I grew up in a small Texas town, and for most of my life I had one plan: leave. I didn’t hate it. I just assumed the interesting stuff happened somewhere else.
Then I became Miss Texas and spent a year driving all over this state. I met people in towns smaller than mine who ran food pantries out of church basements and coached Little League with no budget. They showed up for each other in ways that never made the news. That year changed my mind about Texas.
I started seeing what it could be, not just what it was.
People love to say all eyes are on Texas. Lately, that feels truer than ever. This election season has been loud, expensive, and mostly happening on our phones. Every scroll brings another ad, another clip, another person telling me everything is on the line.
And somewhere in all that noise, I think we lost the part most people care about—local races.
I don’t mean it as a civic-duty, eat-your-vegetables thing. I mean it selfishly, and I think that’s fine. People care about their own lives first. Their rent, their kids’ school, the road they take to work. On a plane, they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on before helping anyone else. Voting can work the same way.
The Senate and governor’s races matter. I’m not pretending they don’t. But keep scrolling down your ballot, past the names you’ve seen on TV, and beyond. Texas Supreme Court justices. District judges. Your district attorney. Then, in the spring, school board and city council. These are the people deciding who gets charged, how your custody case goes, what your kids learn, and whether your street ever gets fixed. If you aren’t sure where to start, local newspapers, nonpartisan voter guides, and your county’s website often have simple breakdowns about who is running and what these offices do. It is easier than it seems to find out what matters in your community.
Those races get a fraction of the attention and turnout. Which means your vote goes a lot further there.
I know how this might sound coming from me. I ran for the Texas House at 26 and lost. About $2 million went into that race, and some days it felt like it all went down the drain. You’d think that would make me jaded.
Some days it did.
But it also taught me something. Almost nobody I met at their door wanted to talk about whatever national fight was trending that week. They wanted to talk about property taxes and schools. Local stuff. Their stuff.
There’s a trend online right now about 2016 nostalgia. People are posting about how the world felt right before that election, when things seemed mostly okay, and the future didn’t feel so scary. They’re calling it millennial optimism.
I get it. I miss that feeling too. But I don’t think we get it back by scrolling through old photos. I think we get a little of it back by paying attention to what’s close to home, the stuff we can actually watch change.
So this year I’m voting the whole ballot, top to bottom. And when the spring elections come around, I’m showing up for those too.
Selfishly. For my own block. And if enough of us do that, it starts to look a lot like caring about everyone else’s block. If you’re voting this year, tell a friend or a neighbor your plan. Invite them to go with you, or just share when you went and how it went. A simple conversation can remind us that we’re in this together.
Averie Bishop is a Democracy Architects Fellow and a lawyer, former Miss Texas, and Democracy Architects Council Fellow. She ran for the Texas State Legislature at 26 and now talks local politics, pop culture, and life in Dallas with nearly a million followers online.
