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Tens of thousands of Odessa residents were once again without water on Saturday afternoon as crews worked to fix a leak in the waterline — an ongoing problem in the city's aging infrastructure.

Crews in the fast-growing city at the center of the Permian Basin were not able to isolate a leak discovered Saturday morning. City manager John Beckmeyer said faulty valves forced workers to shut down the entire system to make repairs. The city's aging 700-mile-long system has seen recurring problems and it is due for a major overhaul, he said.

After a much larger leak led to a water outage in May, Mayor Javier Joven said that a majority of county residents outside city limits also rely on the city's water plant.

The city sent out a public safety alert around noon notifying city residents the water would be shut off at 2 p.m. Beckmeyer said estimated residents would be without water for three hours, and under a 24-hour boil-water notice after it comes back.

Breckmeyer said Odessa eliminated a crew that regularly checked valves about a decade ago as a cost saving measure.

The city now has standard operating procedures to limit the time water is shut off when leaks cannot be isolated with the goal of preventing dayslong water outages like in 2022. Odessa also started notifying residents about water problems with cellphone alerts after many were surprised by May's outage.

Beckmeyer says the city is working on fixing the valves, but contracted repairs will take time and they won't be cheap. The city applied for support from a new $1 billion statewide water fund that was approved by constitutional amendment voters in November.

Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!

You come to see

What you want to see

Yeah you come to see

But you never come to know

— Kinky Friedman, “The Wild Man of Borneo”

Kinky Friedman died Thursday. His obituaries have listed his various endeavors: Peace Corps volunteer, bandleader, provocateur, satirist, singer-songwriter, mystery novelist, essayist, perennial candidate for various offices (Kerrville justice of the peace, governor of Texas, commissioner of agriculture). I'd add Borscht Belt comedian, killer chess player, dedicated cigar smoker and savior of dogs to the list.

He was also, as it happens, my boss when he ran in a four-way race for governor in 2006.

I have never known anyone who worked harder at not having a real job, and I count my own efforts in that regard pretty impressive. His campaign had plenty of career-minded people focused on order and organization. There were a few who seemed determined to avoid not only work or a job but really any kind of useful activity whatsoever.

Over the years I've come to understand that this was by design, that this was Kinky's preference. A level of chaos for him was a feature, not a bug.

Hiring me was just one example: Nearing 50, I had a resume that consisted of pretty much one job: Bass player.

I joined the campaign seeking to escape a life that was becoming unbearable to me after 30 years as a professional musician. A few years earlier, at a festival in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, two bandmates and I had taken the stage and begun tuning our instruments — the adjusting of monitor levels, the thump of drums and splash of cymbals that precede a live show — when I suddenly felt I could hear every individual thought of every person in the audience. I looked wildly at my bandmates, wondering if it was just me. That condition, which I'm not sure even has a name, only worsened over the succeeding years. Crowds became intolerable, an impossible situation for a professional musician. When I got the call from our former booking agent and Kinky's first campaign manager, Cleve Hattersley, I jumped at the chance. It was a measure of how much of a musician I was that I thought I was getting a real job.

The first time I remember meeting Kinky was at UT-Austin, an early campaign event. With a large following of students in tow, he strolled the campus, chewing on an unlit cigar and answering questions from a rapt group of students. I was taken with his ease, his sharp and rapid wit and his comfort with tough questions (which I noticed he didn't actually answer).

The particulars of Kinky's run for governor were never very specific, but his platform was very pro-teacher and public schools, deeply dubious of the death penalty and adamantly opposed to Gov. Rick Perry's proposed Trans-Texas Corridor, an ambitious but deeply unpopular multinational superhighway, rail and utility corridor that would have cut a gigantic swath across the state.

Kinky further offered an aspirational vision to voters that was long on slogans, if short on details. It spoke to Texans' deep sense of identity, including distrust of government. “How hard can it be?” and “You can lead a politician to water but you can't make him think” were classic Kinky one-liners, and they appeared on T-shirts and bumper stickers we sold hand over fist. He tapped into a sentiment neither liberal nor conservative: pissed off. Very few people, if indeed anyone, looked to Kinky for policy pronouncements. What drew many, myself included, was an abiding frustration with the status quo.

