Texas Dems Squander Chance for PR Gold
with Press Blockade at JB Pritzker Pep Talk
Capitol Inside
June 26 2026
CORPUS CHRISTI - Texas Democrats blew a rare opportunity for gold-standard publicity at their state convention on Friday when party officials prohibited members of the media from covering Illinois Governor JB Pritzker's speech at an event there.
At a time when the Democrats can't afford to squander the kind of good press in a bid to turn a U.S. Senate seat blue for the first time in almost four decades, the journalist blockade at a Blue Wave Luncheon was mind-boggling given the potential boost it offered. It raised the specter that the Democrats are not ready for the prime time in Texas despite the presence of James Talarco as the party's strongest candidate for major office here in the era of Republican rule.
When asked about the decision to keep working reporters from hearing Pritzker's remarks to a massive ballroom packed with cheering supporters, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder said that Pritzker made the call to block journalists who he hadn't exclusively selected in advance.
Scudder said it was standard operating procedure to block journalists from attending fundraisers that are billed as private. That's long been the case with hat-passing events at the residences of donors or other locations that are small compared to conventions that state political parties stage once every election year.
But a state political convention is a different creature - especially for a party that has their best shot on paper to snap a losing streak of 32 years at the statewide level. All publicity is good to various degrees when you're the underdog - even when it comes across as bad.
While Pritzer's appearance was a gift to the Democrats in Texas - a sign that the party's national forces are taking the state seriously for the first time in memory - depriving media access to his words was a disservice to the locals - a flabbergasting breach of politics 101 in the art of public relations for a group that's been in exile here for two dozen years.
The state GOP convention in Houston last week was a fiasco from a PR point of view - an event that was billed as a unity parade that exposed a state party that's still bitterly divided in a U.S. Senate runoff election's wake.
Outgoing U.S. Senator John Cornyn - still bristling over a loss to Paxton in a primary runoff late last month - took another shot at fellow Texas Republicans on Thursday with a post on the kamikaze nature of a push to close primary elections to registered voters.
"Paving the way to minority party status. Democrats haven't turned Texas blue; Republican's might," Cornyn said in a post on X
Talarico - in the meantime - faces the prospect of trying to win in spite of his association with the Democrats if the intentional exclusion of professional journalists from an event that would be a rare publicity bonanza is a harbinger for the fall.
Scudder in the meantime faces a challenge from the party's former executive director Monique Alcala in his bid to keep the party leadership post that he won in a vote of the State Democratic Executive Committee 15 months ago.
"I’m running for Chair because I know how to win," Alcala said in a post on X while attending a meeting of the Labor Caucus on Friday at the Hilliard Center where the convention is taking place. "And when I’m elected I’ll hire a professional staff — with a UNION contract!"
more to come ...
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