagine what that would be like with kids, with young kids. I can tell you it adds it adds up. and Ours are smaller. Yeah. yeahs Yeah. Snacks, man. Those are snacks are really expensive.
00:19:05
Speaker
So basically when food is unaffordable, nothing else is going to be affordable. Healthcare, housing, transportation, vacations, literally nothing else. So we are going to go aggressive on making food affordable again.
00:19:17
Speaker
We could probably drop food prices by quarter, I believe. So, you know, your grocery bill will go from 100 bucks to 75 bucks. So, you know, process. We might actually be able to get it more. i suspect we can get it actually even further down.
00:19:31
Speaker
We are also going to be removing a lot of chemicals from a lot of foods. Again, I mentioned I now have an allergy to processed foods. Just the other day i was at a banquet and ate some of their food. And then, you know, five minutes later, i had to run to to the nearest toilet because I'm like, well, I guess there something processed. There's like a preservative in there that and I wasn't aware about. And now I am, which will increase our health.
00:19:56
Speaker
significantly, it will decrease healthcare costs by quite a bit. And as I think everyone will feel better and will just be better off will literally everyone will be so we can make food both healthier and cheaper at the same time.
00:20:11
Speaker
Yeah, because the cheap food right now is some of the least nutritious and you know That'll save you money in the short run, but in the long run, it's going to end you up in the hospital, right? And that's entirely by design. like that food cheap The processed food is not you know it's not cheap because it's just magically cheaper to produce. It is cheap because the system designed it to be cheap.
00:20:33
Speaker
And it's designed fruits and veggies and whole grains to be expensive. You just have to switch the equation. And then suddenly, all these healthy foods would be the cheap foods and all the unhealthy foods would be a little bit more expensive.
00:20:44
Speaker
which, you know, fairs fair is fair. Well, so, I mean, it just seems like it's always what you're saying is so consistent, as Alex is saying, with the Maha movement, which is dominating a lot of the Republican races, but also, you know, America first. Like we hear a lot of that right now, like, oh, America first, you know, and we should be ah prioritizing the workers here. um And it seems like there's an economic and health ah perspective here, an argument to be made for your position. and I'm wondering, you know, on the flip side, though, is there also an employment case to be made to hire workers?
00:21:22
Speaker
And i I want to ask it also in in the vein of what's going on with immigration, because it seems like there's a business case, an economic case to be made of having a pro-immigrant policy, especially as we are looking for workers here in the state of Texas.
00:21:37
Speaker
Sure. So I was actually on a i was on a radio interview the other day, and they were asking me what I thought about ICE and immigration and everything.
00:21:49
Speaker
And I said, like, look, if you would say you want to kick everyone, like all immigrants out of the country, okay, you know, have fun with 12% inflation. Like there are 10 million jobs that we do not have the people for.
00:22:01
Speaker
We just don't. yeah Like we are literally short of the people. So we have to have immigration. And, you know, anyone who's reasonable about it knows that we have to have immigration.
00:22:13
Speaker
So, you know, bringing these jobs back, which I do support, you know, let's bring back, let's reshore agriculture, reshore American manufacturing. I'm all for that. we're gone We don't have the people to do that yet.
00:22:26
Speaker
We're going to have to get folks in. Basically, if we didn't have immigration, our population would be declining, just like Japan and just like Germany, just like China, actually. So like we have to have a system that works.
00:22:40
Speaker
Problem is the system is designed not to work. that's Again, that's by design. Corporations and monopolies make more money because if they have to pay someone under the table, well, they don't have to pay them as much.
00:22:52
Speaker
right At least anecdotally, we're seeing and and even in rural communities, i think a number of Republican voters who thought, you know I'm all for getting out that the violent criminals, the the worst of the worst, as as what kind of campaigned to me. But I didn't think it was going to be and guy who's who's been living here for decades. It's an upstanding member of the community. like I know him. I know his his wife and his kids. And why are we going after him? think they didn't realize how sweeping the effort would be once the quotas were put in. It doesn't matter who they are or what they're doing or if they've ever been convicted of any crime. We just got to get our numbers up.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah, the the folks who are leading all that are just, I mean, if anyone's going to be deported, it should be them because they're actively harming our country. Right. So if there's a lot of folks who are being deported, i mean, a lot of them are good people. They're, you know, actually um funny little story.
