The Republican primary race for Texas Senate District 22 on March 3 could be pivotal for Waco and McLennan County residents, regardless of their political affiliation.
The Texas Senate is the state’s most powerful political body, but the Waco area has not had one of its own in the chamber since 2010.
Incumbent State Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, is planning to step down this year after 16 years in the office, and has been nominated for a Pentagon post.
Three Republican primary contenders – Jon Gimble, Rena Schroeder and state Rep. David Cook – are competing for the seat. Early voting begins Tuesday in the Republican primary, and the winner will face Democrat Amy Martinez-Salas of Arlington on Nov. 3.
The district favored Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election by 28 points. No Democrat has taken Senate District 22 since Chet Edwards ended his tenure in 1990, and Birdwell last won re-election in 2022 with more than 74% of the vote.
The three GOP candidates are vying to show who can best represent Waco-area voters and deliver on local needs across the district’s 12 counties. The district includes Falls, McLennan, Hill and Bosque counties and extends to the southern edge of Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
The Republican candidates are as follows:
- State Rep. David Cook, a former Mansfield mayor backed by big donations and an endorsement from President Donald Trump,
- Jon Gimble, a former McLennan County district clerk with deep Waco-area roots, and
- Rena Schroeder of Lott, a rancher and data center opponent running a grassroots campaign on a shoestring budget.
Over the past week, The Waco Bridge spoke with the candidates about how they plan to help Waco, how they will represent all district voters, and where they stand on key issues for the region, from data centers to immigration.
For more information on the March 3 primaries, you can visit our interactive guide and our list of county and state races of special interest to McLennan County.
David Cook
A state representative from Mansfield in southern Tarrant County, Cook is the heavyweight contender in the bout for Senate District 22. He was elected to Texas House District 96 in 2021 after serving 12 years as Mansfield mayor, and he narrowly lost the bid for speaker of the Texas House in 2025. Cook is an attorney and managing partner of Harris Cook LLP, a law firm with offices across the DFW area.
Cook has picked up endorsements from President Donald Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Waco state Rep. Pat Curry. His campaign’s current cash-on-hand — $721,000 — eclipses his nearest rival, Jon Gimble, by a more than 10:1 ratio, highlighting his support from the Texas’ Republican party elite.
“I’ve served as Mayor for 12 years, I have relationships and endorsements all throughout the Legislature and I’ll have the ability to… get things done for all of Senate District 22 and McLennan County,” Cook told the Bridge during a Friday interview.
Representing Waco
“From a representative perspective, I mean, that’s where the most voters are, so we want to make sure that we’re accessible to the electorate,” Cook said. “The main criteria (as a state senator) is knowing that you represent all voters, not just a certain area where you live or where you’re from, but the entire district.”
Cook said water security and data centers are the “two most important issues for the Waco area specifically.”
Local leaders have long lobbied the Legislature to preserve and expand protections against dairy pollution upstream of Lake Waco. They have also sought state funding for a new mental health facility following the closure of the DePaul Center at Ascension Providence.
In an interview Friday with The Waco Bridge, Cook largely deferred to the city of Waco in the strategy for dealing with dairy pollution. After Birdwell helped fend off a threat to unwind regulations on dairies in the North Bosque watershed in 2023, city leaders worked with Rep. Curry in the 2025 session on attempted legislation to fund manure composting and haul-out.
“I think that the City of Waco is doing an excellent job of working with the dairy farmers,” Cook said. He said he has had conversations on the topic with the Brazos River Authority and Texas Farm Bureau. Cook said his preferred solution would balance the needs of dairy farmers and Waco’s watershed.
Mental health “is a top priority,” Cook said, though he gave few details of what kind of mental health solutions he would seek for the Waco area.
“Early prevention is the best offensive move that we can take to help the residents … in McLennan County specifically,” he said.
Data centers
Cook this week responded to widespread concerns Texans have about proposed data centers and their impact on water, energy and land use. After Hood County commissioners voted Tuesday to reject a pause on data center development, under pressure from other state politicians, Cook committed to filing legislation regulating the Texas data center industry.
In a news release Wednesday, Cook stated that Hood County voices were being ignored “as corporations pursue projects that could fundamentally alter” the county. Asked if the same concerns apply to the data center proposed north of Lacy Lakeview, Cook answered, “I do. Yeah, I definitely do.”
“A lot of (this) is because we don’t have any regulation to speak of in place,” he said.
“The purpose of my bill is to set up guardrails.”
Cook said beefing up local land use and water controls would be part of the legislation, which could be filed during the upcoming legislative cycle or even hashed out earlier during a special session if Gov. Abbott were to call one.
