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Texas is “on track” to more than double its number of Republican women in the state House as more women are waking up to “the severity and heavy-handedness that government” has in their everyday lives, one of those candidates tells Fox News Digital.
Ellen Troxclair was one of the few Republicans and the youngest woman to be elected to the Austin City Council when she was just 29. She served on the council from 2015 until she left in 2019 to focus on her family, her real estate business and her book, “Step Up: How to Advocate Like a Woman,” encouraging conservative women to run for office.
Now, Troxclair is taking her own advice and running for Texas House District 19 after feeling “continually frustrated with the direction of our country.”
Ellen Troxclair, a Republican, is running for Texas House District 19.
(Courtesy of Ellen Troxclair)
“I’ve always said if there was a need or an opportunity, I would be willing to step up again,” she told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“I’m tired of being sold out,” she added, “whether it’s our kids being sold out through indoctrination in public schools or public safety through the open borders, or even our money through the inflation policies and economic policies.”
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Troxclair said the COVID-19 pandemic, the subsequent school lockdowns, and the window that parents were given into public school curricula due to remote learning, helped shine a light on the impact the government can have on people’s lives, motivating more women to want to have a voice in those decisions affecting them and their families.
Ellen Troxclair, a Republican, is running for Texas House District 19.
(Courtesy of Ellen Troxclair)
“I think sometimes it’s easy to think like, ‘Well, government, you know, it’s a thing that doesn’t really affect me. … and then the lockdowns happened, and they felt the severity and heavy-handedness of government and the impact it can have,” she said.
“I feel like we’ve seen a resurgence of these younger moms saying, ‘OK, our kids can’t fight for themselves, they have no one else to fight for them, and it’s time for us to step up,'” she continued. “And yes, we’re busy, and yes, all these other things that we’re doing are important, too. But we have a role, and we have a voice that we need to exert, otherwise our country is going to continue to go in the same woke direction that will be detrimental to our kids.”
Troxclair said she’s especially frustrated with the way the Democratic Party has claimed women’s issues and diminished female conservative voices.
“I just think we’re sick of having the left speak for us,” she said. “It’s the continued attitude that your opinion only matters if you’re a Democrat woman, and whether it’s reproductive rights or the economy or whatever, the leftists take great pride in trying to make everybody believe that it is the party of women. And I know that they certainly don’t represent me, they don’t represent my family and my friends.
“And I think there’s also a generational issue here, too, that it’s kind of time for a new generation to step up and speak out,” she added.
Ellen Troxclair (R), a Republican, is running for Texas House District 19.
(Courtesy of Ellen Troxclair)
The Texas House currently has seven Republican women and is looking to add eight more, which Troxclair said she’s confident will happen.
“We’re on track to double the number of Republican women in the Texas House, which is awesome,” she said.
“At the end of the day, it’s not really about men versus women, but it’s about having the right spokespeople for the messages that we all care about,” she said. “And the left has done that a lot more successfully than the right. And I think we’re starting to wake up and realize that.”
Texas House District 19 is currently held by Republican State Rep. James White, who did not run for reelection. Troxclair will face Democratic nominee Pam Baggett on Nov. 8.
Republican women are also growing their presence in politics on the national scale. They set a record in Congress in the 2020 elections, and the 2022 midterm elections are shaping up to deliver another “Year of Republican Women,” Republican operatives and candidates say.
Thirty-two Republican women won election to Congress in 2020, surpassing the record of 30 Republican women set in 2006. Maggie’s List, a political action committee dedicated to increasing the number of conservative women elected to federal public office, has endorsed 55 female GOP candidates so far.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., founded Elevate PAC to help elect more GOP women to Congress, telling Fox News Digital in April that she’s trying to change the narrative about conservative women.
“For so long, the media coverage, certainly when I first got to Congress, was very focused on highlighting and elevating Democrat women candidates who were running for office or Democrat female elected officials and not really focusing the attention on really incredible Republican women candidates and current incumbents who have stepped up and have just really inspiring personal stories,” she said.
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Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, said she’s hopeful that electing more Republican women to Congress would mean the conference would more accurately represent the people they represent. The 2020 election record has already made the conference “so much more effective,” she said.
“And it’s only going to get better.”
Fox News’ Kelsey Koberg and Tyler O’Neil contributed to this report.