00:23:48
Speaker
So when I was in when I was in Taiwan, I had to switch my visa, my student visa over to a working visa. And, you know, I go to the their immigration office and they were like looking at my passport and they had this funny look on their face.
00:24:03
Speaker
I'm like, oh, that's kind of weird. And they're like, oh, you you have the wrong stamp on your passport. I'm like, oh, okay, well, what put does that mean? I don't understand. They're like, oh, no, the stamp the officer gave you when he came in through the country at the airport gave you the wrong stamp, which means you're technically here illegally.
00:24:19
Speaker
And first off, that no i learned from personal experience, that's never something you want to hear from a government agent. ah You're in our country illegally. Now, you know, they had the full authority just to throw me on a plane and kick me out.
00:24:34
Speaker
And if they were iced, that's probably what they would do. But there they go like, okay, we recognize this as an administrative mistake. We'll work to get it fixed. There's a lot of people in that same boat here.
00:24:44
Speaker
Like yeah maybe they have the wrong stamp on their passport. Maybe they overstayed an administrative issue. you know You know, the right and particularly a lot of other folks who are really trying to, you know, turn this to a political issue a cultural issue, want us to make us think like, they're all these people are just coming over. It's like, no, they're here. This and administration problem happened and now it's too hard to fix.
00:25:09
Speaker
So while was at Commissioner, I can't do anything about it besides run my mouth. You know, hopefully we can get a Congress that actually wants to truly fix this in a way that's fair for everyone.
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think your point, I mean, we have a declining birth rate like other countries. I don't think people realize like how this is going to affect employment, employment here, employment for ranchers, and also just Texans generally.
00:25:35
Speaker
um hey i wanted to ask you um before we jump into other topics, like you mentioned earlier, you ran for office before. How is that impacted this race? Like, are have you learned from it? Or is it just so vastly different having a statewide race that you're like, I, it's two different mechanisms?
00:25:54
Speaker
Yeah, so I would say this, we're doing a couple things a little bit different this time. Now, the first time I ran that was during COVID. So that was just kind of a strange time.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yeah. But this time, we're focusing a lot more on like building our own database and We learned a number of issues with the other databases we use. So we're really focusing on that and trying to build where we can do a lot of micro-targeting on very issue-specific things.
00:26:23
Speaker
And we're trying to be a lot more consistent with our messaging. Can you speak, though, i mean, as you gear up to the general, like how you see that for your race and maybe in conjunction with other races? Because I, you know, you're a bit more down ballot than, say, Senate or the governor's race. We still have a statewide. So I'm wondering, like, how are you thinking about that?
00:26:43
Speaker
Well, we'll know a lot more once we know who are all the nominees are. I know last cycle we had a slate for the first time in like 30 years.
00:26:54
Speaker
So hopefully we'll be able to do that again. and I really think back to the 1982 election. So, you know, the 1980 when Reagan came in, like it was just a wash for Texas Democrats. Like we lost damn near everything.
00:27:07
Speaker
But then Reagan did what Reagan does best, cause a recession. And, you know, a couple... couple folks really like, hey, we need to run. We need run a slate. So you have Gary Morrow, who was the Texas Democratic Party exec director of time, columnist Jim Hightower, attorney Jim Maddox, and a county commissioner, y'all may hurt may have heard of her, and Richards.
00:27:30
Speaker
And they decided to run as a true slate, which meant they figured out where were each of them strongest. Like, oh, okay, Jim, you're really good out in West Texas. You go out there. Okay, Ann, you're really great on the I-34 corridor. You campaigned there.