However, Cook said, “there’s a push from the top, you know, (from) President Trump,” to expand the industry.
“It’s a fact that data centers are coming,” he said, but the question is “where are they going to be and under what regulations are (we) going to be able to put into place.”
Immigration
Cook is an outspoken supporter of President Trump’s mass deportation policy and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
He co-sponsored Senate Bill 8, the controversial state law mandating county partnerships with ICE, and which became a source of heated debate in McLennan County this year.
His campaign website states he will be “taking on” cities “who shelter illegals.” The Bridge asked Cook if Waco was a city that needed to be “taken on.”
“I’m a law and order candidate,” Cook said. “So, yeah, that means that if someone is here illegally, then yes, they’re subject to deportation.”
But, he said, “I do have the endorsement of the Latinos United for Conservative Action. … I want to make sure that I’m available and accessible to everyone, regardless of race or anything like that.”
Property taxes
Cook said voters can expect him to work with state leadership on eliminating school property taxes and “take that on as a state responsibility.” His position is in line with Gov. Greg Abbott’s legislative agenda to eliminate school property taxes on homeowners.
Some tax policy experts have described that goal as unrealistic, noting that school districts in 2024 took in some $42 billion in property taxes.
Jon Gimble
Gimble is a third-generation McLennan County resident and McLennan Community College graduate whose life and political career have revolved around Waco. In 2015, he became the first Republican in modern times to be elected as McLennan County district clerk, and he held the position until starting his Senate District 22 campaign last year.
Gimble presents himself as a conservative policy technician in command of local, regional and state issues. He told the Bridge last week that the Waco area needs its own representative, rather than a surrogate from the Dallas Fort-Worth area.
Representing Waco
“You’re a product of the tapestry that you live in, and Central Texas needs a voice at the table,” Gimble said. “What drew me into the race was we have someone that’s running, that’s being pushed on us by Austin. The DFW area has six or seven senators at the table. We have an option for one.”
But a vast gulf in fundraising and endorsements separates Gimble from Cook, which could be difficult for Gimble to overcome. His campaign has $78,000 on hand, according to a January campaign finance report, roughly a tenth of Cook’s war chest.
Gimble said he was undaunted, noting that he won his district clerk race despite getting outspent by a 5:1 ratio in 2015. He added that his “stellar and solid” reputation for conservative fiscal management would translate throughout the district’s communities.
“You’ve got to be able to represent the entire district, and that doesn’t just mean your primary voters or your community,” Gimble said.
Local priorities
Gimble spoke at length about mechanisms for improving the speed and cost effectiveness of Texas Department of Transportation projects, a particular sore point for Wacoans and I-35 commuters.
“Coming out of COVID, TxDOT had packaged things into what they called mega projects that only a half dozen contractors can bid on, so that cuts out all of your medium contractors from bidding,” Gimble said. “So part of it is getting TxDOT to go back to that pre-COVID model where it feeds the entire ecosystem for competitiveness.”
“The other issue is making sure that our highway dollars are actually going to highway issues,” Gimble said.
He spoke expansively on the history of Bosque River dairy pollution though ultimately arrived at a similar conclusion to Cook.
“The big thing I see as a senator is balancing the needs and making sure you come up with solutions that work for, in this instance, both ends of the Bosque River (watershed).
Gimble also said he would continue to promote Waco’s downtown development as a state senator.
Data centers
Gimble celebrated a resolution passed last week by the State Republican Executive Committee, which proposed several regulations to Texas data center development while expanding local control of land and resources.
“We need a public permitting process at least as strong as we have for a landfill,” Gimble said.
He said that while Texas has plentiful land for data centers and gas to power them, “just because we’ve got two out of three of your answers doesn’t mean we want to give all our water away.”
Last year, while still serving as McLennan County District Clerk, Gimble began working with the City of Lacy Lakeview to help facilitate a 520-acre data center promoted by developer Infrakey. He told the Bridge that he was introduced to Sujeeth Draksharam, a spokesperson for Infrakey, “through one of the governor’s boards.”
In a text exchange involving Lacy Lakeview Mayor Chuck Wilson and Draksharam, Gimble appeared to offer assistance with drafting a memorandum of agreement for the project, according to texts obtained through an open records request by opponents of the development.
The Bridge asked Gimble if the public backlash against Infrakey’s project affected his perspective about it.
“(Residents) have concerns, probably some fears, and they, at least (at) a minimum, need to be addressed in a meaningful way. And if they can’t be addressed, maybe that’s not the best place to put one,” Gimble said.
