In the race to represent Texas House District 72, Shiloh Salazar says when your opponent won’t even agree to debate you, you have to get creative in order to connect with the voters.
In a telephone interview on Sept. 10, she talked about her campaign strategy.
“As we know, Rep. Darby has over a million dollars in the account, and we’re never going to touch that. That’s not going to happen, but we have raised a little over $10,000, and with that, we have been able to buy advertisements and other things which no one ever thought we could do.”
Salazar said she’s working to make those donations count.
“We have a staffer now that is on the ground registering voters… knocking on doors and also helping us coordinate events, so those are some things that we’re now able to do.
“We are also part of the Texas Together program that the Democratic Party has put together.
“And that’s a program where they’re combining resources and volunteers at the state level for block walking and phone banking… texting and sending out joint mailers, instead of each individual candidate sending their own, and spending fortunes upon fortunes trying to reach voters, we’re consolidating our money and trying to reach the exact same voters together, and that’s important.
“I think the state party kind of sat down and they were like, ‘How can we do more with less?’ which is exactly what my campaign has been doing this whole time. I was told from the beginning that we would to be lucky if we raised $4,000, and now here we are, just reaching over that $10,000 mark, so I didn’t really expect us to have this much.”
Connecting in Meaningful Ways
Salazar said that while she doesn’t have a lot of experience winning popularity contests, she does have a lot of experience fighting for things that are important to her, and she thinks that’s going to go a long way with voters in West Texas.
She feels like the key for her is staying connected with people she has just met and sharing the ideas she’s developing from having listened to them.
“We have just been making TikTok videos and Facebook videos and Facebook posts every day, and really just trying to hit on all of the social media platforms and use that power to help boost us forward.”
She said now that she has a little money, she’s thinking about sending out a mail message or two, but she wants these to include useful information for people in the district in addition to asking for their votes.
“I have resources that I put together based on what the voters I’m talking to have told me they need,” she explained, so I have information about food banks, and where you can get help with Medicaid and Medicare, or getting help with writing a resume or finding childcare.”
When news was announced that Pres. Trump would try to offset record-high steak and hamburger prices through imports of Argentinian beef, Salazar produced a handy guide with every farm-to-table store and local processer in the district in an effort to promote local sales, and safer supply chains.
Her campaign has also put together guides to encourage local civics, listing all the county commissioner court and city council meetings, along information on all the different taxing entities in the district, and delivered more than 20,000 pencils to teachers. She said her campaign is always looking for ways they can be useful to the voters in TX-72.
She also has some big signs her campaign is working to distribute around the district; 4-foot by 4-foot signs that say “Texas Needs a Mom to Save Public Education” on one side and “Texas Needs a Mom to Regulate Data Centers” on the reverse that will be deployed across the 10-county area, along with different versions of the smaller signs people can put in their yards.
She recently had a few signs in Big Spring get run over, and shared her frustration with her supporters in a social media message to tell them her campaign is working with local law enforcement, because it looks like it was not an accident.
“Obviously, I’m not going to accuse someone of anything I can’t prove, but if it was intentional that really pisses me off … because I have teachers supporting this campaign that have been living on the same income since 2019, and waitresses earning $2.13 per hour. I have working families trying to stretch every single dollar they have, and I even have someone that made a donation of 89 cents. Let that sink in.
“I don’t have electric companies and data centers donating to my campaign; Working-class Texans paid for every single one of these signs; they looked at their bank accounts and decided it was worth it to support this campaign, so I don’t take that lightly.”
Salazar has been very active in supporting the candidacy of other office seekers in the area, making appearances with them all over the district, and she’s also trying some non-traditional methods, like delivering a self-defense class with Pct. 1 candidate for justice of the peace, Walter Bryant, who is a karate instructor.
I thought this could be a good way to reach out to some people who might want to meet us, but they’re scared to talk about politics, so I wanted a low entry event; a place where — if you’re kind of worried about talking politics, but you still kind of want to explore it — how can I make it easy for you get an idea of who I am, without you having to sit there and hear a speech and be uncomfortable.
She said her team is also working on ideas for a workshop that will help voters understand how legislation is created, allowing them to draft their own proposed bills.
“We’re going to tell people how a bill is written and passed and then we’re going to offer them a blueprint to write their own legislation that we can either take with us if we do win this campaign to Austin and try and figure out how to make their bill come reality or we can send it to Austin when we lose and tell them ‘These are the problems in West Texas.'”
She said they are still working to coordinate something like that.
Do Voters Deserve a Debate?
Salazar said she has been after Drew Darby’s campaign for quite a while trying get them to agree to at least one debate, but as of right now, there is still nothing concrete scheduled.
A pair of local non-profit organizations offered to host a debate, but in order to protect their non-profit status, they need candidates from both sides to participate, and that’s been a problem.
“We looked at doing another forum with just the Democratic Party candidates, but frankly, we’ve done plenty of forums with just Democrats.”
At the end of the day, Salazar said she’s just going to keep right on going with the same intensity and see what happens.
“I only need 3,000 votes,” she said.
