Riley Rodriguez takes on Charles Perry with a populist campaign focused on water, electricity, poverty, housing, and corporate accountability.
Summary
Riley Rodriguez is running for Texas Senate District 28 with a direct working-class message: West Texas deserves leadership that protects people, water, housing, and local communities rather than corporate profits.
- Rodriguez describes himself as a lifelong rural West Texan, small-business owner, college student, and progressive populist.
- He argues that years of Republican control have left too many district residents struggling with poverty, stagnant wages, food insecurity, and inadequate public investment.
- Abilene’s massive Stargate data-center development pushed him into the race after incumbent Charles Perry told him to trust the corporation.
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Rodriguez warns that rapid industrial growth can raise rents, strain electricity and water systems, displace vulnerable families, and expand exploitation without meaningful oversight.
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He calls for rebuilding Democratic power throughout rural Texas by organizing around material concerns rather than surrendering communities to right-wing cultural politics.
Rodriguez presents this campaign as a contest between organized money and organized people. His candidacy challenges Democrats to fight everywhere, connect progressive policy to daily survival, and give rural working families a government that answers to them.
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Riley Rodriguez Brings a Working-Class Progressive Challenge to Rural West Texas
Riley Rodriguez enters the Texas Senate District 28 race with something too many elected officials lack: an intimate understanding of the people, communities, and economic pressures he seeks to represent. He grew up in rural West Texas, operates small businesses, attends college, and speaks openly as a working-class progressive. That background shapes a candidacy centered not on political theater but on water, electricity, housing, poverty, public education, and corporate accountability.
Rodriguez says the fight over school vouchers first pulled him deeper into politics. The enormous Stargate artificial-intelligence data-center complex in Abilene then convinced him to challenge Republican Senator Charles Perry, who has represented District 28 since 2014. Rodriguez recounts asking Perry about the project’s consequences and receiving a simple instruction to trust the corporation. That answer exposes the central conflict in this race: Should Texans trust concentrated corporate power, or should they demand enforceable protections for workers, ratepayers, renters, farmers, and the environment?
That question has become urgent. The Associated Press reported that the Abilene Stargate complex could require roughly 900 megawatts of electricity, employ thousands during construction, and promise 1,700 permanent jobs. Its developers say they will use closed-loop cooling to reduce water consumption. Those benefits and assurances deserve consideration, but communities must not treat corporate projections as substitutes for independent oversight, enforceable standards, and public transparency.
The costs are already entering public debate. TIME documented severe housing pressures around the Abilene development, including sharply rising rents, shelters and motels at capacity, and residents struggling to compete with an influx of construction workers. The Texas Observer has also reported that projected data-center expansion could consume enormous quantities of water in a state where drought and long-term supply challenges already threaten communities. These consequences validate Rodriguez’s insistence that economic development must serve existing residents rather than price them out, drain their resources, and socialize corporate infrastructure costs.
Rodriguez also connects the data-center controversy to Texas Republicans’ assault on local democracy. House Bill 2127, widely called the “Death Star” law, restricts cities and counties from adopting local rules that go beyond broad areas of state law. Courts upheld the statute in 2025, and Republican lawmakers have since considered expanding it. The party that once preached local control now blocks communities when local voters threaten corporate priorities.
His broader argument carries political significance. Rural Texans do not live outside progressive politics. They need affordable healthcare, strong public schools, reliable infrastructure, fair wages, clean water, food security, and protection from monopoly power. Those are progressive concerns because they place human needs above concentrated wealth.
Rodriguez understands that Democrats cannot rebuild Texas by concentrating only on metropolitan turnout and abandoning vast rural regions. A durable progressive coalition must compete everywhere, listen carefully, and translate policy into the language of daily life. Farmers worried about water, renters facing displacement, families confronting utility increases, and workers seeking economic stability share more interests than partisan media admits.
This campaign remains an uphill contest in a deeply Republican district. Yet every credible campaign builds organization, develops candidates, challenges media silence, and gives neglected voters a political home. Rodriguez is not embarrassed to call himself a progressive or a populist. He argues that representation should mean fighting for constituents rather than serving corporate stakeholders. That is precisely the debate West Texas—and the entire state—needs.
