The stakes are high for Waco on Nov. 3 as Texas Senate District 22 changes hands for the first time in 16 years.
As Monday’s early voting kickoff nears, the candidates are making the case that they are best suited as a new voice for Greater Waco, the district’s largest population center.
Texas Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield, is competing against Democrat Amy Martinez-Salas of Arlington, a political newcomer hoping to upset her well-connected and well-funded opponent.
The winner will replace Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, who stepped down in May to become a U.S. assistant secretary of defense. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called a special election for Nov. 3 to fill out the rest of his term from November to January.
The special election will be on the ballot along with the general election for the Senate seat, meaning voters will be asked to vote twice for their favored candidate. The winner will be sworn in soon after the election.
Waco-area leaders and residents are looking for their future senator to deliver on local priorities, from mental health funding to county control over data centers.
Waco city officials are hoping for a partner in the Senate who respects local autonomy at a moment when state lawmakers are whittling it away.
Cook, an attorney and former Mansfield mayor whose current district includes Mansfield and other Fort Worth suburbs, said he is paying attention to Waco’s needs.
“We really have spent a tremendous amount of time over the last 15 months being present in Waco,” Cook told the Bridge and KWBU in a joint interview last week.
He established his campaign headquarters in downtown Waco months ago. Cook has presented himself as a party insider prepared to leverage his connections and move the needle on Waco’s priorities.
Martinez-Salas, a legal assistant and first-time candidate, did not have the resources to stake out an office in Waco, but she said her working class journey resonates with Wacoans who have faced similar struggles.
Martinez-Salas was raised by an immigrant mother and has known financial hardship. She completed her undergraduate degree at age 34 — mostly, she said, to show her children what’s possible. “You can’t sit there and pretend to know what the people in Senate District 22 actually need and want if you don’t live that experience,” she said. “I’ve lived through that hardship.”
Cook enjoys a yawning fundraising advantage against his opponent, reporting $240,000 in cash as of October. That’s 75 times the $3,200 in cash Martinez-Salas reported.
The Senate district’s electoral history offers few silver linings for the Democrat. The district has favored Republicans by 23 points or more in top-of-ballot races in 2022 and 2024. In a deep red district, Cook’s endorsements from President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott could be an asset.
The winner will represent a 12-county area stretching from the southern fringe of Dallas-Fort Worth west to Cisco and south to Falls County. It encompasses all of McLennan, Hill and Bosque counties.
Delivering for Waco
Cook said the work of getting to know the Waco-area began before the March primaries.
“Waco and McLennan County in general has been a big part of our campaign up to this point,” he said.
In addition to locating his campaign headquarters in Waco, Cook said he has met with Waco Mayor Jim Holmes, McLennan County Judge Scott Felton and Felton’s unopposed successor Rick Tullis, to familiarize himself with local issues.
After the closure of Waco’s DePaul Center in 2023 left the city without a dedicated mental facility, local leaders have petitioned lawmakers for funding to replace it. Cook vowed to work with Rep. Pat Curry, R-Waco, to wrangle $10 million in state funding and move the effort forward.
Martinez-Salas said she wants to bring in more than $10 million for a DePaul replacement.
The Arlington Democrat spent more than a decade as a healthcare technician before pivoting to law, while her son’s battle with mental health reinforced the importance of better access, she said.
“Behavioral health is just as important as physical health,” she said. Martinez-Salas wants to fund additional crisis centers, school counselors and mobile health clinics in McLennan County, she said.
During his interview with the Bridge and KWBU, Cook did not take a side on Waco’s decades-long conflict with upstream dairy farmers over pollution in the North Bosque River. The dairy industry is concentrated in Erath and Hamilton counties, which lie in District 22.
Cook voted in 2023 for a House bill to unwind rules that state and federal officials imposed two decades earlier in the watershed of the North Bosque River, which was declared “impaired” for phosphorus pollution.
Under pressure from Waco officials, Sen. Birdwell used his committee chairmanship to block the bill from getting to a Senate vote.
Cook this week said he believes the issues can be resolved with technology.
“Technology is better today than it was yesterday, and that’s where the answer lies: What is the best available technology?” Cook said.
Martinez said that in her conversations around the district, McLennan County residents hammered home the importance of water security and quality. She mentioned improving water quality in Lake Waco and the Brazos River, and helping Waco-area communities fund water and sewer work as campaign priorities. She also touched on industrial overpumping of groundwater, an emerging issue in McGregor, where SpaceX tests its rockets.
Property taxes, local control
A debate over reducing property taxes is poised to define the upcoming legislative cycle, which begins January.
Waco’s state senator will have to navigate the competing interests driving the debate’s central question: How to reduce household property tax burdens without crippling city and public school budgets.
Gov. Abbott, who is up for reelection Nov. 3, has called on the Legislature to consider his five-point property tax plan. The plan proposes eliminating school property taxes, limiting city spending, capping and slowing property appraisals, and making it easier for voters to force a tax rollback election.
Cook mostly praised the governor’s plan, including changes to the appraisal process and proposals to cap local government spending. He has positioned himself as a liaison between Waco-area officials and the governor’s office, “so that (the governor) can factor those suggestions in,” Cook said.
Waco city staff have interpreted the plan as one among several attempts by the Legislature to strip away local autonomy from cities.
In a Waco City Council meeting this month, Waco Chief of Staff Ashley Nystrom cited the tax plan as an “erosion of municipal authority and municipal finance mechanisms.”
Cook summed up his position this way: “I’m a firm believer in local control, but not without any kind of restrictions.”
Martinez-Salas said local tax hikes are downstream of unfunded mandates passed by the state, which force cities and public schools to increase spending.
While she believes property tax burdens are a serious issue for working families and those on fixed incomes, “completely stopping property taxes doesn’t help.”
“It will actually bring our (public) school communities down completely,” she said.
Data centers and county power
With controversial data center projects proposed across Senate District 22, including three in McLennan County, both Cook and Martinez-Salas have struck a tough line on the industry.
Cook was quick to support Hill County in its attempted moratorium on data center development this spring, and he praised Gov. Abbott’s statewide pause on new data center permits.
He said he supports enhanced public notice requirements for data center development, county-level land use controls targeting the industry, and a “full-blown accounting and audit system” for water and energy use.
Martinez-Salas said data centers strain the power grid and stress local water supplies, while passing on the consequences to neighboring communities.
“I don’t like data centers for the simple fact that they’re crippling our grid, sucking up our power. We already know that our power grid is awful,” Martinez-Salas said.
She called Cook a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” because of his relationship with Abbott, who championed data center expansion until this year.
“(Cook) is going to say he doesn’t support data centers, yet … the governor is the reason we even have them here. (Abbott) has been very supportive of them in the past,” she said.
Martinez-Salas nabbed an unexpected endorsement from Rena Schroeder, an outspoken rural data center opponent and one of Cook’s opponents in the Republican primary in March. Schroeder is now a staff member on the Democrat’s campaign.
