Allison Mitchell was a chef in Napa Valley, working in the kitchens of some of the most prestigious restaurants with menus full of foods that are difficult to pronounce and too intimidating to ask how. Then she became a luxury handbag designer with a showroom in New York City, a feature in Vogue and a calendar full of late-night calls with European artisans. But now, Mitchell, who looks like a typical Northwest Dallas mom on her way to grab the kids from school, is parked outside early voting locations, with an explainer sheet on the 17 propositions Texas voters will see on their uniform election ballot and a sign that says “All in for Allison.”
Mitchell launched her campaign as the Democratic candidate for House District 108, which represents the Park Cities and parts of Richardson in the Texas House of Representatives. Without any political experience or even a law degree, Mitchell isn’t scared. She says she’s done hard things before, and she plans on doing them again.
“When I decided to run for this, I already knew that [politics] was a tough world, but I’ve been tested already in those ways,” she said. “I just didn’t see it as a problem, and I could be really useful in the Texas Legislature.”
Mitchell is running uncontested for the Democratic nomination as of right now. However, that could change at any minute, and the primary election isn’t until March. Now, she’s creating political education content for her 17,000 followers on social media, bolstering her support but, more importantly, spreading awareness.
The bipartisan-focused videos have garnered significant attention. Maybe it’s because Mitchell’s delivery is palatable and organic, or maybe it’s because algorithms like beautiful women. She isn’t sure which is true, but regardless, it’s a tool in her kit and something to leverage before she has to kick into high gear next year.
“You’ve got to use what your mom gave you,” she said while discussing “pretty privilege,” a societal bias for people who fit within the conventional beauty standard. “But it’s a different world for women. We are living in a different reality than men.”
The Feminine Experience Led To Politics
Currently, the House is made up of 64% men, at a time when women’s healthcare rights in Texas are the most restricted they’ve been in decades.
“The government should never be a decision maker in the health care of anybody between a patient and their physician,” she said. “… The government has no business telling a woman when she can get an abortion or whether she can get one at all. Men feel entitled to prioritize women’s health, to weigh in on this. They don’t have that entitlement. We do.”
But it isn’t the state of reproductive rights that spurred her into action; it was motherhood.
Mitchell, a Hockaday graduate, has a six-year-old daughter enrolled in the Dallas Independent School District and a four-year-old son with autism who is non-verbal. When Gov. Greg Abbott greenlit school vouchers earlier this year, she decided enough was enough.
“A lot of people say they’re surprised that my issue is public education because I come from private education,” she said. “But what I say to them is, I was very lucky. I got an incredible education. I had a lot of opportunities at my fingertips, and I was very lucky. Seeing that it is not available to all children, it is wrong.”
Mitchell says programs for special education children are likely to be the first affected as public schools lose taxpayer funding to the voucher system.
“Good education should be available to all children. Texas is in the bottom half of education. We’re also one of the wealthiest states with the most uninsured, with the least funded schools, and there’s no reason why we can’t change that.”
HD 108 hosts some of the wealthiest families, who can afford several thousand dollars in private education tuition. But Mitchell hopes the voucher issue can be the breaking point for voters on the edge.
“A lot of [voters in HD 108] are really unhappy with the voucher legislation that [their representative] voted for,” she said. “They’re very willing to be issue voters instead of party affiliation. We have a unique opportunity in this cycle, because of Trump, because of Abbott, because of the extremism, to peel away his base.”
HD 108’s Republican History
HD 108 has been represented by Rep. Morgan Meyer, a “life-long conservative” in the middle of his sixth term. He hasn’t announced a bid for re-election, but if he did, he would likely be tough to beat. Meyer has triumphed over Democratic opponents in the last two elections by wide margins.
But Mitchell is hoping that the blue voters within the district will rise to the occasion, or at the very least, historically red voters will stray from their party affiliation based on Meyer’s voting history at the House.
In the last session, Meyer co-sponsored divisive GOP bills, like one that made Ivermectin, traditionally a horse dewormer and touted as a COVID-19 cure by conspiracy theorists, an over-the-counter pharmaceutical for human consumption. He also co-sponsored a bill that allows private citizens to sue abortion pill manufacturers and distributors. But Mitchell questions whether his and other Republicans’ compliance with the hard-right figureheads is what the people of the district want.
“Everything that happens in the Texas legislature is just an extension of the Trump administration,” she said.
HD 108 is not just the Park Cities, though. Sure, that’s where the money is, and those voters are powerful, but they aren’t the only voters in the large district.
“The Park Cities are not the only neighborhoods in this district,” she said. “We have so many blue neighborhoods in 108. It’s just because the wealth is concentrated there and the spotlight is concentrated there that people think this is a super, super hard district to win. And it is. But there are so many others who vote.”
As of right now, Mitchell will continue to make videos for her social media page, camp outside polling places and pick up her kids from school, all while strategizing for the impending election.
“You need fresh energy from younger candidates,” she said. “That’s the answer to get the Democrats who are just so tired of losing all the time in this district, in this state, get excited about coming out to vote.”