Eight Texas independent voters share how they're sizing up the candidates heading into November

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The presidential election this year will likely be decided by independent voters — those Americans who don’t cast ballots based on loyalty to the two-party system.

This summer, they were given plenty of political fodder to consider.

A gunman attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, at a July rally in Pennsylvania. Two weeks later, after pressure from donors and fellow Democrats, President Joe Biden, who had won his party’s primaries with almost no opposition, withdrew from the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.

In August, Harris won the party’s official nomination at the Democratic National Convention. If elected, she will be the country’s first Black and South Asian woman to become president.

The extraordinary events have left many voters with whiplash. Republicans have been even more vocal with their support of Trump after the assassination attempt. Democrats have rallied around Harris who has breathed life back into her party’s hopes after Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump in late June.

But for those who don’t identify with Democrats or Republicans, the issues are more nuanced.

According to August polling, Trump leads among Texas’ independent voters by 2 percentage points, a narrowing among the key bloc since his 24-point leg up over Biden in June. Harris is gaining ground among women who are independent voters, who prefer her over Trump by a 6-point margin.

In Texas, voters don’t have to officially declare a party to cast a ballot. They can vote in whatever primary they choose. The Texas Tribune spoke to some of those voters who identify as independents about the state of the race, who they expect to vote for and what issues are most pressing to them.

Here are a few of their stories.

(Credit: Meredith Seaver for The Texas Tribune)

Joanne Kropp, 68

Home: Bryan

Occupation: retired

Who did you vote for in 2016? Donald Trump

Who did you vote for in 2020? Donald Trump

As a retiree, Joanne Kropp said she has felt the pinch of inflation sorely. Every month, she finds herself dipping into her savings just to make ends meet.

“It stinks,” she said. “The inflation, it’s terrible.”

Kropp considers herself an independent voter with Libertarian tendencies – she generally opposes government regulation. But she’s voted in local elections for Democrats, and she once cast her ballot for former President Bill Clinton. With the economy as one of her top issues this year, Kropp said she’ll be voting for Trump. She’s put off by the narrative of some Democrats that the economy is strong under Biden.

“It’s this whole ‘You don’t understand that the economy is good,’” she said. “Well, I do understand that it’s not good for me and it’s not good for anybody I know.”

During Trump’s four years in office, she said, she did not find herself penny pinching. She thinks his experience as a businessman led to economic decision-making that helped the average American, including more lax rules on energy production and business deregulation. Kropp’s husband owned his own pest control business for 45 years and Kropp said she saw how deregulation helped small businesses create jobs.

Kropp, who lived in El Paso for 40 years before she moved to Bryan, said another of her top issues is immigration and the need to limit the number of people crossing the border without authorization. With Trump, she said, it felt like the country had a plan for how to stop the high number of border crossings, even if she didn’t always like how Trump talked about his policies or the migrants.

“I was OK with his policies, I did not like his language,” she said. “When he talks, I cringe.”

Kropp is critical of Harris for not moving the ball on immigration during three and a half years under the Biden administration. While Kropp praised Harris for attempting to address the root causes of why people migrate from their homes she said there hasn’t been enough action from the vice president.

“It was just a squandered opportunity,” she said.

Kropp also is concerned about foreign policy. She thinks the next president needs to know how to square off against Russian President Vladimir Putin, navigate the war in Gaza and address root causes of migration. Even though Trump often talks like an isolationist — and chose a vice presidential nominee who amplifies that worldview — she doesn’t want a president who will turn his back on world affairs.

She feels confident Trump will manage international relations well.

“He talks a good game [on isolationism],” Kropp said. “But then he doesn’t do it.”

(Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune)

Dan O’Grady, 55

Home: Houston

Occupation: financial consultant

Who did you vote for in 2016? Hillary Clinton

Who did you vote for in 2020? Joe Biden

Before Biden dropped out of the race, Dan O’Grady planned to sit this election out.

He could never see himself voting for Trump. But Biden’s performance — even before the presidential debate in June — had been so poor in his mind that O’Grady was not going to vote for him, either. He’d liked what the incumbent had done in office but he feared that his cognitive health was deteriorating and didn’t think Biden could do the job for another four years. So why wasn’t he stepping aside?

“I just wondered if this is the best [the Democrats] can do – offer this incapable, senile guy who had problems,” O’Grady said. “If this is the best they can do, the U.S. deserves Trump and [I wasn’t] gonna vote.”