Immigration
Having spent 2011 on the border as an enlisted Texas State Guard, Gimble said the topic of border security is important to him.
“It’s not just signaling that trying to catch people’s attention,” he said. “But I do understand the concerns about the ICE involvement (in Waco).”
However, he said, “I don’t think we’ve seen that here in Central Texas.”
“I’ve read and seen news reports about what’s going on elsewhere, and it seems like temperatures could be lowered on both sides of the equation, and hopefully people could get back to a more orderly and lawful society.”
Property taxes
As with Cook, Gimble is advocating for Gov. Abbott’s plan to gradually eliminate school taxes for homeowners.
“It’s a disparate system that we need to get rid of, and getting a good allotment from the state, combining those federal dollars and then replacing those property tax dollars, that gets rid of the Robin Hood system as well,” Gimble said, referring to the state recapture system that balances property wealth between rich and poor schools.
He said the plan could eventually lead to the elimination of county-level central appraisal districts, too.
“The auditors in the Comptroller’s office are saying you have to hit this target of anticipated growth for the school funding formula to work out? Well, that cascades across all of the taxing entities and that’s where our problems are occurring.”
Rena Schroeder
Schroeder owns and operates a ranch in the tiny Falls County community of Lott, about a 30 minute drive southeast of Waco. She’s a proud grassroots candidate who joined the race to provide a voice for rural conservatives and data center opponents.
Schroeder’s small team of volunteers operates out of a trailer on her property, where she runs a nonprofit horse rescue to rehabilitate those struggling with mental illness.
Pointing to the recent upset in a special election that flipped Senate District 9 to a Democrat, she believes her eclectic platform better reflects the will of the district’s Republican voters. But as a relative unknown with $256 dollars on hand, Schroeder’s path to the Senate faces long odds.
Representing Waco
A self-described “recovering Californian,” Schroeder relocated to Texas in 2017 with her husband and two children; first to Temple, then to Lott three years ago.
She said her decision to enter the race came after a prayer and an observation.
“I started saying, ‘You know what? I don’t see anybody fighting against these data centers. I don’t see anything being done,’ ” Schroeder said.
Despite living in Lott, Schroeder says she is in Waco almost every day and in touch with the city’s needs, not just those of her rural neighbors.
“I’ve talked to a lot of Wacoans and I hear what they’re saying,” Schroeder said. “They’re concerned about infrastructure, they’re concerned about (I-35), they’re concerned about their taxes, they’re concerned about water.”
Local priorities
Schroeder believes if government waste can be rooted out, the savings can be rerouted into “places that really matter, like the infrastructure, the homelessness, the mental health.”
“Those are the things that Wacoans are really concerned about,” Schroeder said.
Data centers
Schroeder has appeared and spoken at organizing meetings held by the Lacy Lakeview data center opposition.
To her, the anger over data centers is the product of a disconnect between establishment conservative leaders and their electorate.
“People feel like ‘no one’s listening to us’,” Schroeder said. She added that her stance on data centers is not for additional regulation, but for their abolition.
“I thought, ‘most things can be regulated… we could handle it.’ No, 18 million gallons of water a day? And they want to put 300 to 400 of them by the end of ‘26?” Schroeder said. “No, that’s not going to happen. It’s not feasible.”
“Data centers cannot happen in rural Texas because I’m a rural Texan and I want my land. I need to make sure my livestock and my horses are always going to have water, and my family’s gonna have water,” Schroeder said.
Immigration
Schroeder, who is half Hispanic, said she understands the fear created by aggressive immigration enforcement.
“I’m having a lot of conversations with the Latino community and they have a lot of concerns, and they’re afraid,” Schroeder said. “They’re like, ‘I’ve been here, I’m legal and I’m still scared.”
Her proposal is to seek written reassurances from ICE agents that they will not target residents with legal status.
“I want it written on paper, that I can go back to (the community) with something, with something on paper, with (an agent’s) signature, saying, ‘Look at what I have.’ And…reassuring you guys that you have nothing to worry about,” Schroeder said.
She added that immigration authorities should turn their attention back to “MS-13, the gangs, the drug dealers, cartels. That’s what y’all said you were going to do.”
School vouchers
On school voucher policy, Schroeder cuts against the grain of the prevailing position among state party officials. Schroeder said vouchers are harming the quality of public education and subsidizing private education for the already wealthy.
“We’re a no for vouchers,” Schroeder said.
This story first appeared in The Waco Bridge. To get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for the Waco Bridge newsletter at wacobridge.org/newsletter.
