AUSTIN — Almost immediately after assuming his new role as chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, state Rep. Ramón Romero Jr., D-Fort Worth, left no doubt that he planned an activist trajectory as he fired off statement after statement during the opening days of the 2025 Legislature.
One such statement assailed President Donald Trump’s emerging immigration policies as a threat to “the very fabric of our nation.” Another vowed the caucus’ opposition to possible immigration raids in Texas schools. Romero lamented a House rule change blocking Democrats from chairing committees but at the same time held out hope that lawmakers were embarking on “a productive session where all Texans will benefit.”
Interviewed in his office on the fourth floor of the State Capitol, Romero said the caucus, widely known as MALC, is facing daunting challenges as Trump presses ahead on beefed-up immigration enforcement with support from Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans who control state government.
“There’s a lot of people in the political world right now that are looking for a scapegoat, and they point to the Latino community,” said Romero, 51. “We all know that the immigration issue has been top of mind.”
One of Romero’s first major initiatives includes the appointment of a six-member committee within MALC to produce a strategic plan for border development. The project would be funded with $11 billion that Abbott is seeking in reimbursement to Texas for the cost of border security and wall construction during the Biden administration.
The money, Romero said, should be used to “address the real needs of our border communities,” including infrastructure, workforce development, trade and security, with an overall goal “to rebuild the border and keep jobs in Texas.” He named Rep. Eddie Morales Jr., an Eagle Pass Democrat, to head the project.
In taking the reins of what is widely known as the oldest and largest Mexican American legislative caucus in the nation, Romero marks another step in a personal journey that started in childhood poverty in east Fort Worth and followed with self-made success in business and politics.
After defeating 18-year incumbent Democratic Rep. Lon Burnam to take office in 2015, the lifelong Democrat is entering his sixth term in the House as the only Latino to represent Tarrant County in the Legislature. His unanimous election by the MALC membership to chair the coalition extends his influence far beyond his east-side legislative boundaries in House District 90.
Navigating choppy partisan waters
Established a half-century ago to give Mexican-Americans a voice in a mostly all-white legislative assembly, MALC has grown to just under 40 members in the 150-member GOP-led House and is at the center of virtually every legislative battle shaping voting rights and quality of life. The organization’s growth in membership and stature reflect Texas Hispanics’ growth into the state’s largest demographic group, with 12 million people accounting for about 40% of the population.
For decades, MALC was composed entirely of Democrats. A handful of Republicans gained a foothold when their party’s candidates crushed Democrats in a 2010 election rout. Six Republicans are now on the MALC roster following a pickup of two representatives in 2024, when Trump made deep inroads in Black and Hispanic sections of the state that had remained defiantly Democratic.
The shift in Latino voting patterns was a factor in Trump’s defeat of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, with some worried Democrats calling it a critical wake-up call to do a better job of messaging and outreach in Hispanic areas.
“I think that we did not do as good a job as we should have in connecting with that community,” acknowledged Romero, who campaigned for Harris and says he “absolutely supported” the Democratic ticket.
Romero said the presence of Hispanic Republicans in MALC spotlights a core premise that the organization’s goals transcend party politics.
“The needs of our community are not unique to Democrats or Republicans,” he said. “Like 99% of what happens in the Legislature, we are in agreement. We need good schools, we need public safety, we need infrastructure. And as a bloc of almost 40 votes, we are a very important part of the Texas Legislature.”
The organization officially describes itself as bipartisan, but given its overwhelming Democratic numbers, historical roots and voting patterns of most of its members, MALC is largely identified with Democrats, particularly for its impassioned stands on issues such as immigration and voting rights.
In 2017, Romero joined desk-mate Victoria Neave Criado, a fellow caucus member, in a hunger strike to denounce a looming House vote on Senate Bill 4. The bill, pushed by Abbott and other Republican leaders, sought to ban “sanctuary city” policies that prohibited law enforcement from questioning detained people about their immigration background.
Neave Criado, a Dallas lawyer who left the House in January after an unsuccessful bid for the state Senate, said she often relied on Romero’s guidance in combating “anti-Latino policymaking” as they sat next to each other on the House floor. She was his predecessor as MALC chair, serving between 2022 and 2024.