O’Grady is an independent who tends to vote for Democrats. But, he said, he is not “progressive or woke,” he’s just a “middle of the road voter” who doesn’t want to be “pushed upon by conservative policies” like Texas’ abortion ban, which he doesn’t support.

His feelings about this year’s presidential election changed with Biden’s withdrawal. He’s seen a renewed hope after the emergence of Harris as the Democratic nominee and has been heartened by the record donations that poured into her campaign in the days immediately following the announcement of her candidacy.

O’Grady admits that he doesn’t know much about her except that her run for the Democratic nomination in 2020 did not go well. But as he’s learned more, he’s liked her approach to the economy, which O’Grady thinks will benefit the average worker more than Trump’s policies.

O’Grady’s big issue is continuing American democracy.

“I view Trump as a threat to democracy,” he said. “For me the biggest issue is probably someone that will keep democracy alive.”

(Credit: Azul Sordo for The Texas Tribune)

Diane Wright, 67

Home: Flower Mound

Occupation: retired

Who did you vote for in 2016: Hillary Clinton

Who did you vote for in 2020: Donald Trump

Diane Wright is not sure how she’s going to vote this November. She’d planned on casting a third-party vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. but has been at a loss since his withdrawal from the presidential race in August.

“The situation is still fresh for me and I’m kind of waiting to see what transpires,” she said.

One thing is for sure – she will not be voting for Harris because she thinks the Democratic National Committee actively obstructed Kennedy and forced him to withdraw from the race.

“I’m very upset with the DNC,” she said.

Politically, Wright was raised a Republican but eventually became an independent and started voting for some Democrats, including Barack Obama in 2008. In recent years, however, she’s disassociated from the two-party system and has aligned herself with the Forward Party, which aims to reduce political polarization and reform elections.

“I want the two parties to go away,” she said, adding that she votes more on a candidate’s position than party affiliation.

Wright voted for Clinton in 2016 because she was “more qualified than anybody I had ever had the opportunity to vote for.” But when Trump took office, Wright said she was pleasantly surprised to see his handling of the economy and foreign affairs and didn’t think he got a fair shake from the press. She said she liked that Trump kept foreign leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in check.

She said she’s not sure if she could vote for Trump again and is leaning toward a third-party candidate but she needs to see if there is one that would align with her values.

She supported Kennedy because he advocated for policy solutions that she thinks common-sense Americans who are not tied down by party politics would get behind, like an approach to immigration that would both support some type of border wall while at the same time increasing funding for immigration judges so that asylum claims could be processed more quickly and people could enter the country legally.

She also liked Kennedy’s stance on abortion, that women should have a right to an abortion “until a fetus is viable.” Wright said that strikes a balance between allowing women control over their body and the need for the country to have more children.

She’s still making up her mind but said the political discourse isn’t helping.

“It’s hard right now because you’re not hearing policies or what they’re gonna do,” she said. “All it is is attacks on each other.”

(Credit: Lorianne Willett/The Texas Tribune)

Stuart Streit, 29

Home: Austin

Occupation: sports blogger

Who did you vote for in 2016? Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party

Who did you vote for in 2020? Joe Biden

If the election were held today, Stuart Streit would vote for Chase Oliver, the Libertarian candidate.

He likes Oliver’s focus on free-market economics and his policy positions of ending tariffs, ending qualified immunity for police officers and finding a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants who are already in the country.

He’s willing to entertain voting for Harris but would like to hear more about her policy positions, especially on the economy. He is concerned about how Democrats talk about some issues that are important to him, like taxes.

“I haven’t heard this from Harris yet but I’m a little wary about talk about a ‘wealth tax’ like [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren has talked about before,” he said. “Even student loan [forgiveness] stuff – I totally get it, it sucks, but some of the way that’s being done ends up putting the burden on people who didn’t go to college to pay for those who did.”

On the political spectrum, he said he’s a true independent who places a strong emphasis on the old fiscal issues professed by GOP stalwarts like Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012. He would probably vote for Romney today, he said, but he won’t vote for Trump.

He said Trump does not follow free market economics and thinks the Republican Party has turned into a cult devoted to him.

“His character feels like it disqualifies him for me – bragging about sexual assault,” he said, referring to hot mic audio released in 2016 in which Trump told a TV host that as a celebrity he could grab women by their genitals. “That’s the first one that comes to mind for me, that Access Hollywood tape.”

But Streit doesn’t just want to give his vote away to Democrats because he doesn’t like Trump. In 2020, he voted for Biden because he felt the Democrat had a shot at flipping the state. Streit said he doesn’t hear any of that enthusiasm this election cycle and instead is considering using his vote to register his displeasure with the candidates of both major parties.

