By Kayla Guo and Renzo Downey, The Texas Tribune.

Six months into his tenure as chair of the Texas Democratic Party, Kendall Scudder is moving the party’s headquarters from Austin to his hometown of Dallas, prompting an exodus of top staff and throwing the party into a state of upheaval ahead of a critical midterm election, according to interviews with over a dozen people familiar with the dynamics.

Every member of the party’s top staff, including the executive director, chief of staff and two communications staffers, is departing after Scudder required them to agree to move to Dallas by November — or else be laid off. A fifth top staffer has already quit, and more departures among the seven other staffers are expected.

The State Democratic Executive Committee, the party’s governing board, voted on Sept. 13 to close the party’s Austin headquarters and move the party’s central hub to Dallas, while maintaining an office in Austin and opening new outposts in Amarillo, Eagle Pass and Houston.

“We are building a grassroots army of working-class Texans in every corner of this state, ceding no territory and standing firm in our convictions to do things differently to win elections,” Scudder said in a news release announcing the new offices.

While many party insiders supported expanding the TDP’s presence throughout the state, critics said that Scudder’s handling of the transition — including his refusal to allow top staff to stay in Austin without taking demotions — undercut his public rhetoric about supporting working Texans as the party looks to win back that voting bloc in 2026. Scudder pushed forward with the relocation even after the party’s executive director and chief of staff warned him that the move would result in a cascade of staff departures, said one person familiar with the discussions, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the deliberations.

Members of the Democratic National Committee and Democrat-aligned political groups in Texas also expressed reservations about the move to Scudder, according to five people familiar with the discussions. They feared that relocating to Dallas would wipe out staff infrastructure, and that the resulting upheaval would fray national Democratic sentiment toward the state party going into the 2026 elections.

“People were pulling out all the stops to try and convince him, ‘you just have to do this slightly differently to avoid the worst possible consequences,’ and he didn’t want to hear it,” one source familiar with the deliberations said.

In a statement to The Tribune, Scudder argued that Democrats had to change tack after years of electoral losses.

“Change can bring growing pains, but if Democrats are going to be successful, we cannot be afraid to try new things,” he said. “The grassroots of our party are speaking loud and clear that they want a Texas Democratic Party that is present around the state.”

He added that, “while there have been some dissenting voices, the majority of reactions from activists across the state have been overwhelmingly that of excitement and optimism for a party that is finally listening to and engaging with them.”

Rebuilding in time for the midterms?

State political parties are just one part of the apparatus helping candidates get elected. In Texas Democrats’ perennial effort to turn the state blue, the center of gravity has long rested more with the multimillion-dollar campaigns of their nominees at the top of the ticket, along with a network of elected officials, local parties, operatives and advocacy groups.

How the turmoil within the state party would impact those broader efforts was unclear. While a lack of national confidence in the TDP could limit the party’s role in electing Democrats, it doesn’t mean national Democrats will write off the Lone Star State.

“There’s bigger fights to fight,” said one organizer involved in a progressive advocacy group in Texas. “Left orgs in Texas have always had to put together a network that picks up, whether the party is strong or not.”

Additionally, some credit Scudder with helping revive the party’s finances by making calls to pull in new donors. As of mid-September, the party had raised $2.1 million this year — mostly through a surge in small-dollar contributions during House Democrats’ walkout over GOP redistricting in August — enough to pay off the $500,000 in debt that Scudder encountered when he took over as chair in March.

Still, Scudder’s push to go through with the move despite its expected impact on staffing has left some DNC members and Texas donors concerned about the leadership of the state party going into 2026, according to three party insiders, including two members of the SDEC. Those same insiders worried that the move would jeopardize national resources and attention to Texas that had been promised earlier this year — in addition to support from groups in Texas that typically partner with the state party.

Upon hearing of the move, DNC Chair Ken Martin expressed concern about the plan and what it would mean for staff, according to a Texas DNC member who spoke to Martin about the matter two weeks ago. That member also spoke with DNC Vice Chair Shasti Conrad and Executive Director Roger Lau, who similarly expressed concern and confusion.

The hollowing out of the party’s staff means the organization will lose years of institutional knowledge and employees who have built relationships with donors and local Democratic officials, leaving the party disorganized ahead of next year’s midterm election, seven SDEC members and former party staffers said. Each was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the contentious matters.

“We do not have the time and capacity to lose and rebuild the whole organization ahead of the 2026 midterms,” a source familiar with the deliberations said.