“Ramón and I sat side by side for years so I’ve been there on the front lines with him,” she recalled. “He had more experience there in the Legislature than I did, so I’d go to him for his advice or thoughts.”
Neave Criado predicts that her former colleague is “going to do great in his leadership role and has the skills, the respect of our colleagues … in these times where we need people to step up.”
One of MALC’s Republican members offers high expectations for Romero’s chairmanship.
“Ramón Romero is a wonderful, whole-hearted member of the House, and he fights for his constituents as (if) it was fighting for his family,” said Rep. J.M. Lozano of Kingsville, a former Democrat who switched to the GOP in 2012. Lozano, a House member since 2011, said he stopped attending caucus meetings after a MALC lawyer savaged his South Texas House district in a redistricting plan, but remains a member of the caucus.
Lozano said he expects Romero to help bridge differences in the caucus, adding that MALC members often respect each other’s position despite partisan divisions.
“We’ll vote on different positions, then it’s like a Friday night football game,” he said. “The minute the game’s over, we’re all friends.”
The path from Poly to politics
Romero grew up in southeast Fort Worth’s Polytechnic Heights as the sixth of eight children whose father was a butcher and mother was a homemaker. Times were hard, he recalls, but he pushed back by washing cars or “hawking golf balls” at the now-shuttered Sycamore Creek Golf Course. “I was a small business owner my whole life,” he says.
His businesses kept getting bigger. He got an irrigation license in high school to begin constructing irrigation systems, eventually expanding into swimming pool construction and a natural stone distribution company that evolved into multimillion-dollar enterprises. Romero thus became an established Fort Worth businessman known for signing paychecks on the front instead of the back.
Politics and public service came next. He served 11 years on Fort Worth planning and zoning commissions, made an unsuccessful bid for City Council, then set his sights on the 90th District House seat that Burnam, one of the leading liberal Democrats in the House, had occupied since 1997.
Burnam, then-dean of the Tarrant County House delegation, acknowledged to the Dallas Morning News that “radically” changing demographics in a poor and predominantly Latino district threatened his chances for reelection. Romero ultimately prevailed by 111 votes in the 2014 Democratic primary.
Romero, a grandfather of four who has lived in the same house in District 90 for three decades, said he has an inherent bond with his constituents. The eclectic district encompasses parts of north and south Fort Worth, including Poly, the Stockyards and parts of the Medical District. Its population continues to evolve and has included a growing number of immigrants from the north central-Mexican state of Zacatecas.
Of the district’s more than 203,000 residents, at least 131,000 — nearly 65% — are Hispanic, according to a House profile of the district. The per-capita income is $27,000, compared to almost $40,000 statewide, and the poverty rate is just over 17%, compared to nearly 14% statewide.
Romero said he understands the struggles many of his constituents face in “not being able to put clothes on their children’s back or food on their plates.” Despite his wealth, he said, “I’m a poor person at heart — I know what poverty feels like, and it doesn’t feel good.”
Romero’s “hands-on” approach to his constituents back home, including sponsoring an annual golf tournament and routinely sending staff to neighborhood association meetings, may help explain why the incumbent lawmaker hasn’t drawn a primary challenger throughout his decade in office. He defeated Republican challenger Elva Camacho with 72% of the vote in the 2020 general election.
“We see him around the neighborhoods frequently,” said Mike Brennan, president of Near Southside Inc. “He’s close friends with a lot of the business owners in the district and with the community leaders who have been part of our work for a long time.”
Launched nearly three decades ago to revitalize a decaying part of Fort Worth, Near Southside Inc. now encompasses more than 340 businesses and institutions, from startups to hospital anchors, that attract thousands of visitors to the area. Brennan said Romero has been “strongly supportive” since his days on the zoning commission.
“As a businessman, he understands the challenges faced particularly by startup businesses,” Brennan said.
Attorney Jason Smith was recruited into active Democratic Party politics in the 1980s when Burnam represented the district. After his close friend Burnam was defeated, he initially worried that Romero was going to be a conservative Democrat, but said he became a strong supporter after watching Romero’s performance in office, particularly when he spoke out for struggling farm workers at a legislative hearing in Austin.