00:27:44
Speaker
And they just really did that kind of divide and conquer. And that's something I hope we can do here. I recognize that, you know, lot of our votes are in urban areas, but, you know, we also have to cut our losses in rural areas and suburban areas as well.
00:27:58
Speaker
So maybe we can find like, oh, so-and-so, you're really strong in Houston. So you really, you know, ramp up in Houston. Don't just talk about yourself, talk about everyone. And if we did any polling, it's sort like, hey, I'm really strong in West Texas. Okay, let's go but go to Amarillo. It's, you know, maybe instead losing at 80-20, let's lose at 70-30.
00:28:17
Speaker
And that will help literally everyone. The whole state. Yeah. And you can't gerrymander statewide. So you got to turn out the vote everywhere. It's true. Every vote counts the same. Yeah. I mean, if we could just park on this for a moment, but then I want to talk about Jim Hightower. I'm glad you mentioned him.
00:28:32
Speaker
I have a connection there and I want to talk about it. yeah um But ah for rural Texas in particular, what do you think it is other than just being ignored?
00:28:43
Speaker
um largely, that we need to do as a party, not just in this cycle, but going into 2030 and beyond to make sure that we are delivering a message that is compelling and resonant and that they're actually getting both sides of the story so that they can make an informed choice.
00:29:01
Speaker
I will say first off, the propaganda is real. It and is very stark, and particularly in rural areas. Rural areas are hit much harder by propaganda than any urban area. They still exist in urban areas, don't get me wrong.
00:29:14
Speaker
But rural areas, it's significantly worse. I find that showing up and listening, kind of show up, shut up, and just kind of listening out. A lot of rural communities are starting to organize against data centers.
00:29:27
Speaker
So... going up to those community meetings, again, not to, you know, shake hands and kiss babies per se, but just to show up and listen and then kind of build some of that community.
00:29:38
Speaker
It's really an exercise of rebuilding trust. And I think the Democrats have been like so focused, like, oh we have to just the right message. and That message doesn't mean a damn thing if they don't trust the messenger.
00:29:49
Speaker
Right. yeah You have to rebuild at least some of that trust. It seems like there's this debate, I mean, as we were talking about that, ah where do we turn out the vote? and Is it the really blue areas? Is it turning out persuadables? Is it going out and talking to the rural areas? I think some people thought Beto's 254 county strategy ah didn't work. So we got to something else. But maybe it did. And we got really close. I mean, so how do you perceive that?
00:30:16
Speaker
Well, what i always find interesting is when folks point out how Beto's 254 strategy didn't work, I'm like, yeah, but he came closer than literally anyone ever has. So, you know, maybe.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah. So maybe I think about that a little bit more. Like, look, if we're going to win purely by the cities, Democrats would have won by now. Like, let's be honest. Like like that strategy would have worked by now, or at least we would be a lot closer.
00:30:44
Speaker
So we're going to have to have 254 county strategy. I'm not saying every single candidate has to go to every single thing. You know, we can have surrogates, you know, I could go to a lot more counties.
00:30:57
Speaker
and talk, you know, but you know, maybe the US Senate candidate, whether it's Tariq or Crockett, you know, maybe they don't necessarily need to go to those. Maybe they should, maybe they don't, you know, I'm not on their campaigns. like I'm willing to entertain the academic possibility that we could just juice the turnout and all the big cities and that'll get us across the line on a statewide race.
00:31:16
Speaker
It could happen in theory. But here's my problem with that approach. That gets us no closer and actually probably works in a counterproductive way to us moving the dial on the legislature.
00:31:29
Speaker
Right. Because whether we like it or not, the legislature is gerrymandered. And if we want to un-gerrymander it, we have to win. In order to win, we have to run in the gerrymandered districts.
00:31:41
Speaker
And so we can't we can't put that coalition together solely in the cities. It won't won't happen. That's not how numbers work. Don't get me wrong. I would love to win some statewide races. And if that's the way you're going to do it, I mean, ah more power to you. But I am concerned about like the longer the longer play.