“It becomes a question of how do I express my beliefs even if it means supporting someone who I know is going to lose,” he said.

(Credit: Azul Sordo for The Texas Tribune)

Deron Patterson, 59

Home: Dallas

Occupation: business development in the glass industry

How did you vote in 2016? Hilary Clinton

How did you vote in 2020? Joe Biden

Kennedy’s withdrawal hit Deron Patterson hard.

“I couldn’t believe it. I went for a walk at 5 o’clock like a crazy person,” he said. “It was 103 degrees but I just had to.”

Since last summer, Patterson had been set on voting for the independent candidate for president. He was one of the RFK campaign’s 40 official electors and had collected signatures to put the candidate on the Texas ballot.

Patterson had long been a progressive Democrat. He served as a Democratic precinct chair in Fort Bend County when it was former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay’s home district. In 2012, he stood at an intersection on Highway 6 in Sugarland with an Obama poster, because he’d heard 40,000 cars drove by there every day.

But he had an independent streak, supporting Ross Perot in 1992 and then Ralph Nader of the Green Party in 2000.

He voted for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries in 2016 and 2020. But he was turned off by the party after observing its lack of enthusiasm for progressive candidates like Sanders.

“The rich and the powerful don’t want a Socialist Democrat running who wants Medicare for All,” he said.

When COVID-19 forced everyone into a lockdown in 2020, his rejection of the Democratic Party was calcified after he started listening to Joe Rogan’s podcast, which his son had been recommending to him for years. On the podcast, Rogan, a comedian and mixed martial arts commentator, often invites controversial speakers to have free-flowing conversations and he has been criticized for spreading misinformation about vaccines. Rogan had Kennedy on the podcast in June 2023.

Patterson found Rogan’s podcast interesting and enjoyed the open discussions Rogan had with his guests. He started looking for other “alternative” news sources, like Chris Hedges, a journalist and political activist who hosts a left-leaning YouTube podcast.

“I want more information,” he said. “We should be independent and think and not have everybody tell us what to think.”

Now, he subscribes to Tucker Carlson’s new streaming network – something he never thought he’d do five years ago. Carlson is a conservative political commentator who often advocated for Trump and his policies. He has been criticized for pushing conspiracy theories on his platform about the FBI organizing the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol and for spreading misinformation on COVID-19.

“I started not watching just CNN and MSNBC and I started getting a diversity of opinions,” he said. “And my politics [have] evolved.”

When Kennedy announced he was running for president, his platform aligned with Patterson’s policy stances: he wanted to stop sending money to Ukraine in their fight against Russia, he was an environmentalist and he wanted to push back against what he saw as censorship by big tech companies on social media platforms.

But now that Kennedy is out of the race, Patterson is at a loss. He won’t vote for Trump, despite Kennedy’s endorsement, and he won’t vote for Harris. He’s going to do some research on third-party candidates like Cornel West, who is also running a quixotic campaign for president.

“What will make up my mind?” he said. “I don’t know. Probably the day before.”

(Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune)

Josh Fleming, 45

Home: Livingston

Occupation: small business owner

Who did you vote for in 2016? Donald Trump

Who did you vote for in 2020? Donald Trump

Josh Fleming said he’s somewhere between a Libertarian and a member of the Constitution Party, a conservative party that aims to keep the functions of government to those spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Bill of Rights and the Constitution.

But as a supporter of these third parties, he recognizes his candidates don’t stand a chance in a presidential race.

“The bottom line is it’s going to be a Democrat or Republican and for me it’s not even a question,” he said.

He’ll be voting for Trump, just like he did in the last two elections. Trump’s policies just align better with his values.

Fleming said that even in his part of East Texas, which is much closer to the Louisiana border than the Mexican one, the impacts of record border crossings in recent years hit home.

Fleming is in the construction business and he said he sees unscrupulous employers hiring unauthorized immigrants at cheaper rates than they would pay U.S. citizens. He feels for laborers and craftsmen who are undercut by the lower pay that many migrants are willing to take.

Under Trump, he said, there was a plan for slowing the large numbers of people crossing the southern border without authorization.

Fleming also likes Trump’s economic policies which lowered taxes on corporations and temporarily for individuals. Those temporary tax cuts for individuals will be up in 2025. The same bill also did away with the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act, which Fleming liked because it eased the burden on small businesses.

Fleming said that Trump gets a bad rap for favoring large corporations and businesses, but the way he sees it, Trump is “fighting for the little guy.”