“He stood up for these folks, he really did,” says Smith, who lives in the district and is one of Romero’s constituents. “Ramón Romero turned out to be a lot better Democrat than I ever thought he’d be.”
Feuds and friendships across the aisle
Romero’s strong positions have sometimes brought him to the center of bitter partisan tensions. The same 2017 session that prompted Neave Criado and Romero’s hunger strike ended in a near brawl on the House floor after then-Rep. Matt Rinaldi, a future state Republican chair, called federal immigration authorities on protesters who filled the House gallery to protest passage of Senate Bill 4.
Romero and several other Democratic House members said they approached Rinaldi in defense of the protesters, but the confrontation escalated after Rinaldi called the demonstrators “”f—ing illegals,” Romero said. In recent interviews about the incident, Rinaldi said Romero assaulted him with a push during the altercation, an account that Romero denies. “If I’d have assaulted him, he would have known it,” Romero told the Report.
The hostilities have hardly softened years later. Rinaldi, an Irving attorney who led the Texas Republican Party from 2021 to 2024, calls Romero “a far left Democrat” and describes MALC as “completely irrelevant.” He adds: “And yeah, we did get into it at one point.”
In turn, Romero, defending MALC as an essential organization that represents the needs of all members and not just Hispanics, said Rinaldi “brought shame to the Legislature” when he was in the House and serves as a “mouthpiece” for “outside billionaires” in his private practice.
The ongoing tension with Rinaldi and his allies hasn’t kept Romero from building legislative alliances on both sides of the aisle.
“Ramón and I have worked well together,” said Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, who served as a committee chair during the last session and is close to current Speaker Dustin Burrows. “He’s a dear friend and he’s formidable — on the golf course and the House floor. He’s a hell of a golfer, and he’s a hell of a fighter for his constituents.”
Rep. Tony Tinderholt, an outspoken Republican conservative from Arlington, said he has good relations with his Tarrant County Democratic colleague despite their partisan differences on issues such as abortion and immigration.
“Romero’s a good friend of mine, and I trust him,” said Tinderholt.
As members of the House Committee on Defense and Veterans Affairs, Tinderholt recalled, he worked with Romero to strengthen qualifications for the mental health director of the Texas Veterans Commission.
“He’s from the Democrat Party, and we’re just going to typically disagree on some policy, but I’ll tell you what, I like working with Ramón on the things that we do agree on,” Tinderholt added.
Charting a legislative agenda for Texas Latinos
Romero announced his bid for the MALC chairmanship in October 2024 after months of consideration, noting that the state’s Hispanic population had grown by more than 500% since the organization was founded in 1973, the year Romero was born.
As its numbers increased in subsequent decades, so did MALC’s power and accomplishments. MALC pushed legislation and legal action for Latinos on a multitude of fronts, including minimum wages for farm workers, equalizing public school finance, boosting funding for higher education in South Texas and legislative redistricting suits to broaden Latino representation in the Legislature and Congress.
A broader set of 21st century challenges await MALC under Romero’s leadership, including guaranteeing adequate power through the electric grid, fortifying infrastructure, improving banking and insurance access, and securing adequate water sources for decades to come. The laundry list also includes the priorities that have faced MALC for the past half-century, including protecting voting rights and combating the ravages of poverty.
Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat who chaired MALC from 2009 to 2017, believes Romero is the right choice to forge that path.
“Since the inception of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, we’ve always benefited tremendously from leadership taking the caucus one step further than their predecessor,” he said. “Ramón is uniquely qualified. He has the acumen, he has the discipline, and he has the passion to be the voice of all Latinos in Texas.”
Romero also underscored the challenges in declaring his intentions to seek the chairmanship, vowing to stay “laser-focused on the issues central to MALC’s mission.”
The fundamental objective, he said, is ensuring “that we are doing everything in our power to support and uplift the Latino community across the state of Texas.”
The Fort Worth Report’s Texas Legislative coverage is supported by Kelly Hart. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
Dave Montgomery is an Austin-based freelance reporter for the Fort Worth Report.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