00:31:59
Speaker
When 2030 rolls around, and we get five new congressional seats and we have another redistricting opportunity. Are we going to put our best foot forward and have some hand in that process? I would love by 2030 for us to have the the governor and the lieutenant governor and the attorney general and to have the House and have the Senate and control the whole process. And the Ag Commissioner, yeah. Well, course the Commissioner. I don't know how involved the Ag Commissioner is in redistricting, but yes, I would also love a Democratic Agriculture Commissioner.
00:32:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I'm about to say something extremely unpopular. If I had a choice between if i had a choice between us winning only the U.S. Senate or winning the Texas House, I'll choose Texas House. Yeah.
00:32:36
Speaker
Like, again, I know that's not a popular opinion. Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right.
00:32:43
Speaker
Hopefully we get both. But yeah, i mean, one of the I've always really focused a lot on down ballot candidates. Even when I ran in 2020, you know, we really focused a lot where there's local candidates. We also really focus a lot building local political parties or local groups.
00:33:00
Speaker
And that's something we're going to bring here. like Since I have no primary opponent, I'm generally trying to stay neutral in a lot of these primaries. But if there's like a rural candidate made for county commissioner, which we do have some actually really great county commission. Even on passes, we have our first county judge candidate in like 20 years.
00:33:18
Speaker
So just kind of really building that local stuff. And I'm hoping to convince a number of other people, number of other candidates to get involved in municipals. For instance, Shirley McKellar is running for mayor Tyler.
00:33:32
Speaker
If we can get her in the mayor position, which is a May election, i mean, that will just help literally everyone. Because I really do believe the key to flipping Texas is local.
00:33:43
Speaker
Well, can you speak a little bit more about that, the organizing happening in West Texas or in the Hill Country? Because I have no sense of that other than my dad grew up there and I know Dallas and how how organized or maybe lack of organized we are. I don't know, question mark. We just we had an episode where we were talking about how many precinct chairs we have in each area and surprisingly... Dallas was low on the list. So you'd think we would have more. But what is it like out there? can you give us that sense?
00:34:09
Speaker
So it's definitely growing. It's definitely getting better and better organized. You know, the state party just opened up an office in Amarillo, which is fantastic. isn it I went to the office. It is a beautiful office.
00:34:21
Speaker
And the Amarillo folks are really focusing on getting more active precinct chairs. So Yeah. Keyword active. Yeah. Not furniture. Yeah. yeah not Not armchair, precinct chairs. That's right. Or they are, you know, in a chair, then they still make phone calls or something, you know, yeah someone active.
00:34:40
Speaker
You can, we can, we can define active as however we need to. But anyway, So again, with the data centers, we're seeing a growth of organizing. Now that's pretty bipartisan.
00:34:54
Speaker
ah That's actually uniquely, here's a kind of a good example. The other day I ran in my mouth. something I seem to do a lot nowadays about data data centers and like a thousand people signed one of our petitions about stopping them.
00:35:09
Speaker
And out of curiosity, I started looking up their voting records. Like a quarter, maybe a third of them were never voted in a Democratic primary in their life. Maybe they didn't vote at all or just, you know, straight Republican primaries.
00:35:21
Speaker
So I do think that's, you know, something for us to get into. It's like, I know there's one coming up pretty soon, like over the weekend that we plan to go to just a again, to show up, shut up and listen.
00:35:34
Speaker
Well, wonder if there's that, that's a like a growth story or a something that Democrats need to be listening to, because I see it too, just anecdotally. Like I see Republican friends talking about data centers and water and I'm like, whoa, what? Like, and I wonder if that's something that can be conveyed by candidates, not just you, but others to say like, look, I'm the only anti data center candidate here. i am the only pro water candidate here.
00:36:01
Speaker
The Republicans are trying to take it away and maybe not even make it in terms of party and and just say like, I'm the anti data center. I know i went to your website and it's like right there. um Like, let's put stickers up, you know, on your social media and say, like, look, you know, we can talk about abortion and all these other things and kids and sports. But like this is you don't like data centers. I don't like them either. Let's get together on this.
