Texas

Allred campaigns for Senate and fellow Democrats to join him on next year's ballot

KACU | By Heather Claborn,

George Levesque

Published July 18, 2025 at 8:16 AM CDT

Attorney General Ken Paxton is challenging John Cornyn for the Republican spot on the ballot. Cornyn, who's held the seat since 2002, has been working to emphasize his conservative credentials with voters, as several rounds of polling give Paxton a double-digit lead.

On the Democratic side, former Congressman Colin Allred and retired astronaut Terry Virts are competing to become their party's candidate.

Allred spoke with KACU's West Texas Dispatch about his candidacy and his work to recruit other Democrats to run for local office.

Texas

Heather Claborn

Heather Claborn joined KACU as news director in January 2018. She oversees daily newscast and feature reporting and works with KACU’s news anchors to develop newscasts. She also conducts two-way interviews, reports for newscast and feature stories and maintains the station’s social media and website content. Claborn began working in public radio in 1998 as a fill-in "All Things Considered" host at WFCR in Amherst, Massachusetts. She then accepted a position with Connecticut Public Radio (WNPR) in Hartford, Connecticut as the "Morning Edition" host. Over the years, Claborn assumed more responsibility and shifted roles to become the daily news editor. She also continued reporting, filing feature stories for NPR news programs and contributing regularly to NPR’s business and hourly newscasts. During her time with with the Harford station, Claborn produced television news reports for CPTV, and served as a panelist on CPTV’s election debates. Heather Claborn won awards from the Associated Press and the Society for Professional Journalists in Connecticut.After moving to Illinois in 2006, Claborn taught Radio News and Interviewing and other journalism and communications classes at Olivet Nazarene University. Kankakee Community College began operation of public radio station WKCC in 2007, and the fledgling station added Claborn to its staff soon after. She hosted the daily morning news programming and produced two-way interviews and feature reports for the station. She also contributed reports to the statewide collaborative of pubic radio stations.Claborn earned her BA at the University of North Texas, majoring in Radio, TV and Film and Political Science. During her college years, she worked for the short-lived KEWS, all-news, FM radio station in Dallas, and the USA Radio Network. She also interned for KDFW FOX 4 news in the Fort Worth office. Claborn returned to central Texas in 2017 with her husband, David and children Cal and Molly. She enjoys the landscape and scenery that is unique to this part of the state, and is acclimating to the difference in the weather. [Copyright 2025 KACU]

George Levesque