I’m tempted to say that this is what Madison was referring to in Federalist 10.
In Odessa, as in many other Texas cities, elections for municipal positions such as mayor and city council member are nonpartisan; candidates do not run as Republicans or Democrats. In recent years, though, Odessa politics have become increasingly divisive and ideological, mirroring national trends. Joven and his allies say they are simply representing the values of their conservative constituents. Ector County is overwhelmingly red; Donald Trump won about 73 percent of its 44,591 votes cast in the 2020 presidential election. “We were elected, and the citizens wanted change,” said council member Swanner. Council member Mark Matta, an account manager at an oil and gas supply company who was elected in 2020, also voted to fire Brooks and Marrero. “We weren’t getting anywhere with [Marrero], so we just had to make the decision that we thought was best for the city of Odessa,” he told me. Matta declined to go into greater detail, citing unspecified “pending litigation.”
Several current and former Odessa City Council members told me that while the city is certainly conservative, Joven’s faction, which aligns itself with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, has introduced a new atmosphere of extreme partisanship, distracting the council from its traditional emphasis on infrastructure and business development. At its first meeting, in November, the newly reconstituted city council voted to declare Odessa a sanctuary city for the unborn, joining more than forty other Texas cities that have outlawed abortion. Odessa’s ordinance is even more restrictive than the state’s abortion ban, providing exceptions only for ectopic pregnancies.
Thompson was alone in voting against the ordinance, arguing that reproductive rights were beyond the scope of the city council. “Why do we need to get involved?” he asked me. “Let’s go build a sports complex. Let’s pave roads.” Since November, though, those typical functions of city government seem to have taken a back seat to Team Joven’s ideological agenda. “It’s very difficult to entice new businesses to come into a city where the local government is so nonfunctional,” said Gene Collins, who served from 2016 to 2020 on the board of the Odessa Development Corporation, which provides financial incentives to spur economic activity. “City employees that we’ve had for a long time have resigned. Others are unsure of their future. Nothing is really getting done in the city.”