00:36:25
Speaker
It's kind of incredible, just the amount of energy. I would not have expected it a couple months ago. it was like with my opponent, my likely opponent, Sid Miller, he came out basically for data centers. That he says, like, don't put them on prime farmland.
00:36:39
Speaker
But, you know, even if you put it not on prime farmland, they're still going to take all the water and electricity anyway. So, you know, that still hurts. Well, we're just... We created ah some criteria or I give a data status center reach meets these seven bullet points, then it's probably okay.
00:36:57
Speaker
So like we we do have some things in there. Actually, i can let I think I remember them off the top of my head. It's like they don't cause power inflation. They don't cause water inflation. They don't cause any sort of pollution that really harms folks.
00:37:12
Speaker
They are constructed and maintained with Union Texas labor. a are not used to create propaganda or to automate jobs away.
00:37:23
Speaker
And the last bit, they're not a part of this billionaire scheme to turn us into a subscription economy where no one owns anything and the billionaires own, or where workers own nothing and the billionaires own everything, which is what Jeff Bezos wants. Literally, he said that.
00:37:37
Speaker
One interesting aspect we're kind of looking into is a lot of um these data centers are causing inflation in computer parts. ram for instance uh quadrupled within a year memory is going that same way semiconductors are going that same way which is hurting particularly gamers and other folks who rely on computers and so forth so we're looking into seeing if we can do some app target very targeted outreach of hey we know you like doing this these data centers are causing this
00:38:08
Speaker
My opponent is for them to do this. I'm against it. Maybe we can convert some non voters into voters. You got to get you on some what Twitch streams. Is that where they are hang out? Yeah, there's we're we're looking more and more in developing a more thorough media strategy.
00:38:22
Speaker
like that. You got to get creative because the old playbook doesn't work. And I've i've been really um hardened by younger candidates like yourself who are willing to try new things and to be in new places.
00:38:35
Speaker
And we need more of that. Yeah. Speaking of that, I'm the, I believe the first candidate now nominee from either political party to be born in the 90s. Oh, 90s. oh ninety s Okay.
00:38:46
Speaker
Yeah, 1991. I'm a 90s kid. Nice. I just barely was a hanger on for the 80s. November 9th, 1989. The day the Berlin Wall fell down. You're welcome, America.
00:38:57
Speaker
I'm not going to tell y'all when I was born. I'm older than you guys. But hey, more more millennials, right? Yeah, I know. we like We like millennial candidates, right? Come on. I'm an elder millennial.
00:39:08
Speaker
Well, on that note, Alex, should we switch to good news? I do, do wanna switch to good news. I would really beat myself up if I didn't come back to this. Oh, the Jim Holtzman, yeah. Yes, okay, so you mentioned Tyler, you mentioned Jim Hightower. I want you to to know that I'm from the 903, the area code.
00:39:24
Speaker
That's a massive part of the state. I'm from Sherman, Texas. And so my political coming of age was the Obama primary against Hillary Clinton. And I wasn't even a Democrat at that point, I just liked Barack Obama, right? um Pretty common story, that that race.
00:39:40
Speaker
Through that process, I met my congressional candidate, Glenn Melanson and Jim Hightower, because he's from Denison, Texas, which is like just next door to Sherman, oldest high school rivalry in the state.
00:39:51
Speaker
He was there a lot in helping Glenn Melanson run that race against, at the time, the oldest member of Congress, Ralph Hall, a member like us yesterday. But yeah, Jim Hightower, if you want to i I know that y'all are are close. If you want to tell the audience what they should know, because i feel like Jim Hightower doesn't get the flowers he deserves. You know, just briefly tell us about Jim.
00:40:13
Speaker
Yeah, so he is a, you know, tried and true progressive populist leader, not just in Texas, but nationally. He was our last agriculture commissioner that was a Democrat in Texas.
00:40:26
Speaker
And he started like, the whole organics movement. Or yeah at least it technically kind of started in California, but he got Texas to pass organic regulation as well as pesticide regulation. So if you enjoy, you know, our foods having less pesticides, they still do have some pesticides, but you know, less pesticides than they used to.