Unlike the major-party nominees — Perry and former Democratic congressman Chris Bell — the independent candidates, Kinky and former Austin mayor and state comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, faced the difficult challenge of actually getting on the ballot. The hurdles were considerable: get 1% of the previous election's number of voters (in 2006, that meant about 50,000) to sign a petition. But each signature had to be from a registered voter, and that voter could not have voted in either the Republican or Democratic primary. Voters could only sign one or the other petition — either Strayhorn or Kinky, but not both — or the signature wouldn't count. And our campaigns would have 60 days, from the primary until May 11, 2006, to gather those signatures, which would then be validated by the Texas Secretary of State.

To maximize those 60 days of signature gathering, we'd have to engage in strenuous campaigning far earlier than the party candidates. When I signed on in the spring of 2005, about 18 months ahead of Election Day, the campaigning was just getting underway. My first job was to paint our first headquarters, a tiny, drafty office in an old two-story building a couple of blocks south of the Capitol. I installed the first computer, a Dell machine with Windows (I spent so much time on the phone with a Microsoft tech support worker in India that I knew her children's names), set up the first telephone, even had my bike stolen from the alley behind the office.

We ultimately had two more HQs as the campaign rapidly grew — the second was a former main office and warehouse for a cosmetics firm, offered to the campaign either gratis or very nearly free by a millionaire friendly to Kinky. We were booted when the production crew for the beloved TV series “Friday Night Lights” scouted our building and offered a ton of money to our landlord. I made the producers pony up considerable funds to move us seamlessly and overnight into our new home, a closed car dealership with a big campaign sign mounted high and visible from the adjacent highway. After our campaign ended, Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign took over the spot.

We were on the campaign trail constantly. If we failed to get enough signatures, two years of very hard work would just waft away like smoke from one Kinky's cigars.

Our approach for getting those 50,000 or so petition signatures was different from Strayhorn's. She decided to spend huge amounts of money on a firm that would fan out with mostly temp workers. We decided we'd keep it in house, so we bought banks of used computers and engaged many volunteers (we were using Facebook when it was still limited to colleges and universities), as well as everyone on staff, to participate in the gathering. We were therefore able to verify our signatures before delivering them to the secretary's office, while Strayhorn's campaign relied on sheer bulk. On the day we delivered all our signatures (in an elaborate convoy led by Austin cops on motorcycles) we knew we had wildly exceeded the minimum. Our total of verified signatures left Strayhorn in the dust.

For a man who avoided real jobs, Kinky was relentless. He was on the road all the time, all over Texas, in front of anyone who'd have him. And plenty would — he was an incredibly engaging presence who read rooms as only politicians and performance artists can. He shared a gifted politician's knack for making you feel, in a brief one-on-one encounter, like you were the only person in the world. If he had an engagement at 2 p.m., he considered himself late if he wasn't there by noon. It was a running joke that if he had a noon flight, you'd be driving him to the airport at 5 a.m.

Kinky's campaign reflected a persistent vein of frustration that has fueled populist insurgents like Ross Perot in 1992 and Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in 2016. A former Texas governor, George W. Bush, was in the White House, presiding over unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Texas, Perry, was in some hot water for his support of the Trans-Texas Corridor. Meanwhile, the Democrat, Chris Bell, outperformed expectations in the end, because the youth turnout from Kinky never really materialized. The conventional wisdom at the time was that Kinky was peeling votes from the left, Strayhorn from the right and middle. The reality was more nuanced. At the hundreds of Kinky campaign events I worked, there were young ideological voters, middle aged and elderly former hippies, resolute Libertarians and future Tea Party adherents. What they saw in Kinky was someone who wouldn't filter himself, someone whose image was crafted by himself and no one else. It wasn't enough to win, but with Strayhorn at 18% and Kinky at 12%, it was the wildest Texas election in recent memory.

As a fellow musician, I know the power of authenticity, and I have never met anyone as authentic, as completely himself, as Kinky.

John Jordan, a native of Corpus Christi, was a longtime Austin bass player before he worked on Kinky Friedman's campaign in 2006. He joined The Dallas Morning News's Austin bureau in 2008 as an office manager and The Texas Tribune in 2012 as an editorial administrator. He was named deputy director of photography in 2022.

