“it is rare to watch an elected official willingly walk the plank”
In the months leading up to this moment, national and state progressive advocacy groups applied intense pressure on Thierry, going as far as to threaten to unseat her in a primary. Other members of the Democratic caucus discouraged her from breaking ranks, with one Democratic lawmaker urging her to “hold your nose” and vote against it with the rest of the party, particularly as the legislation would require no Democrat to pass through the Republican-controlled legislature. But Thierry made her decision clear. Her religious convictions and her own research required her to vote in favor of the legislation. Less than a year after that vote, progressive groups and aligned unions poured more than $1 million to help a hand-selected challenger defeat Thierry in a heated primary and runoff campaign.
As I watched the relentless campaign against Thierry unfold, I struggled to understand why the state party failed to defend one of its own from the progressive groups. The newly elevated issue of medical transition treatments for minors was far removed from the traditional positions of Democratic officials, such as civil rights, worker protections, and public education. But in this instance, it was treated as a defining test of loyalty. The party’s decision was made all the more perplexing by who Thierry was.
Shawn Thierry would seem to embody the modern Democratic Party: an African-American woman, a lawyer, and the daughter of a city maintenance worker and an English teacher. The generations of African-Americans who built her district of Sunnyside, Houston’s first black community, were working-class, Christian, and loyal to the Democratic Party. They helped deliver Texas for Kennedy and Johnson, under whose terms the Democrats passed sweeping civil rights legislation. But African-Americans, particularly older voters who form a significant share of the Democratic base, tend to be more socially conservative. Rather than see Thierry’s vote in favor of the ban as one that reflected the will of voters in her plurality-black district, the state Democratic party determined that allowing the progressive groups to remove Thierry was less costly than defending her.
Shortly after her loss, Thierry released a statement announcing she was leaving the Democratic Party. “The Democratic Party has veered so far left, so deep into the progressive abyss,” she wrote. “This is not the party I grew up with. I have witnessed firsthand how the so-called ‘liberal’ left now stifles thoughtful debate, silencing dissent with an iron fist—demanding blind allegiance to ideology, where one must comply or be cast out.”
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I have observed this here: “I will be primaried and taken out if I do that.”
