By Kimberly Taylor, Taylor Collective Solutions
I woke up this morning, read one text message, and cried like a baby. I didn't realize how much I'd been carrying until that moment. Twenty years of stress, disappointment, and heartbreak came pouring out all at once. Here's what my friend wrote:
"Kept thinking of you and the work, time, and money you put into laying the groundwork for progressives in Texas and what happened last night. Congratulations, sweet friend! We finally did it!"
After blood, sweat, and many tears, we finally did it.
To understand why last night matters so much, you have to remember what the last 30 years in Texas have looked like.
In 2003, Texas Republicans redrew congressional maps in the middle of the decade to grab more power. That same year, they cut thousands of children off CHIP health coverage. In 2011, they slashed family planning funding by two-thirds, kicked Planned Parenthood out of the Women's Health Program, passed a forced-sonogram law, and passed a voter ID law so restrictive that a federal court found it was written with discriminatory intent.
In 2013 came HB 2, designed to shut down abortion clinics across the state. Wendy Davis stood for 11 hours to stop it, and the Supreme Court later struck it down, but not before roughly half the clinics in Texas had closed.
Then 2021 hit like a freight train. SB 8 banned abortion at about six weeks, before most women know they're pregnant, with no exception for rape or incest, and turned private citizens into bounty hunters. The trigger ban made abortion a felony punishable by up to life in prison the moment Roe fell. SB 1 outlawed the drive-thru and 24-hour voting that had helped working families cast their ballots. And just two years after the El Paso and Odessa massacres, lawmakers passed permitless carry. A year later, we lost 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde.
It kept coming. Bans on care for transgender kids. Book bans. A gutted DEI system at our universities. A "Death Star" law stripping cities of the power to protect their own workers, down to mandatory water breaks in 100-degree heat. In 2025, a billion dollars in public money for private school vouchers, the Ten Commandments ordered into classrooms, and yet another mid-decade redistricting grab. All while Texas refused Medicaid expansion and kept the highest uninsured rate in the country.
I'll be honest. I had nearly given up on Texas. I used to say it all the time: "Being a Democrat in Texas is soul-sucking."
For 20 years I spent too many nights away from my children: at fundraisers and board meetings, flying and driving across Texas with candidates and nonprofit leaders, and simply burning the midnight oil to get the job done. The work was hard and divisive, and it often pitted me against people in my own party. I lost dear friends. I lost race after race after race. I lost money. I lost employees who told me we couldn't take on candidates as clients anymore because the work was just too hard. I was even sued (and won) for $1,000,000 by a MAGA school board candidate over a race I volunteered on and won. Anyone who has been a Democratic consultant or volunteer in this state knows that kind of beatdown.
In the last couple of years, I was losing hope, the very thing my friends in DC used to tease me for having too much of. They called me crazy for believing, election year after election year, that we could actually win in Texas. Maybe I was. But crazy hope is what built this.
Over two decades, I worked beside some of the most passionate, brilliant people I've ever known. People who simply wanted women to keep and expand their reproductive rights, who wanted to end gun violence, protect our environment, and fight for better healthcare, better schools, and workers' rights.
Together we built nonprofits to organize everyday Texans and worked to build a statewide progressive infrastructure that would help nonprofits advocate, organize and give a voice to the marginalized communities they serve. Some are still thriving. Others have closed, but not before training new advocates and building systems that help people stand up for their communities. None of that work was wasted. Every one of those seeds is part of what bloomed last night.
To my former and current employees: thank you for believing in the projects I brought to the table, especially the pro bono ones, and for stepping up to make them happen. Thank you for living our company slogan as passionately as I do: "Bringing people, organizations and communities together for the greater good."
Most of all, thank you to the young organizers and millions of volunteers who made this blue wave real. You knocked on the doors. You sent the texts. You made the calls, filled the phone banks, and showed up again and again when it would have been so easy to quit. You picked up a torch when a lot of us were too tired to carry another step, and you ran with it. This is yours, and it's for my kids and every Texas kid who comes next.
And to my friends who never worked in politics but saw exactly how the GOP's attacks on education, healthcare, and reproductive rights were hurting their kids and grandchildren: thank you for the rallies, the marches, the fundraisers, the doors, the posts, and the countless hours fighting alongside me. You showed up every step of the way for what you knew was right.
I'm hopeful that soon my daughter and every woman in Texas will have her bodily autonomy restored. That we will no longer be treated as second-class citizens in our own state.
There are far too many people to name, but I want to give a heartfelt shout-out to the people I've worked alongside over the last 20 years to make Texas a better, kinder, and more welcoming, safe place to call home:
Naomi Aberly
Steve Adler
Heather Bland Ho
Elizabeth Bray
Andy Brown
Carrie Collier Brown
Beth Buyse
Charhonda Cox
Aimee Cunningham
Amber Davis
Wendy Davis
Adrienne Donato
Matt Ellis
Ed Espinoza
Dave Glassco
Matt Glazer
Sarah Gutierrez
Beth Hernandez
Laura Hernandez
Sara Hirsh Bordo
Diane Land
Fred Lewis
Michael Li
Lynn Meredith
Anne Pederson Musial
Katie Naranjo
Yael Ouzillou
Crystal Perkins
Lesley Ramsey
Shuronda Robinson
Leya Simmons
Eugene Sepulveda
Marc Stanley
Sonia Van Meter
Jill van Voorhis
Alexa and Blaine Wesner
We finally did it, y'all. We finally did it.