我于10月中旬在沃斯堡市中心以南的一个多山社区与Crystal Mason会面。她很容易辨认——她穿着一件黑色T恤，正面印着一副鲜红的拳击手套，还有一个单词，用大号方块字母写着：“STILL ACQUITTED”（依然无罪）。八年前，在得克萨斯州共和党官员推动寻找并起诉选民欺诈案件的背景下，这位沃斯堡居民因在2016年总统大选期间处于重罪判刑的监督释放期内投票，被判处五年监禁。
I met up with Crystal Mason in mid-October, in a hilly neighborhood south of downtown Fort Worth. She was easy enough to recognize—she wore a black t-shirt with a pair of bright red boxing gloves on the front, and a single word in big block letters, “STILL ACQUITTED.”Eight years ago, amid a push by Texas Republican officials to find and prosecute instances of voter fraud, the Fort Worth resident was sentenced to five years in prison for voting in the 2016 presidential election while on supervised release for a felony conviction.
Mason辩称，她从未被告知自己不能投票，而且她投的只是临时选票，从未被计入。2024年，一家法院采纳了她的主张并撤销了定罪，但塔兰特县共和党籍地方检察官提起了上诉。直到今年9月，她才彻底赢下这场官司——随后立刻投回工作中。
Mason argued that she had never been informed she couldn’t vote, and that she cast only a provisional ballot, which was never counted. In 2024, a court agreed and threw out the conviction, but Tarrant County’s Republican district attorney appealed decision. She finally beat the case for good this September—and then got right back to work.
见面时，她正在手机上核对选民名单，并向一群志愿者——两个女儿、一个儿子和一个孙辈——快速下达指令，他们陪同她在气温高达94华氏度（约34.4摄氏度）的下午挨家挨户敲门、与居民核对情况。如今，当她不开着厢式货车干本职工作时，就会经营一个名为“Crystal Mason: The Fight”（Crystal Mason：战斗）的投票权利组织。最近几周，她参加了选民登记活动、上门走访，还在卡拉OK之夜去了一趟老年中心，确保那里的选民有去投票站的计划。
When I met her, she was checking a voter list on her phone and rattling off instructions to a group of volunteers—two daughters, a son, and one grandkid—who had accompanied her to knock doors and check in with residents on a 94-degree afternoon. These days, when she’s not driving a box truck for her day job, she runs a voting rights group called Crystal Mason: The Fight. In recent weeks she’d participated in registration drives, hit the doors, and stopped by a senior center on karaoke night to make sure voters there had a plan to get to the polls.
梅森等人开展的组织工作在十一月大选前变得更加紧迫。九月，由共和党主导的县委员会取消了92个选举日投票站——占其2024年总数的近三分之一。倡导者认为，这些削减将对黑人和西班牙裔社区产生不成比例的影响。梅森称这些关闭“令人难以置信”。这在任何地方都是件大事，但塔兰特县并非普通县份；它是该州终极的战场县。
The kind of organizing Mason and others have been doing has taken on a new urgency ahead of the November election. In September, the Republican-led county commission eliminated 92 Election Day voting sites—nearly a third of its 2024 total. Advocates argued the reductions would disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic areas. Mason calls the closures “unreal.”This would be a big deal anywhere, but Tarrant is not just any county; it’s the state’s ultimate battleground.
该地区在最近几个选举周期中曾以微弱优势在总统选票上支持民主党人，但它仍是该州最后一个由共和党掌控的大型城市县——包括曾试图恢复梅森定罪的地区检察官。而塔兰特县的保守派飞地在塑造德克萨斯州共和党近期的发展轨迹方面发挥了超乎寻常的作用。今年的保守派政治行动大会（CPAC）在沃斯堡郊区的格雷普韦恩举行。
The area has narrowly backed Democrats at the top of the ticket in some recent cycles, but it’s the last of the state’s big urban counties still run by Republicans—including the district attorney who tried to reinstate Mason’s conviction. And the conservative enclaves of Tarrant have played an outsized role in shaping the recent trajectory of the Texas Republican Party. This year’s Conservative Political Action Conference took place in the Fort Worth suburb of Grapevine.
