Editors’ note: Read about our Bum Steer Awards and more on Bum Steer of the Year contenders such as Ken Paxton, the Dallas Mavericks, Arch Manning, Elon Musk, our public universities, and eight of our worst road hazards. Check out the Best Things in Texas for some of 2025’s uplifting moments.
Every new year feels bright and promising for a day or two, and for many people 2025 was no different. Though Americans had some disagreement about whether to feel delight or dread, the prospects for the people who run Texas—our political class—were as shiny as new silver. A Republican president would soon be taking over, and here at home, Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick were at the height of their powers. A conservative Speaker of the Texas House, Dustin Burrows, would be replacing one who hadn’t gotten along with the rest of the party. And the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed, patriotically. There was no better time to tackle the state’s hard problems. Do Big Things. Do the Work.
This year the Legislature did One Big Thing (it allocated taxpayer
money to private schools for the first time), a few unequivocally good things, and a few bad. The GOP has been in charge of Texas for two decades, so if Republican voters have a deep-seated grievance, it’s the fault of Republicans. The party has to either pretend to address these grievances or shift blame to someone else. Or, ideally, both, while taking advantage of the great financial opportunities public service offers. It’s a cycle of futility and misdirection that took root in Washington in a new way in this, the year of DOGE and the Epstein files. But the D.C. pols will never be able to beat the home team.
The Texas economy was slammed by trade wars and the labor problems caused by immigration enforcement, but the Lege preferred to confront threats posed by “furries” in public schools, debating an act to ban the use of litter boxes in classrooms, part of a trend away from real-world problems and toward online-world problems. Lawmakers talked less to one another than ever before, preferring to talk about one another, especially on vertical video on social media. At times, they laughed in one another’s faces—and at state Representative Brian Harrison, whose proclamation on the House floor that “I’m not just here to fight for Brian Harrison’s interests” was answered by mocking, disbelieving howls.
From left: Giovanni Capriglione, Dustin Burrows, Gina Ortiz Jones.Capriglione: Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune; Burrows and Ortiz: Eric Gay/AP
A stunning number of serious issues were pushed to the side while legislators spent time posting online. The West Texas measles outbreak was one source of concern for parents statewide—and in New Mexico, which caught some of our viral overflow.
Yet the value of children’s lives tripped up leaders again and again. When 27 girls were swept away in the Camp Mystic flooding, the sad sacks and neurotics of the press started asking questions like “Why did this happen?” and “Who was responsible?” These questions were put to Governor Abbott, the consoler in chief. Three years ago, Abbott famously said of the Uvalde school shooting—nineteen dead children, after a bungled response run by his state security forces—that it “could have been worse.” No surprise that he had been working on a version of this that sounded slightly more, uh, better.
What he came up with this time was also pretty weird. “ ‘Blame,’ ” he said, was “the word choice of losers,” which seemed uncomfortably to cast the parents of the dead girls, who have been pointing fingers, as “losers.” Texas was a football-loving state, he said. Uh-oh: He’s trying to get folksy. “Losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame,” he said. He wanted to run the state like a “championship team,” one that says, “ ‘Don’t worry about it, man, we got this . . . we’re going to win this game.’ ” It could use a little work, but he’ll have it polished by the next school shooting.
Attorney General Ken Paxton had a rough year and a glorious one (see “The Top Ken List”). He appears to have a good chance to win the 2026 Republican primary for U.S. Senate while losing his marriage to state Senator Angela Paxton. All the while his office continues doing the state’s work, gloriously.
In late 2024, Brent Webster, the first assistant attorney general, sent an email claiming that his colleague Judd Stone harassed him by telling office mates that he fantasized about Webster’s being “violently anally raped by a cylindrical asteroid.” Then in June, Stone filed a lawsuit asserting that Webster had made the whole thing up. For the AG’s office, this arguably represented a reduced level of internal dysfunction from prior years.
