Spectrum News
‘I know how to win’: Former Texas Democrats executive running to be party leader
BY James Barragán Texas
PUBLISHED 7:56 PM CT Apr. 28, 2026
Last year, Monique Alcala was fired as executive director of the Texas Democratic Party after Kendall Scudder became the party’s new leader.
Now, Alcala is running against him in an election that will be settled at the party’s state convention in June.
Alcala, a 15-year veteran of political campaigns at the local, state and national level, said she’s running to make sure Democrats capitalize on a crucial election year.
“We have a huge opportunity for us here in 2026,” Alcala told Capital Tonight. “We have a real opportunity to flip the state and win statewide.”
Earlier this month, three dozen Texas Democrats wrote an open letter calling on Scudder not to seek reelection this year, accusing him of a “hostile work environment” and operational failures. Days later, more than 800 Texas Democrats wrote a dueling letter that backed Scudder and said the party needed more time to assess his leadership.
Scudder brushed off the criticisms and filed for re-election, saying he was focused on helping the party win in November — noting a $30 million commitment he secured to target key races and a full slate of candidates for every congressional and state house race in Texas.
Alcala filed her candidacy on Friday, the deadline to jump into the race, promising “real change, not more empty promises or missed opportunities.”
Alcala said she would return to the work she had been doing as the party’s executive director. That includes building infrastructure to aid local parties and strategic partners, like the campaign arm of Texas House Democrats, in winning legislative races. She also criticized the party’s current leadership, saying they had lackluster fundraising.
“It’s a far cry from the millions of dollars that it’s going to take to defeat Greg Abbott, John Cornyn or Ken Paxton,” she said.
Alcala said she would focus on lessons she learned during her career in battleground states to help Democrats win in Texas, including running coordinated campaigns that would help the party’s candidates from the top of the ballot to the bottom.
She also said she would focus on keeping employees on staff who had experience in organizing and running elections — a criticism that has been lobbed at Scudder by his opponents.
“This is about building infrastructure on the ground when it comes to the TDP,” Alcala said. “We need people that are working at TDP that are leading TDP that know how to build coalitions but also know how to have hard conversations about how to move the organization forward.”