博·弗伦奇是德克萨斯州铁路委员会提名人，主张将所有穆斯林驱逐出美国，且被指控为种族主义者，他曾任塔兰特县共和党主席。“真正的德克萨斯项目”（The True Texas Project），前身为东北塔兰特茶党，通过举办一场关于“针对白人美国的战争”的对话来庆祝成立15周年；今年秋天，它在全州各分会举办了一部名为《》的新纪录片的放映会。
Bo French, the racist nominee for Texas Railroad Commission who wants to remove all Muslims from the United States, is a former Tarrant GOP chair. The True Texas Project, formerly known as the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party, celebrated its 15th anniversary by hosting a conversation on “the war on white America”; this fall, it’s held screenings of a new documentary called , at chapters around the state.
鉴于利害攸关以及塔兰特县的关键地位，位于沃斯堡边缘一处办公园区内的当地民主党总部里，志愿者、候选人以及像我这样的“笔杆子”们忙得不可开交。当我在办公室前台陈列的政治周边商品前驻足欣赏的时间稍长——其中包括印有卡玛拉·哈里斯品牌的啤酒罐和温迪·戴维斯品牌的酒杯——塔兰特县民主党执行主任雷内·特莱斯感慨地引用了《得克萨斯月刊》近期对该场所的描述：“塔兰特县民主党办公室是对过往美好希望的神圣纪念。”
In light of the stakes and the preeminence of Tarrant County, the local Democratic Party headquarters in an office park on the edge of Fort Worth had been bustling with volunteers and candidates, as well as ink-stained wretches like me. When I spent a little too long admiring the political paraphernalia at the front of the office—including Kamala Harris-branded beer cans and a wine glass for Wendy Davis—Reyne Telles, the Tarrant County Democratic Party’s executive director, wistfully quoted the ’s recent description of the space: “The Tarrant County Democratic Party office is a shrine to great hopes past.”
特莱斯表示，他方阵营的每一位全州范围候选人心中都有一个数字，即他们需要在该县领先多少个百分点才能赢下全州——通常在3到8个百分点之间。但有一些迹象表明民主党已取得进展，包括在传统上支持对立阵营的选民中。在今年早些时候的一次特别选举中，一位名为泰勒·雷梅特的民主党工会领袖让政治观察家大跌眼镜，他翻转了一个曾以17个百分点优势支持特朗普的州参议院选区。数据表明，他的成功很大程度上归功于说服选民转变立场，而非动员选民投票。
Telles says that every statewide candidate on his side of the ledger has a number in mind for how much they need to win the county by in order to win the state—generally somewhere between three and eight percentage points. But there are some indications Democrats have made inroads, including with residents who traditionally support the other side. In a special election earlier this year, a Democratic union leader named Taylor Rehmet stunned political observers by flipping a state Senate district that had voted for Trump by 17 points. The data suggested he owed much of his success to persuasion, not turnout.
尽管官方的县级共和党组织为极右翼摇旗呐喊，但沃斯堡温和派共和党市长马蒂·帕克却背书了两位民主党全州范围候选人——铁路委员（对阵弗伦奇）和总检察长。曾担任塔兰特县县长（相当于县行政长官）16年的格伦·惠特利录制广告，背书民主党籍州众议员詹姆斯·塔拉里科，支持他在联邦参议员竞选中对阵共和党总检察长肯·帕克斯顿。
While the official county Republican organization carries the flag for the far right, Fort Worth’s moderate Republican mayor, Mattie Parker, has endorsed Democratic candidates for two statewide offices—railroad commissioner (against French) and attorney general. Glen Whitley, who served for 16 years as Tarrant County judge (it’s the equivalent of county executive) cut an ad endorsing Democratic state Rep. James Talarico over Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the race for US Senate.
虽然塔拉里科和州长提名人吉娜·伊诺霍萨占据了大部分新闻版面（有罪），但塔兰特县的地方选举风险极高，民主党已有数十年未在全县范围的选举中获胜。民主党籍县专员阿丽莎·西蒙斯正与现任县法官蒂姆·奥黑尔展开激烈角逐——后者是保守派博·弗伦奇的盟友，曾推动减少投票站数量。
While Talarico and gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa have captured most of the headlines (guilty), the stakes are high in Tarrant County’s local races, where Democrats have not won a countywide race in decades. Alisa Simmons, a Democratic county commissioner, is in a tight race against the incumbent county judge Tim O’Hare—a conservative Bo French ally who pushed the reduction in polling locations.
“他是个很有意思的人——我不确定他为什么想任职，因为他根本不履职，”西蒙斯在科利维尔一处私人住宅的筹款活动前对我说。
“He’s a really interesting person—I’m not sure why he even wanted to serve because he’s not serving,” Simmons told me, before a fundraiser at a private home in Colleyville.