00:40:45
Speaker
Or the organics food, you can thank Hightower for that. And yeah, I've, I worked with Hightower. first met him 2018. I ran one of his political organizations for a while where kind of cut my teeth on that.
00:41:00
Speaker
And then ah kind of a little bit of a funny story. you know about a year or two ago maybe a year and a half he called me up it's like hey you you know you want to come over and get lunch i'm like oh okay so i walk over open i go inside and there's this this big round table of folks with hightower middle i was like oh crap what did i do and they' like oh no we want to talk to you about ag commissioner like oh okay so one of the origin stories you had ah you had a political intervention you're you were drafted into the race I got voluntold.
00:41:32
Speaker
Voluntold, I love that, yeah. Yeah, we're in the military, so we get that. Yeah, a lot of my family's military, so its okay it's part of the family culture.
00:41:42
Speaker
What ranch is for you? Mostly Navy. Navy, okay. ah We'll forgive you. Half of my family is Navy, the other half is ranchers, so there's just no hope for my mouth.
00:41:55
Speaker
awesome Exactly. Fair enough. Well, I'm going to shift gears. ah We're doing something new ah called ah good news. I think Republicans are a lot more comfortable um in spreading their gospel. I think we as Democrats got get better about sharing good news and whether that's good news that has anything to do with politics or not. I think we got we got to flex that muscle.
00:42:17
Speaker
So is there anything in your personal life, anything in your professional world, um anything that's just happening that you want to share that is ah good news you think what people ought to know about? Well, we've had 10 baby goats so far. This is a number 10. Does this one have a name? I have a superstition. I do not name baby animals for two weeks.
00:42:37
Speaker
After two weeks, and we will be doing naming contest, both for goats and we have some mini cows as well. Someone's waking up. so uh check my social media or you know sign up for email or texting that's that's how i'll go out and all my handles are the same this clayton tucker tx and my website's also played tuckertx.com we're very consistent so i would say that's probably the good news just lots of lots of baby goats yeah we love the babies they're a lot of fun
00:43:11
Speaker
In that vein, I mean, it it feels like the the snow has thawed here and I'm ready for spring. And maybe you'd appreciate that. I i don't live in a rural area, but I really love and i'm looking forward to doing stuff in my garden and like really doing more there and growing things. And so something that I really care about and that's my good news is that I'm looking forward to that. I'm kind of planning right now. Yeah.
00:43:33
Speaker
ah You know, more like vining plants and trying to make it. I live next to Frontier Communications and so... Speaking of like large data centers and just the noise that they make and I'm trying to make it a more like ambiance friendly area and not me just hearing the whirring of their like HVAC um in this like urban area. So that's something I'm looking forward to as we are all gearing up for spring.
00:43:58
Speaker
My good news is going to be relentlessly focused on the podcast. My dear listeners, we are so excited to announce that ah Kate and I are opening our bank account for the podcast for the very first time just later today. We're going to be leaving momentarily after we get done recording here.
00:44:17
Speaker
And ah good news, bad news is that we need to figure out how to raise a little bit of money for for this thing so we can make it sustainable. Because again, this is not about one cycle. It's not about one one news story or from the from one to the next. It's about the long-term movement we got to build so that we're ready come 2030.
00:44:37
Speaker
And so I'm excited about that, actually. I'm excited about what's to come. Well, the... Well, the work y'all do is really important because, I mean, speaking of monopolies, the media is terribly monopolized.
00:44:48
Speaker
And with, you know, Twitter being bought by was Larry Ellison, I mean, it's about to get worse. Yeah. And, you know, but like eat a lot of social media getting bought out as well. So the work y'all do is incredibly important because a lot of the media is more propaganda than it is media now.
