For 20 years, Roy Knight has voted in the Republican primary. This year was no different. In the March primary, he cast his ballot for US Sen. John Cornyn.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton beat fellow Republican Cornyn in the May runoff election with 62.6% of the vote, ending Cornyn’s Senate career after more than two decades. That set up the race for the Nov. 3 general election for Texas representation in the US Senate: Ken Paxton versus Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.
Knight, 75, spent 45 years in public education, including as superintendent of Lufkin Independent School District. He says this November, he will not vote for Paxton.
“There’s nothing he can do to change my mind,” Knight said.
Knight doesn’t consider that a betrayal of the party he voted for earlier this year. In much of Texas, he explained, the Republican primary is where local races are decided. So voters who want a say over their local officials and legislators vote there. The general election is a different beast.
“Most of the folks I know don’t vote by party,” he said. “They vote for the candidate that they think best represents the things that they stand for. I include myself in that.”
Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994, when they won the lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller, and land commissioner. Lloyd Bentsen was the last Texas Democrat to win a senate election in 1988.
Talarico will need a meaningful number of voters like Knight in order to win in November. Knight thinks the Democrat is bringing the right things to the table to make it happen.
A town that used to build things
Knight said 20 to 30 years ago, the town of Lufkin was known for the oil pumping units that were invented and built there. The town also used to have a local paper mill that shut down in the 2000s.
“Every one of those are now gone,” he said. “We built our reputation as timber country. As the economy slows down, the price of diesel goes up. Our loggers have a hard time making a living.”
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Today, Lufkin is a regional medical and retail hub for surrounding counties. Knight said he’s grateful for the hospitals and doctors they attract, but people are still on hard times with the exit of manufacturing.
“Our families are struggling right now overall and looking for some kind of relief, for just groceries and the ability to have affordable healthcare,” Knight said.
He described a recent outpatient surgery that would have cost him about $40,000 without good insurance.
“My neighbor right down the street who has little or no health insurance couldn’t afford that kind of surgery. [He] would have just suffered,” Knight said.
At Lufkin ISD, Knight said about 80% of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch when he led the district.
He added that most conversations in town are about household costs, but character still counts when it comes to who gets his vote.
Character matters
Knight judges politicians by the same standard he applied to his students.
He said besides the assigned curriculum, he thinks schools should instill three things in kids: that every child is a worthwhile person deserving dignity, the value of hard work, and that choices carry consequences. He thinks about all three when he casts his ballot.
“Are they honest? Do they take cheap shots and name-call other people?” he said. “Do they understand the value of hard work? Or have they figured out a way to scheme so they can line their own pockets? And have they dodged consequences most of their life at the expense of someone else?”
Attorney General Ken Paxton has faced years of legal and ethical scrutiny. A career politician and lawyer, he served in the state House of Representatives from 2003 to 2013, and the state Senate from 2013 to 2015. In 2015, he pleaded not guilty after being indicted on state securities fraud charges. He performed community service and agreed to restitution for the victims—but the charges weren’t dismissed until 2025.
In 2023 he was impeached and suspended by the Texas House on allegations of bribery and abuse of office. Paxton was acquitted by the Texas Senate, and the Justice Department later declined to bring federal charges. Paxton has denied wrongdoing and called the federal probe a politically motivated witch hunt.
Knight also pointed to a 2022 episode in which, according to a process server’s affidavit, Paxton left his home in a truck driven by his wife to avoid being served a subpoena in an abortion-access lawsuit.
“That’s hardly the kind of guy I want representing me in Washington, D.C.,” Knight said.
Knight said his bigger objection is to what Paxton didn’t do as attorney general. Borrowing from his father, a M ethodist preacher, Knight distinguished sins of commission from sins of omission.
“It’s the things that he’s failed to do as a leader that give me no confidence whatsoever in his ability to make anything other than self-serving decisions,” he said.
As attorney general, Knight said Paxton was “quick to file lots of lawsuits against the hot-button cultural issues of the time” but didn’t turn the same scrutiny on the state’s own leaders.
Some members of Knight’s Sunday school class share similar concerns. “In our Sunday school class, character matters,” he said.
Schools as a litmus test
Public education is the issue Knight cares about the most. His children are public school teachers, and five of his six grandchildren attend public schools. The sixth plays college baseball at a state university.
“Public schools are a litmus test for me,” he said.
In other states, the fight over school vouchers often splits along party lines. In rural Texas it often doesn’t, because many deeply Republican small towns have no realistic private alternative, and the public school is a major employer and frequently the center of community life.
In Lufkin, Knight said one small private school serves about 100 students with few open seats, and there’s also a small Catholic school.
“There’s a place for private schools,” he said. “But not at the expense of public schools.”
He rejects the assumption that private schools perform better.
“There’s no basis of comparison because they’re not required to take the same standardized tests,” he said.
Knight believes the better fix is smaller classes and more support staff. He pointed to his six months as interim superintendent in Manor ISD near Austin, where he said state grants for struggling schools helped turn an elementary school’s scores around in a year.
“If you’re really interested in improving the quality of education, then reduce your class size,” he said.
He also blames state leaders for tying teacher pay to the fight for private school vouchers. In 2023, a school funding bill with teacher raises died in the regular session after the senate added vouchers, and a later package died in special session after the house stripped vouchers from it.
“It makes it harder and harder to attract quality teachers to public schools simply because of the pay,” Knight said.
He was sharply critical of how some state leaders talk about teachers. Claims that teachers indoctrinate students, or rumors that schools provided litter boxes for children, which have been repeatedly debunked and which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott repeated in 2025, are insults to people “working their rear ends off for very little money,” he said.
“They might as well pass a law just as effective about the zombie apocalypse,” Knight said. “They’re both every bit as real.”
Knight said he has met Talarico, a former middle school teacher, and testified before the House Public Education Committee, on which Talarico served.
He credits Talarico with defending teachers, pushing to expand Medicaid eligibility, and supporting summer food aid for students. Gov. Abbott line-item vetoed $60 million the state legislature set aside to join the federal summer EBT program.
‘Every kid needs a safe island’
When asked what candidates of both parties misunderstand about towns like Lufkin, Knight said passion.
“I think they misunderstand how passionate people are, particularly in Texas, about high school football and their local public schools.”
Most private schools in Texas do not have football teams. For Lufkin, the Panthers are a civic institution. One of his former students, Dez Bryant, went on to be a three-time Pro Bowl wide receiver in the NFL for the Dallas Cowboys, and still hugs Knight when they see each other.
Knight said band, drill team, volleyball, and robotics serve the same purpose for other students.
“Every kid needs a safe island,” he said. “When you begin messing with your public schools, you begin messing with your communities.”
He thinks Republicans “overplayed their hand” on vouchers, and that, along with affordability, explains why parts of Texas feel more competitive than they have in decades.
For Knight, the US Senate race comes back to the lesson he spent 45 years teaching. Late in his career, he said, he saw more and more “road grader parents” who smoothed every obstacle out of their children’s way.
“They weren’t preparing their kid for the road ahead,” he said. “They were preparing the road ahead for their kid.”
He holds Paxton to the same standard he held those students. For him, it’s about whether a person owns the consequences of their choices or dodges them “at the expense of someone else.” By that measure, Knight said Paxton has already lost his vote.
When asked why this shift is happening now?
“People are sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
