What Does Tyler Smith see as his top priority?
As the Democratic candidate for Texas House Representative for District 138, Tyler Smith says Texans are priority number one. Tyler Smith is running to end the pay-to-play culture of corruption and focus on the working class. As Texas House Representative, Tyler Smith plans to address the rising costs of healthcare and housing, help keep families safe, and fight for Texas public schools.
What is Tyler Smith’s professional background, and how does it inform his campaign?
Tyler Smith studied political science at Texas Southern University and believes government should work for people. He sees government as an umbrella on a rainy day — there to help people weather difficult times and create opportunities for families and communities to thrive.
His professional experience has reinforced that belief. In Washington, Tyler worked for Senator Jon Ossoff, where he helped advance the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and worked on efforts that brought the largest federal investments in colleges and universities in generations. That experience taught him that progress is possible when leaders are willing to work across party lines and focus on delivering results rather than political division.
Tyler has also spent years as a baseball coach, where he learned firsthand that success depends on teamwork, preparation, accountability, and bringing people together around a common goal. Those lessons inform his approach to public service today.
In his current work with Everytown for Gun Safety, Tyler works to reduce gun violence and make communities safer, including helping advance bipartisan efforts that secured $2 million in funding to support violence-prevention work. His professional experience has given him a practical understanding of how government, community organizations, and local leaders can work together to solve problems.
Together, these experiences shape Tyler’s campaign: government should work for people, leaders should deliver results, and solving Texas’s challenges requires bringing people together rather than driving them apart.
Where does Tyler Smith stand on public safety?
Texans want to feel safe in their homes and neighborhoods. Texas has made measurable progress in reducing crime, but public safety remains a serious concern for families, particularly in communities experiencing violent crime and gun violence. Tyler Smith believes public safety requires both accountability for people who commit violent crimes and investments that prevent violence before it happens.
Tyler supports comprehensive, bipartisan bail reform that keeps repeat violent offenders off the streets while protecting the constitutional rights of people who have not been convicted of a crime. He believes public safety and civil rights are not in conflict, and that Texas can hold dangerous offenders accountable while maintaining due process and constitutional protections.
Tyler also believes we cannot arrest our way out of every public-safety problem. He supports expanding community violence intervention programs that bring trusted community members, faith leaders and law enforcement together to interrupt cycles of violence before they escalate. Tyler has helped secure $2 million for these programs, and as state representative, he will fight to expand that work in HD 138 and across Harris County.
Preventing gun violence is also a personal and professional priority for Tyler. He has lost loved ones to gun violence, and through his work with Everytown for Gun Safety, he has helped build bipartisan coalitions of survivors, lawmakers and law enforcement around common-sense approaches to protecting children and communities from gun violence. He will bring that same coalition-building approach to Austin.
Tyler also supports mental-health treatment and diversion programs for nonviolent offenders. When someone is experiencing a mental-health crisis, putting that person into the criminal justice system instead of getting them treatment can make it harder to break the cycle of crisis and incarceration. Texas should expand diversion courts and treatment options so that people who need help can get it.
Tyler believes the best long-term crime prevention is opportunity. He supports investing in after-school programs, youth sports, job fairs and community mentorship programs that give young people alternatives to street violence and stronger connections to their communities.
Tyler also believes cities and counties need greater flexibility to address the public-safety challenges they understand best. State policy should support local law enforcement and community organizations rather than unnecessarily restricting local decisions about public-safety priorities and resources.
For Tyler, public safety means keeping dangerous offenders accountable, preventing gun violence, treating mental-health crises appropriately, investing in young people, and building trust between communities and law enforcement. The goal is straightforward: safer neighborhoods, stronger communities and a criminal justice system that protects both public safety and constitutional rights.
What is Tyler Smith’s position on healthcare?
Tyler Smith believes healthcare is a right, not a privilege, and yet the cost of healthcare remains a significant burden for Texas families. In 2025, the average employer-sponsored family health plan cost nearly $27,000 a year, with workers contributing an average of $6,850. Meanwhile, 19.2% of Texans under 65 were uninsured in 2024, and the uninsured rate among low-income Texans was substantially higher. In Houston, 23.3% of residents lacked health-care coverage.