Dylan Doody, who until recently was the executive director of the Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee, said it is key to maintain some continuity of staffing at this point in the campaign cycle, when the party is working on recruiting candidates and preparing to register voters and drive get-out-the-vote efforts. He noted that Sam Gostomski and Brenda Cruz — the TDP's outgoing executive director and chief of staff, respectively — were important to fundraising during Democrats' quorum break last month.

Public support for the working class

Since taking the helm of the Texas Democratic Party, Scudder has pushed a focus on winning back working class voters, who lurched to the right in 2024.

“Texas Democrats will not stop fighting for the little guy,” he said in a statement at the end of the regular legislative session this year. “In 2026, we will make sure Texans never forget who sold them out to billionaires and special interests. Democrats built Texas, and Democrats can save Texas.”

But internally, five SDEC members told the Tribune, Scudder was pushing the party toward his vision with little regard for staff, giving them the ultimatum to uproot their lives and move to Dallas or lose their jobs.

The SDEC, composed of roughly 120 members, elected Scudder to take over as chair in a special election in March after longtime chair Gilberto Hinojosa announced his resignation shortly after the 2024 election. Scudder’s current term only runs until the state party’s convention in June, when thousands of party delegates are set to elect the next full-term chair.

Staffers were hesitant to move to Dallas at the whim of a chair who is up for reelection in nine months, according to three sources familiar with the deliberations.

Scudder, in his statement to the Tribune, argued that there was no “exodus” in response to the party’s move to expand operations across the state.

“In order to execute on this strategy, we need every single person on our team aligned with this mission,” he said.

Four minutes before the SDEC’s Sept. 13 meeting, a representative from the party employees’ union proposed a set of worker protections related to the move, including granting staff members the right to refuse to relocate without being fired.

The SDEC is not typically involved in labor negotiations and did not take up the measures. But Scudder was angry and felt ambushed by the proposals, according to three people who were in the room. In a Sept. 16 letter sent through a lawyer, Scudder and other management-level representatives called the union’s move a “serious breach of its duty to bargain in good faith,” and demanded the union retract its proposals.

Some SDEC members said they were caught off guard by Scudder’s decision to move the party headquarters to Dallas. Though he had floated the move with staff as early as July, four SDEC members said the full governing board was not formally told of the plan until they saw it on the agenda for the board’s Sept. 13 meeting, where the move was officially approved.

Explaining the move

Even as he insisted on the relocation, Scudder failed to publicly articulate a clear case for why it was necessary or worth the cost of losing tenured staff, said six sources familiar with the deliberations, including three SDEC members.

Two SDEC members said that Scudder privately explained the relocation to Dallas to some party insiders as representative of the party “meeting the moment” by moving to an area of the state that saw enormous growth among people of color.

Before he became chair, Scudder argued that the party’s base should be decentralized from Austin, and that the state party should not have a role in legislative affairs. One source familiar with the deliberations said Scudder referred to the capital as a “bubble” the party needed to expand out of.

Local Democratic leaders in the Panhandle and Maverick County, which includes Eagle Pass, expressed support for the party’s expansion to their areas, according to notes Scudder shared with the Tribune.

“While Republicans have been politicizing our border communities, Democrats on the ground have felt like we were left alone to defend our communities by ourselves,” said Juanita Martinez, chair of the Maverick County Democratic Party. “Knowing that the Texas Democratic Party is finally opening up shop on the border to help us in our organizing work is a huge relief. This is the path to start winning again in Texas!”

Several party insiders expressed concern about not having a strong party base in Austin, the center of Texas politics and home to activists, consultants, donors and partners of the party.

The Legislature convenes in the city every other year, and its central location makes it accessible to potential candidates from across the state who have to file with the state party to appear in the Democratic primary.

At the same time the relocation is pushing out much of the party’s staff, the SDEC is moving to begin paying Scudder a yearly salary of $150,000 — a sum he would not have been eligible to receive unless he won reelection to a full term as chair at the state party’s upcoming convention in June.

The move to begin paying Scudder early faced pushback within the SDEC, with members arguing that it would be “optically awful” to grant him a six-figure salary at the same time staffers were getting forced out by the move to Dallas. The SDEC’s finance committee agreed earlier this month to start paying Scudder the salary early, according to three SDEC members.

Scudder said he had “no intention of engaging in any discussion” about his salary, noting that when the motion to begin paying him was brought up at the Sept. 13 SDEC meeting, he “relinquished the gavel” and did not participate in any talk about the matter.

The finance committee also unanimously recommended that the SDEC guarantee severance pay to all staffers — regardless of their union status — if their departure from the party was related to the Dallas move.

“The chair needs to realize how folks feel and how this party should be prioritizing its people,” one SDEC member said. “I believe in progress. I believe in expansion. I believe in all of that. Never at the cost of people.”

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