Texas

Texas is the ancestral ground of the Claremont family, the state that shaped Ellen Claremont's political identity and the site of both her most stinging defeat and her greatest triumph. It is the place where Alex Claremont-Diaz's political consciousness was forged, where he first imagined a future with Henry, and where he ultimately found the direction for his own life beyond the White House. More than a setting, Texas functions as a character in the novel—a battleground state whose shifting demographics and political evolution mirror the personal transformations of the people who call it home.

The Lometa Longshot and the 2016 Defeat

The novel's relationship with Texas is defined by the bitter memory of the 2016 election. When Ellen Claremont squeezed out a victory in the general election, the cruelest part of the night was losing Texas, her own state of residence. She became the first president since Nixon to win the presidency while losing her home state, a distinction that stung all the more because the family had secretly held out hope for what they called the Lometa Longshot—the unlikely chance that Texas might flip blue. The state had been polling red, so the loss was not a surprise, but the disappointment lingered. The 2016 election night in Austin was bittersweet: the city itself was deep blue, and Ellen won Travis County by 76 percent, but no amount of fireworks and champagne corks in the streets could change the fact that they lost the very state they stood in to make the victory speech. The image of celebrating a presidential victory in a state that had rejected them became a defining family memory, one that Alex would carry with him for years.

The Texas Binder and Alex's Political Obsession

Texas became Alex Claremont-Diaz's personal project, embodied in a binder he was not supposed to have. The Texas Binder, as he called it, was his baby—a jealously guarded collection of data that he stuffed into his messenger bag to take home from the office and hid from WASPy Hunter, a fellow campaign staffer. It contained a county map of Texas with complex voter demographic breakdowns, matched up with the populations of children of undocumented immigrants, unregistered voters who were legal residents, and voting patterns over the last twenty years. He filled it with spreadsheets of data, voting records, and projections he had Nora Holleran calculate for him. Alex kept returning to the numbers from 2016 and 2018 precinct by precinct, unable to shake a nagging feeling of hope. He swore there was something there, something shifting in the state's political landscape. The binder represented more than data; it was a case for action, a big fat argument for why he should take the LSAT, as both his parents wished he would instead of diving headfirst into politics. He had always, always said no—he didn't wait for things, didn't put in the time, didn't do what he was told—but the binder kept pulling him toward a different future, one that involved law school and a more deliberate path to public service.

A Battleground State and the 2020 Campaign

By 2020, Texas had transformed from a reliable red state into a battleground state for the first time, and the Claremont campaign treated it accordingly. There had been progress in the past year: a few court victories Alex tracked in his trusty binder, registration drives for young voters, the Houston rally, and shifting polls. After the tabloid nightmare of the Waterloo Letters scandal, Alex needed a distraction, so he threw himself into an after-hours committee with a bunch of the campaign's Texas organizers, Skyping in to figure out the logistics of a massive election day shuttle service throughout Texas. The decision to hold election night in their hometown was a risk—there was no rule saying the sitting president couldn't host a rally in DC, but it was customary to do it at home. The Lometa Longshot wanted to come home again, and this time, the gamble paid off. On November 3, 2020, President Ellen Claremont stepped up to the podium in Austin, Texas, to deliver her victory address, having won the state that had eluded her four years earlier. Her speech invoked the family's Texas roots, describing a family "with Texas dirt under their shoes," made up of the children of immigrants and people who love in defiance of expectations or condemnation.

The Promise of a Future in Texas

Texas also became the setting for Alex's most intimate hopes. During a quiet moment, Alex told Henry that after the inauguration, he wanted to take him back out to Texas, just the two of them, to sit under the moon and not stress about anything. He painted a picture of a future where his mother would be in office again, where they wouldn't have to worry about winning any more elections, where he could finally breathe. He promised to cook migas in the mornings, swim all day, never put on clothes, and make out on the pier without caring if the neighbors saw. Henry called the idea nice, if unlikely, but Alex's vision of a private, peaceful life in Texas stood in stark contrast to the public chaos of their relationship. The state represented not just political victory but personal possibility—a place where the two of them could simply exist together. This dream of Texas as a refuge, a place of domesticity and ease, became part of the larger promise Henry made when he told Alex he wanted to offer him the chance of a life, if Alex could wait.

The State as a Symbol of Change and Belonging

Texas ultimately became a symbol of the novel's central themes of change, belonging, and the redefinition of family. The state's political transformation from red to battleground to blue mirrored Alex's own journey from impulsive political operative to someone willing to wait, to plan, to commit. When Alex revealed to Nora that he had snuck off and taken the LSAT that summer, she immediately understood—law school was the simple answer to where he had been unknowingly headed all along. The decision was inseparable from his relationship with Texas, the state that had taught him about patience, strategy, and the slow work of building change. On election night, when Alex strode out onto the stage after his mother, he turned back to see Henry hovering in the wings, hesitant to step on anyone's moment. That hesitation was no longer acceptable. Henry was family now, part of it all—headlines and oil paintings and pages in the Library of Congress, etched right alongside. Alex yelled for him to come on, and Henry stepped out onto the stage, gravitating to Alex's side, beaming. The image of the two of them together on that Austin stage, surrounded by family and friends, with President Ellen Claremont about to deliver her victory address, cemented Texas as the place where the Claremont family's public and private lives finally converged. The state that had once been the site of their greatest political disappointment became the stage for their most complete personal and political triumph.