As Texas House Representative for District 138, Tyler Smith will fight for Medicaid expansion to immediately cover 726,000 uninsured Texans. He will expand Community Health Centers to better serve primarily low income and medically underserved communities where care is needed but scarce. He will also expand mental health treatment options, such as mental health residency programs, loan forgiveness programs for therapists serving underserved communities, and removal of licensing barriers for out-of-state providers.
What is his position on public education?
Tyler Smith says every Texas child deserves a quality education, and he will work to fully fund Texas public schools. Texas has a constitutional responsibility to maintain an efficient system of public free schools. Yet, at the same time Texas ranks 47th nationally in per-student spending, the state has committed $1 billion to a new voucher program that uses public funds for private-school education and other approved educational expenses.
Tyler Smith will restore local control back to the duly elected Board of Trustees where it belongs. He is a strong advocate for teacher pay raises to ensure Texas attracts and retains the best talent. He also wants to prepare youth for family-sustaining jobs – not just for college – by providing clear pathways to trades.
Does Tyler Smith address housing costs?
Texas housing affordability has deteriorated dramatically. The Texas Comptroller reports that median home prices rose roughly 40% from 2019 to 2023, while one-third of Texas households were already spending at least 30% of their income on housing. The Texas Housing Trust Fund is woefully underfunded, while public dollars flow freely to tax breaks for data centers and school vouchers for millionaires. Tyler Smith plans to expand state housing tax credits, low-interest construction loans, and incentives for developments that guarantee long-term affordability. He will champion down-payment and closing-cost assistance to first-time buyers.
What is Tyler Smith’s stance on the Texas power grid and data centers?
Texas is experiencing unprecedented growth in electricity demand, and Tyler believes that growth should not come at the expense of Texas families. ERCOT recorded an all-time winter demand record of 80,560 megawatts in February 2025, while the grid operator is now tracking more than 438,000 megawatts of large-load requests — nearly 90% of them from data centers. ERCOT says it is seeing new electricity demand added to the system “faster and in greater amounts than ever before.
The scale of the data-center buildout is significant. ERCOT’s November 2025 data showed approximately 226 gigawatts of large-load projects seeking interconnection through 2030, with about 73% classified as data centers. ERCOT also identified roughly 400 cloud-based data-center sites of at least 1 megawatt, representing about 9,850 MW of installed capacity, with actual data-center demand increasing 15.5% between January 2025 and January 2026.
Tyler believes Texas should welcome economic development while making sure data centers pay their fair share of the costs they impose on the grid and local communities. He does not believe taxpayers and residential ratepayers should subsidize massive private facilities while families are asked to shoulder higher electricity costs. Data centers should be required to bring or develop their own power where appropriate, pay for the infrastructure necessary to serve them, use water responsibly, and make meaningful investments in the communities where they locate.
That concern is particularly important as Texas offers tax incentives to attract data centers. The Texas Comptroller reports that the state’s data-center sales-tax exemption reduced state tax collections by approximately $617.6 million in fiscal year 2025.
Governor Greg Abbott has also played a prominent role in promoting data-center investment in Texas. In November 2025, Abbott joined Google to announce a $40 billion Texas investment involving data centers, AI infrastructure and energy capacity, calling Texas “the epicenter of AI development.” More recently, Abbott has responded to growing concerns about the impact of data centers on electricity, water and local communities.
Tyler believes those concerns should have been addressed from the beginning. Texans should not have to choose between economic growth and reliable, affordable electricity, clean water and livable neighborhoods. If a data center wants to come to Texas, it should strengthen — not strain — the communities and infrastructure that make that investment possible.
That means requiring data centers to pay their fair share, provide or procure adequate power and water, protect nearby residents, and invest in the communities where they operate. Tyler would work to make sure Texas’s energy policy puts Texas families and communities first.
What office is Tyler Smith running for?
Tyler Smith is running for Texas State Representative, House District 138, which includes communities northwestern Houston, including Jersey Village, Spring Branch, Spring Valley, Hilshire Village, Tanglewood, and Bear Creek.