Hill Country Hero: Independent Candidate Fights for Water, Land, and Your Right to Ignore Drag Queens

SPICEWOOD — Nestled between a fresh-roasted coffee stand and a vendor peddling jars of habanero dill okra at the Pedernales Farmers Market, one woman is on a mission to make politics great again. Meet Kodi Sawin, the staunchly nonpartisan crusader who's more concerned about your well running dry than the latest leftist outrage.

“Would you like to hear about my independent run for state representative?” Sawin asked, luring passersby with a smile. “My top issues are water, wastewater, and land use.”

Not taxes. Not guns. Not the border. Not abortion. Just the essentials to keep the Hill Country from turning into a desert wasteland.

Sawin sees a Texas Legislature obsessed with national hot-button issues — like drag queens and DEI — while Hill Country residents are left high and dry, literally. “One thing we all love is the water and the land. It’s why we live here,” she told Briarcliff resident Hunter Hale, as a nearby guitarist strummed an earthy, acoustic version of “Purple Rain.”

“I’m trying to make politics local again and get more of our voice back at the Capitol,” Sawin said. Hale, tired of watching pastures turn into rooftops, was sold: “Where do I sign up?”

'We've lost the art of communication'

Texas House District 19 is a Republican stronghold, but that's not stopping Sawin. “My win is something different,” she said. “Winning, to me, is giving us all hope that there is a way to change the way we communicate about politics.”

Her plan? Focus on local issues, avoid national political topics, and refuse to bad-mouth others. Raised in the Panhandle and now living in Lakeway, Sawin has seen enough red and blue turf to know that Texans have more in common than the political circus suggests.

But “we’ve lost the art of communication, of hearing and understanding where other people stand,” Sawin lamented. Instead, politicians divide while the rest of us just want to get along.

That's not what most Americans want. A few years back, the Hidden Tribes survey found that two-thirds of Americans belong to an "Exhausted Majority" sick of polarization. And an American Bar Association report noted that the two parties are now at opposite end zones, not facing each other in the center of the field.

Redistricting after the 2020 census pushed Sawin to run. When lawmakers redrew the maps, they pulled Sawin’s neighborhood out of a somewhat purple district and stuck it in a 70% Trump district.

“A 70/30 district is unacceptable,” Sawin said. “We stop communicating. When one side is going to win, it’s game over.”

One conservative voter summed it up: “I’m on the winning side all of the time, but I don’t feel like I’m winning.” Sawin agreed: “We need to talk about what matters to the community.”

Curbing polarization by thinking local

While Republican Rep. Ellen Troxclair focuses on cutting taxes, banning gender-affirming medical care for minors, and setting rules for transgender student-athletes (Troxclair’s campaign website), Sawin wants to talk about what really matters: water and land.

“Hill Country residents want what’s best for their families — safe communities, a secure border, an excellent education for every child, low taxes, and protection of our water and land, to name a few,” Troxclair admitted via email.

But Sawin believes decreasing polarization starts with focusing on local priorities. “We’re not even talking about water. Why? Because we’re talking about cats in Ohio,” said Jim Mosley, an exasperated Cottonwood Shores resident.

Casie Hall knows the struggle. She pays $640 a month to have water delivered to her Spicewood home because her well runs dry. “There’s not enough discussion about water and not enough awareness of it,” Hall said.

Working against the trends

Sawin wants the Legislature to empower local governments to make important judgment calls on developments. But lawmakers have been doing the opposite, making it easier for developers to bypass regulations (House Bill 3697, Senate Bill 2038, and the so-called Death Star bill HB 2127).

“We’re losing the Hill Country. We’re losing what we love,” Sawin said. “It doesn’t mean, 'Don’t grow.' But we’ve got to empower the local communities to be able to manage what is upsetting the balance of our values and our history.”

Reshaping our partisan landscape won't be easy, but Sawin hopes her campaign can soften the political turf for new conversations to take root. Just like grazing livestock loosening sunbaked ground, she's preparing the way for a political rainfall.

Robustly conservative, pro-gun, anti-government, anti-LGBT, anti-left, and anti-abortion views not explicitly stated but implied through satirical exaggeration and selective emphasis.