A Texas politician has come under scrutiny for filing as a Republican after raising money from Democrats.
Katherine Culbert, a former Democratic nominee for the Texas Railroad Commission, has launched a 2026 campaign under the Republican banner, raising questions about candidate transparency and campaign fundraising practices.
It is understood that she used the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue to raise money for her campaign. The ActBlue team said it became aware late on Tuesday afternoon that Culbert had switched parties.
I’m not American, so excuse me if I sound dumb, but how would that mess with republicans? Like, what’s even the point of registering if you can vote for whomever you like anyway?
The ‘democratic party [DNC]’ and the ‘republican party [RNC]’ are two private companies that have hijacked the electoral system. They (sometimes, but not always) hold ‘primary’ elections to choose which candidate they will run in the actual election. If you are registered with the party, then you can vote in the primary elections to choose their candidate. If, for instance, I were to register republican (me, a dirty commie) then I would vote for the primary candidate that I was most certain would lose in the actual election. Anyone can vote in the real election, so i could stay registered as republican and vote for their worst candidate in the primary, then I could go to the real election and waste my vote on a third-party socialist candidate. (I put a lot of irony in my description here, but I hope its still clear why someone would register for the opposite party). [EDIT: I have just learned that each state has a different setup for who is allowed to vote in primaries, so this scenario is not universal. Thanks to Baron Von J comment below]
Wow… I had no idea… Thanks for the write-up (and I love your irony, but your meaning came through loud and clear)!!
It’s called a closed primary and fewer than half the states do it that way. Here in Texas, the primaries are open, but voting in a primary affiliates you to that party for that one calendar year so that only those who voted in the original primary can vote in any run-off elections from the primary.
I did not know this! I thought they were all closed primaries.
Primaries vary state by state, in some you have a jungle primary where you don’t have to register for that party. And railroad commissioner is a bigger deal than it sounds because it has a lot of power over semi related things.