For three weeks every March, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo takes over the Bayou City. Athleisure is out; fringe is in. Cosplay cowboys fill restaurants and bars. Thousands of trail riders, some pulling covered wagons, shut down major roadways. Despite the area’s negligible connection to the Old West—Houston’s early history was shaped by cotton, not cattle—the event that debuted in 1932 as the Houston Fat Stock Show and Livestock Exposition has grown into something close to a civic religion. Like no other institution, the rodeo unites Houstonians of all races, classes, and political persuasions. 

This was the mighty organization that Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo rode into battle against  last week. On the evening of March 10, Hidalgo attempted to gain access to the so-called chute seats, one of the most expensive viewing areas at NRG Stadium, to watch a concert by country music star Megan Moroney. As the county’s top executive, Hidalgo receives complimentary access to a luxury box, which she shares with other local officials. But Hidalgo, who did not reply to an interview request, had taken to watching shows from behind the cattle chutes, where seats on the dirt floor can fetch up to $525. 

Leading up to the Moroney concert, rodeo officials had, at Hidalgo’s request, provided her and her guests with around $9,000 worth of chute tickets to concerts by J Balvin, Forrest Frank, and Luke Bryan. But on this night, the 35-year-old Democratic politician had been informed that the area was sold out and could not accommodate her. When she showed up anyway, accompanied by several guests, she was asked to return to her suite. Things got ugly. According to Hidalgo, security officials “manhandled” her. According to rodeo board chairwoman Pat Mann Phillips and president and CEO Chris Boleman, the judge was being disruptive and had to be escorted out of the stadium. Portions of the confrontation were recorded by Hidalgo, who subsequently posted the audio on Facebook. 

In a two-page letter to rodeo officials released the next day, Hidalgo wrote that she “felt disrespected, threatened and physically unsafe—as did my guests and the kids.” She continued: “I want the HSLR leadership to know that constituents of color and women, like me, deserve to be physically safe and to be treated with dignity.” Rodeo officials fired back with their own statement, noting that the judge “is the only elected official to request, even demand, these seats night after night” and that “the idea that she was treated this way because she’s a woman or Hispanic is absolutely false and insulting.” The rodeo’s executive committee later voted to strip Hidalgo of her ceremonial title of “ex officio director,” an honor granted to various dignitaries. 

The rodeo dustup is merely the latest in Hidalgo’s growing catalog of feuds. Over seven-plus tumultuous years in office, she has crossed swords with Houston Mayor John Whitmire, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, former District Attorney Kim Ogg, and most of her fellow county commissioners. She has alienated many of her former Democratic allies and become a favorite punching bag for Republicans. In September, former Harris County Democratic Party chair Lillie Schechter told me that “the coalition that was behind her in 2022—labor, progressive donors, Democratic activists—they’re not behind her anymore.” 

But no controversy has attracted as much bipartisan condemnation as Hidalgo’s current squabble. To many Houstonians, taking on the rodeo is like picking a fight with Santa Claus. “She has less than a year left as judge and she chose to spend one of those days going to war with one of the most popular institutions in Houston,” one of Hidalgo’s former staffers recently texted me. (The staffer requested anonymity in order to speak freely.) 

Republican state Senator Paul Bettencourt, whose district includes a swath of western Harris County, has called on Hidalgo to resign from office. “It’s a preposterous level of hubris and immaturity and bizarre behavior for the county judge of the third-largest county in America,” Bettencourt told me. He expressed concern about Hidalgo’s capacity to respond to natural disasters during the remainder of her term, which ends in January. “Her decision-making is becoming increasingly erratic, irrational, and focused only on herself. . . . And that is not a person that you want to run emergency management in a major Gulf hurricane.” 

Two days after the incident, Hidalgo returned to NRG Stadium to review security footage. At a subsequent press conference, she acknowledged that she couldn’t find evidence of her alleged mistreatment. “You can’t really make things out because it’s very dark and it’s from a distance,” she said, before calling on the stadium to install more cameras “so we can make sure a situation like this doesn’t happen again.” She told reporters that she planned to move on from the incident. 

Not everyone is ready to drop the subject. Tom Ramsey, the sole Republican on the Harris County Commissioners Court, told me he plans to raise the issue at the court’s meeting on Thursday. “We’re going to have an open-comment conversation about how embarrassing this has been to all of us,” he said. “We’re not going to ignore it. This isn’t going away.” 

Hidalgo may not be in attendance for that conversation. As of Friday, she was planning to be out of the country this week on a trade mission to Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal. Over the past year, the judge has been absent from court on multiple occasions. In September she left court early to attend a concert of music by film composer Hans Zimmer. The next month she embarked on a ten-day trade mission to Japan and Taiwan. “I don’t love commissioners court these days,” she told me in December. “I mean, they’re bullies.”

In the aftermath of the rodeo contretemps, many social media users have expressed nostalgia for former Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the well-liked moderate Republican whom Hidalgo unseated in 2018. Emmett recently told me that he typically only attended the rodeo once or twice each year when he was in office, and he mostly stayed in the county suite. He said Hidalgo’s behavior was troubling. “We live in a time of a lot of politicians doing really bizarre things,” he said. “This may top the list.” 

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