“The four years he was in office, for me and my family it was probably the most prosperous in our times,” he said. “And we’re not rich. We’re just regular middle class people.”

If the summer spurred any change in his plan to vote, it only reaffirmed his allegiance to Trump. Fleming thinks Trump is fighting “political machines” in both parties and he didn’t like the way Democrats replaced their nominee a few months before the election.

“I was already able to see how corrupt the system is,” Fleming said, “but the events of the summer made me want to vote for him more knowing that if the system hates him that much, then that made me really want to vote for him.”

(Credit: Lorianne Willett/The Texas Tribune)

Travis Ross, 44

Home: Austin

Occupation: auto body technician

Who did you vote for in 2016? Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party candidate

Who did you vote for in 2020? Joe Biden

Travis Ross voted begrudgingly for Biden in 2020, just to get Trump out of the White House.

He hoped that Biden would be a transitional leader who would pass the baton to a new generation after one term. So when Biden decided to run again, Ross was not happy.

He was also unappeased by Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race in July, anointing Harris as his successor. He wished Biden had made the decision sooner and felt that his vote in the Democratic primary – for Marianne Williamson – was wasted.

Now that Trump and Harris have become the party’s respective nominees, Ross thinks he doesn’t have much of a choice. He doesn’t want to vote for Trump – he feels that his supporters listen to and believe every word he says without questioning it, which worries him. But he feels like Harris and the Democrats went around the established election process to select her as the party’s nominee.

Ross is worried about corruption in politics and says that lobbying plays too big of a role, cutting out the average American, and giving the wealthy and the politicians more advantages.

He doesn’t know much about Harris’ policies. He thinks she’s smart and he is leaning toward voting for her but wants to learn more.

“I’d like to see a couple of debates and some people actually be serious politicians and not just clowns trying to get elected,” he said. “It does feel kind of trapped and limited with these choices.”

One thing that encouraged him was Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.

“I can kind of relate to him, he seems more like a regular person,” Ross said. “He’s not saying the extreme stuff. I’d like to hear more from people like that in politics. I’d like a president who’s super smart and super boring.”

Much like four years ago, Ross said he feels like he is voting for the lesser of two bad choices at the top of the ticket.

“I’m probably going to take the mainstream Democratic person,” he said, “just to make sure Trump doesn’t get elected again.”

(Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune)

Paul Knapp, 77

Home: Santa Fe

Occupation: tax prep business owner

Who did you vote for in 2016? Donald Trump

Who did you vote for in 2020? Donald Trump

Paul Knapp is an independent voter with conservative leanings and though he doesn’t like how Trump behaves, he likes his policies.

So for the last two presidential elections, Knapp held his nose and voted for him.

This year, Knapp was looking for another option. He said he’d consider voting for a conservative Democrat or some type of moderate Republican but that candidate did not appear. Instead, the Democrats chose Harris as their nominee and Knapp said he can’t vote for her.

Knapp identifies Harris, a California Democrat, with “extreme socialism.”

“I’m a capitalist, so I can’t vote for her,” he said.

He doesn’t like that she praised the “defund the police” movement in 2020 – her campaign co-chairs have tried to walk the latter statement back since she became the presumptive nominee.

Knapp also doesn’t like that during Harris’ presidential run in 2019, she promised to end fracking, a platform she has backed away from since becoming the Democratic nominee but that will be a sticking point in fracking-heavy Texas.

“I really think her history tells us what she is. Unless she has some sort of epiphany,” he said. “Maybe she’ll say ‘I thought about it and that was wrong, I learned my lesson on several of those things.’ We’ll have to see about that.”

But Knapp said he wouldn’t be able to shake off the suspicion that Harris is only walking back those platforms to get elected.

He also said he doesn’t like that Harris was selected as the Democratic nominee without a single vote cast for her in an election. It reminds him of how political bosses used to select the presidential nominees in “smoke-filled back rooms,” he said.

He narrowed down his choices to Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before he got out of the race. But Knapp had always regretted voting for Ross Perot in 1992 because he felt Perot was only in the race to spoil the election for Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush.

“I have held that against myself,” Knapp said. “I helped in a negative situation and I helped the wrong guy.”

The process of elimination has left him with Trump, whose economic results in office he enjoyed, especially when contrasted to what he views as “overspending” by the Biden administration. He thinks Trump will help rein in the federal government’s spending, which is a major concern for him.

“If I have to hold my nose and vote for him I’ll at least hope for that,” he said.

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