From left: Lina Hidalgo, Greg Abbott, Tony Gonzales.Hidalgo: Marcus Ingram/Sipa USA/AP; Abbott: Brandon Bell/Getty; Gonzales: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP
Paxton was hardly the only Texas politician embroiled in scandal. State Representative Giovanni Capriglione was dogged by a former mistress with claims too bizarre and outlandish to believe—the most PG highlight is the allegation that he left a payoff for her behind a dumpster next to a Chuck E. Cheese in DFW. There was evidently enough to the accusations to get him to forgo a reelection campaign. Congressman Tony Gonzales faced the more troubling allegation that he had an affair with a staffer who fatally set herself on fire in September. (Gonzales denies that there was an affair.) When a potential scandal simply involved money—as when the well-funded lobbying group Texans for Lawsuit Reform made Dan Patrick’s son its CEO—it was a relative relief.
This run-through has so far consisted of Republicans because they run the state. When Democrats go wrong, it matters much less. But the febrile atmosphere of 2025 extended to them too. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo bizarrely urged Houston children to storm the mic at a city council meeting—a kind of kiddie January 6, narrowly averted. Perhaps she was driven to distraction in part by Houston Mayor John Whitmire, who has fought Hidalgo with a fervor he normally reserves for bike lanes. Soon-to-be mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, of San Antonio, pulled out her phone in the middle of a debate that banned those devices, briefly derailing the proceedings.
Judge K P George, of Fort Bend County, facing his own corruption allegations, switched to the Republican Party—only to be told by the state GOP that he wasn’t wanted. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, of Dallas, prompted furrowed brows when she labeled Abbott “Governor Hot Wheels.” But she had consistently eye-popping takes. In April she argued that the U.S. needed migrants, legal or illegal, because “we’re done picking cotton,” she said, meaning Black people. “You can’t pay us enough to find a plantation.” It seemed to have escaped the congresswoman’s notice that comparing undocumented farmworkers to enslaved people might be regarded as an argument against letting them stay here.
All this, laid out, has a numbing effect. So does marijuana, to which Dan Patrick is steadfastly opposed. But this opposition created one of the few highlights of the legislative session—his videos warning about the dangers of reefer madness. In May, Patrick appeared at a press conference behind a table with a bevy of colorful, happy-looking THC candies, snacks, and beverages. “They can poison you—not just children, but adults,” he said. Full of vim and vigor, he seemed to imagine himself as the Kevin Costner character in The Untouchables. “Does anyone want to try any of these?” he asked, his tone implying that no sane person would. Half of the room probably had. He threw one bag at a journalist, who, though probably not high himself, failed to make the catch. No Texas politician has ever put so much effort into threatening his constituents with a good time.
From left: Brian Harrison, John Whitmire, Brent Webster.Harrison: Jay Janner/The Austin American-Statesman/Getty; Whitmire: Kirk Sides/Houston Chronicle/Getty; Webster: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty
Texans have not developed the anti-incumbent sentiment you see in many other places, which means we have to look to other methods to discourage our worst-performing public servants. In the spring, one politician—former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson—was bitten by an ostrich at a Texas wildlife park. It was the very least Johnson, who helped bring Great Britain to the brink of ruin, deserved, and the bird seems, judging from British press coverage, to have given a much-needed feeling of catharsis to Johnson’s former constituents.
Yes, we know what you’re thinking. The Capitol in Austin is already surrounded by a fence, and every lawmaker has to walk through the Capitol grounds occasionally. There should be ostriches everywhere.
For now, we’ll settle for noting that Texas’s political class accomplished a Second Big Thing over the past twelve months. In so many ways, large and small, silly and sad, mundane and freakish, it embarrassed itself enough to be named our 2026 Bum Steer of the—Oh, enough already. If we were forced to pick one? It’s Ken Paxton. It’s gotta be Ken Paxton.
This article originally appeared in the January 2026 issue of Texas Monthly with the headline “Bum Steer of the Year.” Subscribe today.
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