00:45:06
Speaker
and That's the frustrating part of this is that i have friends and family who'd rather believe a meme or something they saw on some Facebook forum than actually ask me my lived experience, especially in i was ah in law enforcement and the military and like, oh, we don't,
00:45:22
Speaker
we don't want to believe her anymore. She's just some woke lib. I'm like, what, like, you'd rather believe some random person in a forum who is not even like telling you the truth. ah But that's why I think you're right. And the fact that we wanted to be independent and create our own sort of atmosphere and ecosystem so that we can say, you know, and be more independent be able to speak truth to the power. um and you know,
00:45:47
Speaker
You see even like with ah so not just social media, but in movies and streaming services and Netflix buying like Warner Brothers. And it's just it's this this time, um even though i love TV and I want to watch it. It's frustrating. But okay those are our good news, sort of. I don't know if I ended on a very good note, but um hopefully we things are getting more positive. But Clayton, we give our guests the last word.
00:46:11
Speaker
What do you think it's going to take to ultimately flip Texas that you have not mentioned already? The only way for any of us to succeed is as a team. And i'm the I'm not just talking about political candidates. you know Even if all the political candidates work together, but no one else did, it ain't going to work.
00:46:28
Speaker
It only will work if we all work as a team. The candidates, the political parties, these little neighborhood groups, including the nonpartisan ones, the work you all do actually spreading truth and honesty, but also real conversations.
00:46:41
Speaker
You know, that it's going to take a true movement to beat this. You know, we've been here before. like This is not the first time America has been an oligarchy. You know, 1870s, monopolies destroyed small businesses, monopolies destroyed small farms.
00:46:57
Speaker
The government literally deployed military against civilians. You know, any of this ring a bell, but it was rural Texans. It was Texans creating a rural urban alliance, populist Texans particularly, that defeated the first Gilded Age and will do it for the second.
00:47:15
Speaker
Right. Monopoly steel busting, ah especially FDR. i mean, we've we've seen this and we can do it again and hopefully through your office as well. Well, Clayton, um if there's anything else, let us know. But otherwise, ah where you remind us again, you mentioned this earlier, but where can we follow you? How can we support you?
00:47:33
Speaker
So all my social media handles, including my website, this is Clayton Tucker TX or Clayton Tucker TX dot com. We're very consistent. If you like getting pictures of animals and occasionally me shit talking, then there you go. It's a great mix. You never know what you're going to get in any given day.
00:47:50
Speaker
And you're usually with your cowboy hat, you know, like I think that's usually how I picture you is with the big cowboy hat. I intermix it. If someone's listening, and they're all in. They're like, i got to help this guy. What is the one thing you would ask them to do right away?
00:48:03
Speaker
I would say there's three big things. First off, go to our website under issues, our platform, every single part of our platform is a petition.
00:48:13
Speaker
So you can sign it, you can share it, you can literally even leave us a comment so you can tell us what's going on. You know, we've had folks, you know, sign in Abilene telling us about their personal experience with the what's it called like Stargate or what whatever it's called that's data center.
00:48:27
Speaker
You know, to me, that's, you know, was returning to the populist campaign really close to the people. So sign and share those. If you're able to volunteer, we're building up regular volunteer parties, really building up the momentum. If you're able to pitch in we have really great momentum for an ad candidate, you know, double than what most ad candidates normally have by this point.
00:48:47
Speaker
And we certainly need more support there. know, Sid Miller and his opponent can, you know, they get $10,000 checks and we get 10. So we have to, while we have two and a half times the number of donors, then they, we have to have even more to match.
00:49:04
Speaker
easy for them to raise money, especially when one person cuts a $10,000 check. Oh, yeah. Thank you, Clayton. We really appreciate you. We're going to looking forward to seeing what's going to happen in the general and support you. And will sign off.
00:49:16
Speaker
Tell our listeners, we'll see you next weekend. God bless Texas. You can follow us on all socials at Mission Texas Podcast. Email us at missiontexaspodcast at gmail.com.
00:49:28
Speaker
This episode is edited by Juan Jose Flores. Our music bumper is by Adam Pickerel, and our cover art is by Tino Sohn.