Rural Texans have never lacked talent or toughness; what too often has been missing is a government willing to meet them halfway. The Democratic Party’s most effective leaders—national and Texan alike—proved that bold public investment can let farm families, ranch hands, and Main-Street shopkeepers thrive on their own terms. Cooke County Democrats stand on those shoulders. Below is the lineage we claim and the lessons that guide us today.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The New Dealer Who Lit the Countryside
When FDR took office in 1933, barely one rural home in ten had electricity; private utilities refused to string high-cost lines across open pasture. The Rural Electrification Act of 1936 changed the game, offering low-interest federal loans to farmer-owned co-ops. By 1953, more than 90 percent of rural households were electrified, unleashing refrigeration, modern irrigation, and nightly study sessions for millions of farm kids.
Sam Rayburn
North-Texas Speaker, Champion of Back-Road Connectivity
Born on a Bonham cotton farm, “Mr. Sam” never forgot the axle-snapping roads he traveled to Austin and Washington. As Speaker of the U.S. House he leveraged New-Deal funding into the Farm-to-Market road system that still threads Texas today, and he was an early ally of rural electrification.
Lyndon B. Johnson
The Hill-Country President Who Declared a War on Poverty
Growing up teaching in a one-room school outside Cotulla, LBJ saw firsthand how geography and poverty conspired against country kids. In the White House he moved mountains:
- Elementary & Secondary Education Act (1965)—poured unprecedented federal dollars into low-income districts, many of them rural, and later amendments earmarked funds specifically for rural dropout prevention and bilingual programs.
- Medicare & Medicaid (1965)—guaranteed that seniors and poor families could see a doctor without selling the tractor first, stabilizing rural hospitals nationwide.
- Great Society rural-development titles—offered low-interest loans and community-action grants so farm families could modernize operations or launch side businesses instead of abandoning the county.
Ann Richards
Texas Governor Who Put Schools—and Teachers—First
From 1991-1995, Richards steered a bipartisan course that quietly revolutionized rural education:
- School-finance compromise (1991) kept classrooms open while moving the state toward a fairer formula for low-wealth districts—many in the countryside.
- Education-reform bill (1991) created school-based decision-making councils and the first statewide health-insurance pool for teachers, critical for small rural districts that couldn’t negotiate good rates alone.
- 5 percent teacher-pay raise plan (1993) signaled that teaching in Childress or Muenster should be as respected—and rewarded—as teaching in Dallas.
How Their Example Shapes Us
- Local Control, Federal Backing – Rural cooperatives and school boards decide what works; Washington supplies patient capital and fair rules.
- Infrastructure First – Broadband in 2025 is what electric lines were in 1936 and FM roads in 1949. We fight until every pasture gate and farmhouse mailbox is on-line.
- Healthcare Is a Right, Not a Perk – Medicare’s success proves universal coverage is administratively doable and economically stabilizing for sparsely populated counties.
- Education as Equalizer – From LBJ’s Title I to Richards’s teacher insurance, investments in learning pay the highest rural dividends.
- Fair Markets for Producers – Credit access, price stability, and disaster relief keep family operations alive; they are cheaper than bailing out megacorporations after monopoly consolidation.
Passing the Torch
Cooke County Democrats are only ten strong today, but so was the first electric co-op board that wired a single North Texas valley. Leadership is not about how many people sit at the table; it is about whether the lights come on for everyone outside the window. By studying the deeds—not just the slogans—of FDR, Rayburn, Johnson, and Richards, we know exactly how to measure our own success:
Did the clinic stay open?
Did the road get paved?
Did the teacher sign a new contract?
Did the farm survive the drought?
If the answer is “yes,” then rural leadership is alive and well—and Cooke County is better for it. Join us, and let’s write the next chapter together.