良政善治一直是竞选的主要议题。2025年，甚至在州议会共和党人重绘该州国会选区地图之前，奥黑尔就发起了一项不同寻常的尝试，试图对县专员选区进行杰利蝾螈式划分，以确保共和党人希望获得的4比1多数优势。委员会将开会频率减半，所有嘉宾发言限制在一分钟内，鼓掌的与会者被副治安官强行带离会场。（在一个引人注目的案例中，一名本地活动人士在证词中使用了“bullshit”一词，一周后被指控扰乱公共秩序。）
Good governance has been a major feature of the campaign. In 2025, even before Republicans in the state legislature redrew the state’s congressional maps, O’Hare embarked on an unusual attempt to gerrymander the county commissioner districts, in order to secure what Republicans hope will be a 4–1 majority. The commission has cut its meeting schedule in half, all guest speakers are limited to one minute, and attendees have been hauled out by sheriffs deputies for clapping. (In one notable case, a local activist who used the word “bullshit” in his testimony was charged, one week later, with disorderly conduct.)
在我们简短的交谈中，西蒙斯抨击该县共和党领袖削减了用于资助县立医院的税收，并强调了塔兰特县监狱不断上升的死亡人数。
In our short conversation, Simmons took aim at the county’s Republican leaders for cutting taxes meant to fund the county hospital, and highlighted the rising death toll at Tarrant County jails.
“我们几乎要赶上哈里斯县了，而哈里斯县的人口是我们的两倍，”她指的是包含休斯顿在内的那个辖区。
“We almost rival Harris County, and Harris County is double the population,” she said, referring to the jurisdiction that includes Houston.
塔兰特县的民主党人认为，今年该县已是囊中之物——那种导致投票率低于其他大型城市县份的冷漠和无奈情绪正在改变，而选票上的共和党人不适应摇摆州的现实。特勒斯告诉我，他希望翻转全县范围的竞选，能向州内其他角落发出信号：如果一个以牛仔驱赶和西部文化闻名的历史上红色大都会能投给蓝党，他们也能做到。共和党人推行选民欺诈叙事并实施无情的选区划分，以维持其对权力的控制。但这样做，他们也提醒了选民真正的利害关系。
Democrats in Tarrant believe the county is there for the taking this year—that the apathy and resignation that have kept turnout lower than other large urban counties is changing, and that the Republicans on the ballot aren’t cut out for swing-state realities. Telles told me he hoped flipping the countywide races would send a signal to other corners of the state, that if a historically Republican metro famous for its cattle drives and western culture can vote blue, they can too. Republicans have pushed voter-fraud narratives and ruthless gerrymandering to preserve their grip on power. But in doing so, they also reminded voters what was really at stake.
当我们在沃斯堡漫步时，我对梅森说，她经历的那种磨难本可能轻易让她远离政治。
As we walked through Fort Worth, I suggested to Mason that the kind of ordeal she went through might have easily turned her away from politics.
“我意识到这正是他们想让我做的事，”她说。“那就是站在台上展示，告诉他们我永远不会再投票，以此打击黑人和棕色人种前往投票站。”她说，她有责任“确保让他们知道，对做这些事的人来说，这些人是民选官员。”梅森的敲门行动是严格非党派的。她祝贺一位准备首次投票的年轻女性，并再三确认她知道去哪个选区投票。但没过多久，得克萨斯州部分邮编区的选民开始看到一则新广告，詹姆斯·塔拉里科坐在厨房餐桌旁，身旁是一位熟悉的投票权活动家。
“I realized that’s exactly what they wanted me to do,” she said. “And that was to stand on display and tell them how I would never vote again to discourage the black and the brown from coming to the polls.”She had an obligation, she said, “to make sure that I let them know that these same people that did this to me are elected officials.”Mason’s door-knocking was a strictly nonpartisan operation. She congratulated a young woman who was preparing to vote for the first time, and double-checked that she knew which precinct to stop by. But not long after, voters in select Texas ZIP codes began seeing a new ad in which James Talarico sits at a kitchen table with a familiar voting-rights activist.
“克里斯塔尔没有退缩，”他说。“你们也不该退缩，”梅森对着镜头说道。
“Crystal didn’t back down,” he says. “And you shouldn’t either,” Mason tells the audience.