Texas’ 2026 primary elections saw tight races, scandals and fortunes spent to decide state and local candidates heading to the Nov. 3 general election.
Not so for Rick Tullis, Republican candidate for McLennan County judge. He won by default.
And he will again in November. He was the only candidate from either party to seek the county government’s most influential post.
Tullis will be replacing sitting McLennan County Judge Scott Felton on Jan. 1. Felton has held the position since 2013 and did not run for reelection.
The county judge presides over the Commissioners Court, which manages McLennan County’s $215 million budget, builds and maintains county roads and bridges, conducts elections and oversees regional issues, from water to economic development.
It’s a notoriously demanding job and one that Tullis believes he’s uniquely prepared for.
“This is all stuff I love doing, it turns out,” he told The Waco Bridge during a March interview.
Tullis is the founder and former CEO of Capstone Mechanical, a Waco-based engineering firm. He has served as Midway ISD board trustee since 2013 and has played an active role in workforce development initiatives, including Texas State Technical College’s WorkSITE program and the Greater Waco Advanced Manufacturing Academy.
A history buff — he co-hosts a podcast on Waco history — Tullis is described by those familiar with him as an intelligent problem solver, more engaged with the technical aspects of local government than partisan rhetoric.
“He is so popular and so well liked in the community, most of the folks that might have been potentially good candidates weren’t particularly interested in running against him,” said Mark Hays, chair of the McLennan County Democratic Party.
Tullis is starting the job at what could be a pivotal moment for the county. State lawmakers want to cut property taxes, the county’s main source of revenue. Rural residents are up in arms about potential data center development. And sore feelings persist about the county’s mid-decade redrawing of commissioners’ boundaries.
The future judge is promising a collaborative approach that focuses on what’s already working: workforce development, growing the county’s industrial base and water security.
Industrial parks and data centers
Like his predecessor Scott Felton, Tullis sees industrial parks as the foundation for stable budgets and a healthy McLennan County economy.
Tullis will take office as the Texas Legislature convenes for its next regular session. One of Gov. Greg Abbott’s top priorities for that session is to eliminate the property taxes that go toward school maintenance and operations. Further restrictions could also be put on county and city tax revenue.
He worries those moves could force the county to cut services. And even though Abbott says the state will make up any revenue from school property tax cuts, he fears it won’t be able to make up all the difference.
“I could see a lot of the career and technology pathways we have in our schools being put at risk as funding sources are taken away,” he said.
Industrial parks, which offer infrastructure and incentives to companies that locate in a specific area, could help protect the county from those fears, he said. They’d take underutilized vacant land and turn it into taxable industrial or commercial sites.
“Those companies create new tax base that has allowed us to drop the overall tax rate down, which reduces the burden on homeowners,” Tullis said, while also providing an insurance policy against state laws aiming to reduce or eliminate household taxes.
“I see this every year at Midway,” Tullis said. Midway ISD has one of the lowest school tax rates in McLennan County because of industrial growth within the district.
Former Midway ISD board President Pete Rusek spent more than a decade working with Tullis until Rusek’s appointment as a district court judge last year.
“Nobody else was bringing quite that same perspective in terms of the financial impact, as it were, of economic growth in the Waco-McLennan County area and what that meant for the district,” Rusek told the Bridge during an interview last week.
Additionally, industrial parks can help manage the data center industry, he said.
“The best place to put in a data center is where one is designed to be.”
He contrasted that vision of managed data center development with the case of Lacy Lakeview’s proposed $10 billion “data district” on 520 acres of farmland near Ross.
To Tullis, Lacy Lakeview’s plan and the subsequent ire it generated with rural homeowners underscores the need for better planning and city-county collaboration on similar projects.
“Look, I don’t blame Lacy Lakeview. They’re looking to grow their tax base. … It makes complete sense,” Tullis said. “But there’s a reason we keep the appropriate separation between residential areas and commercial areas.”
He said he would not support a county tax abatement for the Lacy Lakeview data center.
‘The collaborative county judge’
The goal of finding a solution that works for everyone aligns with how his colleagues describe Tullis’ governing approach.
“Whether it’s individuals, whether it’s a small group, a larger group, other governmental entities, outside business interests, Tullis is always looking to … talk to these people about this and get them involved in this too,” Rusek said.
That recollection isn’t far off from how Tullis thinks of himself, and how he hopes residents think of him.
“I want to be known as the collaborative county judge,” Tullis said.
Felton has cultivated robust relationships with city officials, state representatives and officials in other counties, which last year paved the way for the Central Texas Water Alliance, a regional coalition of counties working to secure long-term water supplies.
“I think that Rick Tullis will be like me in that regard, that he finds the points that we can agree on and really make those stronger, and don’t get tied up in little squabbles,” said Felton, the current county judge.
Those relationships will be crucial for delivering state funding for a mental health facility in Waco, a goal Tullis has set for himself that has eluded city and county leaders since the closure of the DePaul Center in 2023.
The absence of a dedicated mental health facility “directly affects the county budget because by default, the county jail becomes the biggest place we house people having mental health episodes,” Tullis said.
Hays, the county Democratic Party chair, will be watching to see if the spirit of collaboration extends to redistricting.
Felton and the all-Republican Commissioners Court undertook an unusual mid-decade redistricting last year ahead of the March primary elections.
Local Democratic leaders denounced the decision as a baldly political move in a county that largely manages to find common ground across party lines, while commissioners said practical, not partisan, considerations drove redistricting.
“I hope he’ll be more concerned with the practical matters of the county, and not not do something along those lines again,” Hays said.
When asked about his openness to redrawing county electoral maps in the future, Tullis said he “wouldn’t look at it from a partisan standpoint, (but) would certainly look at it from an operations and efficiency standpoint,” referencing unequal growth across commissioner precincts.
Winding down, gearing up
Tullis isn’t quite sure when he’ll serve his last day at Midway ISD, but with no campaigning to do, he’s taking time to study up for the next assignment.
“I’ve got the next 10 months to prepare for a job,” said Tullis. ” What an incredible gift that is.”
Some of that time, though, will be spent on other important priorities, including his wife, four sons, farm on the Middle Bosque River and “way too many hobbies.”
As an immediate illustration of his rich, non-campaign life, Tullis offered the ideal flow rate on the river for kayaking: When the U.S. Geological Survey gauge in McGregor reaches 3.25 ft.
