TAMMYE NASH | Managing Editor
Nash@DallasVoice.com
Lobbyist and Irving resident Mike Hendrix officially announced his candidacy this week for the District 105 seat in the Texas House of Representatives, saying his extensive background “working in and around” the Texas Legislature and his childhood abroad as the son of missionaries make him uniquely qualified to represent the Irving-based district with its highly diverse population.
“Irving is one of the most diverse and fastest-growing cities in Texas and in the nation, [with a] beautiful blend of different communities, such as LGBTQ+, Hispanic, Black and Indian/South Pacific communities,” Hendrix said in a press release announcing his candidacy.
“I grew up in Singapore and Indonesia. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, and Irving has the largest mosque in North Texas,” Hendrix said. “I went to school in Singapore, which has a very diverse Asian population, and one of the largest Indian populations outside of India. And Irving has one of the largest Hindu temples in the state.”
That upbringing, he said, “provides me with the world view and an understanding of the cultures and the religious diversity that I will be representing here in Irving.”
His childhood also provided him with a strong impetus to fight for equality for all people. “I was in conversion therapy from 7 years old to 13 years old,” Hendrix said, and then when he was 16, his family moved from Singapore to Waxahachie. It was, he said, “the biggest culture shock of my life.”
“I didn’t hunt or shoot guns. I thought ‘football’ meant ‘soccer,’ and I spoke with what we called a British ‘Singlesh’ accent,” he recalled. “I didn’t fit in, to say the least, and I was bullied a lot.”
It was that sense of being an outsider and the conversion therapy’s constant lesson that “I was ‘less than’” that instilled in him the desire to “be in a position to fight for people, not just for the LGBTQ community but for all the minority populations in Texas and especially in Irving who are under-represented in the Texas House.”
Hendrix said his first experience with politics came when he was 13 years old, and Bill Clinton was running for president. “He was really one of my heroes,” he said of Clinton.
“That’s when I really got interested and active in politics. I would work at the yacht club in Jakarta and the American Club in Singapore, securing mail-in ballots for Clinton from the Americans living there — much to my parents’ horror.”
Hendrix said that he has been working “in and around” the Texas Legislature since his family moved to Texas when he was 16. At 19, he became the youngest chief of staff at the Legislature, working for Rep. Betty Brown, “a Walmart greeter from Terrell who was elected to the Texas House and who represented her district very well.”
Hendrix said that, due to his strict religious upbringing, he went a difficult struggle to come out as a gay man at the age of 22. After that, he worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign as a campaign consultant for Nancy Pelosi, before heading to Florida to work on the campaign of Jim Stork, the openly gay former mayor of Wilton Manors who was running for Congress.
Then he moved back to Texas where he got involved in Democratic politics, and for the last 12 years, Hendrix said, he has been a registered lobbyist in Austin, giving him an in-depth understanding not just of the issues but also of how the House of Representatives works.
“It has also allowed me to develop personal relationships there and an uncanny ability to reach across party lines,” Hendrix continued. “I know how to frame arguments in a way that can get through to Republicans without compromising my core values. That’s the key.”
He said he has already put his personal experience to good use as the star witness in House committee hearings on a bill to ban conversion therapy in Texas. The bill did not pass that time, Hendrix said, but it laid the groundwork for future efforts, and it have him the chance to “use my upbringing and the pain I went through in conversion therapy to do something for the betterment of others.”
Hendrix said he is challenging the District 105 incumbent, Democrat Terry Meza, who first assumed office on Jan. 8, 2019, because he does not believe Meza fights hard enough for the people she represents and because residents of Irving “have reached out to me and said, ‘We need better representation.’”
“She has been in office for six years, and she has only been able to pass three bills. She did not deliver one single bill for the people of Irving in this last session,” he said. “She says it’s hard to get bills passed because the Republicans control the Legislature. But look at what other Democrats have done. Rep. [Cassandra] Garcia Hernandez [in District 115], a freshman in the Legislature, was able to pass six bills out of the House in just one year. Rep. Rafael Anchia passed 12 bills out of the House in just one year, and Sen. Nathan Johnson passed 34 bills in just one session.”
(According to the Texas Legislature Online website, Meza has been primary author on only three bills that passed the Legislature and were signed by the governor: HB 3464, HB 783 and HB 1432.)
In his work “as an activist and a lobbyist,” Hendrix said, “just this last session alone I passed 18 bills through advocacy, and I passed [legislation authorizing] $50 million in spending by the state to treat opioid addiction and PTSD.”
He also notes that in 2023, he worked with the Republican who authored Senate Bill 12, which would have banned many drag performances in the state, and with lawmakers in the LGBTQ Caucus and Dallas bar owners Caven Enterprises to “gut that bill so badly that even the caucus members voted ‘present not voting’ because it was the best possible outcome to protect drag in Texas and to protect children.”
He said, “I like to tell people, I did all that as a lobbyist; imagine what I could do if I actually sat on the House floor and could talk to the other representatives without having to make an appointment or go through their staffers.”
Hendrix said that if elected, his legislative priorities would include fully funding public education to make sure Texas teachers make “a livable wage” and to “bring back the Summer EBT Program;” to lower property taxes for Irving residents and to bring more the nearly $700 million the city’s residents pay to the state in taxes and to invest money in Irving for better rail service with broader access to DART rather than “just sending the money to Dallas.”
Hendrix met his partner, Cathedral of Hope Senior Pastor the Rev. Neil Thomas some five years ago in Austin. The two “dated long distance” for some time before Hendrix moved to Irving where he and Thomas live with their 11-year-old daughter and their three dogs.
Hendrix said he knows that being an openly gay man makes him a big target for the religious right, which has a very visible presence in Irving.
“We know the GOP is targeting this district, and we have already seen the Families for Irving PAC starting to target us,” he said. “But I have confidence in the Irving community and in the Democratic Party, and I believe they will come through for us.
“One of my campaign promises is that ‘All Irving Families Matter.’ We like to say that in Irving, families come first, and with Mike Hendrix, that means that ALL families are included.”
Mike Hendrix will launch his campaign for Texas House District 105 with a rally on Saturday, Aug. 9, at 6 p.m. at Simons Flags, 250 W. Airport Freeway in Irving.