OUR HOSTS

Born and raised in rural east Texas, Kendall Scudder is the first millennial to be nominated by a major party for the Texas State Senate. SPOILER: he lost. But ran a race showing up in every county of his district, which helped a bunch of other candidates down-ballot. Kendall ran for office in deep red districts every year since he could walk--most of the time he loses these elections but since he started so young we are pretty sure he will be elected the first senator from the newly inhabited planet we will have to live on if the climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers don't get out of the way. Kendall knows more about public education policy than most of the crowd in Austin and is a Democratic party guy who currently serves on the State Democratic Executive Committee. Kendall can also be found touring the karaoke circuit in North Texas and shoving gobs of ice cream in his gullet.

Lillian Salerno hails from a big Irish/Italian Catholic family from East Dallas but considers herself a small town girl from rural Texas. Lillian is a serial entrepreneur, activist, mom, and attorney, and has worked for many years behind the scenes both in Texas and Washington DC. Friends call her Lil: twenty years ago, Kinky Friedman tried to rename her “Diamond Lil,” but it didn’t stick. She now wishes she had listened to him as it may have made the difference in her loss in a highly contested Congressional race in North Texas. Thankfully, we were still able to flip the seat and the long-sought-for retirement of a key Trump enabler is now at hand. Lillian was a high-ranking official in the Obama Administration and a subject of an article (now a book, The Fifth Risk) by Michael Lewis (author of the The Big Short, The Blind Side, Liar’s Poker) which will soon be a Netflix series. Lil is secretly terrified about who will be cast as her and mostly tells people she regrets cursing so much in the article but that is just how she talks and she blames her 5 brothers. Lil believes there is always a middle ground in politics and her motto is “stop talking and get s*** done”. Lil is not under 30, but also enjoys ice cream.