Disclosure: Dell, Facebook, Microsoft and Texas Secretary of State have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden's unsteady performance at Thursday's presidential debate has sparked a wave of anxiety among Texas Democrats, some of whom fear their party's standard bearer could drag down the rest of the ticket and cost Democrats down-ballot seats in November.

Even Biden's allies and supporters in Texas acknowledged the debate was a disaster. The president, who hoped to quell concerns about his acuity and fitness for office, routinely struggled to muster up complete sentences and often wove multiple points together, muddling his message. The performance overshadowed the debate's substance, including former President Donald Trump's support for rolling back abortion rights and refusal to disavow the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — issues where Texas Democrats hope to seize the upper hand this fall.

“Biden had a very low bar going into the debate and failed to clear even that bar,” former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro said on social media. Castro, a former San Antonio mayor, faced Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary. “He seemed unprepared, lost, and not strong enough to parry effectively with Trump, who lies constantly.”

Two-thirds of debate viewers polled by CNN after the debate said they thought Trump outperformed Biden, though only a small fraction of those who backed Biden before the debate say they would now consider voting for Trump.

Statewide polls show Biden trailing Trump by a wider margin than at any point in the state four years ago, and Democrats worry that a further slip could torpedo their chances in key races, including U.S. Rep. Colin Allred's challenge to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and several GOP-controlled state House seats they are targeting. The fate of these largely unknown down-ballot candidates is closely linked to their party's success atop the ticket, where presidential nominees are more visible to everyday voters and have far more money to drive turnout.

“I think that if you are a down-ballot candidate in a swing area, that candidate's responsibility for turnout becomes even bigger than it was before yesterday,” said Ed Espinoza, a Democratic strategist who previously oversaw the progressive group Progress Texas. “You're gonna need an extra push.”

Allred's campaign and social media was silent throughout the debate. The Dallas Democrat declined to comment after leaving the U.S. House chamber on Friday, saying he was still “processing” the debate.

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat who serves as a national co-chair on Biden's campaign, said “it was not the night any of us wanted.” Still, she expressed more dismay that reporters were not further challenging Trump's comments about migrants coming from prisons and asylums, which she described as “beyond vile.” Escobar said she still had confidence that Biden could counter Trump's remarks in the future.

U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, acknowledged that Biden underperformed, but warned members of his party to be cautious before declaring the president's reelection effort dead.

“I don't think members should say anything that they will regret later before everybody's had a chance to just kind of chill a little bit,” he said.

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, delighted at Biden's debate performance, immediately using it to target Democratic congressional candidates who had endorsed Biden's fitness. The National Republican Congressional Committee didn't hesitate to unearth an old quote by Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen, where he said Biden was “healthy, he's sharp, he's a full package.”

“Vicente Gonzalez has supported Joe Biden every step of the way – in his open border and inflationary policies and now as Biden mentally struggles to do the job as president,” former U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores, who is challenging Gonzalez for the 34th district, said in a text message. “Now is not the time for feeble leadership from Biden or blind yes men like Gonzalez.”

Biden's age could be particularly effective among Hispanic voters, who are on average the youngest ethnic group in the country. The only U.S. races targeted by national party groups are in majority Hispanic districts in South Texas.

“It just confirmed what all Americans already know: that he is a feeble man not able to perform the duties of his position,” said U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-McAllen, who is facing a competitive challenge from Democrat Michelle Vallejo to keep her seat in the 15th district.

Republicans are hoping to flip two U.S. House district seats this year in South Texas — the 34th and the 28th districts — and are investing heavily to hold onto the 15th district. National Democrats are also showing early interest in the Senate race in Texas for the first time in decades, identifying the state as their most likely flippable seat in a largely difficult map for Democrats this year.

But Democrats retort that their congressional candidates don't tie themselves closely to Biden anyway. U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat in the 28th district, and Gonzalez both routinely vote against their party, voting with Republicans on issues ranging from the border to energy regulation. Allred voted for a Republican resolution condemning Biden's handling of the border, though he later reversed course on a similar resolution.

In Harris County, where Republicans have gained recent momentum after losing political control, GOP Chair Cindy Siegel said her party would do everything it can to tie Democrats to Biden's most glaring weaknesses, from inflation to immigration. Siegel also predicted that Trump would “help us succeed and win our down-ballot races” — a striking change in posture from just four years ago, when Biden carried Harris County by 13 points over Trump.

“I fully expect that [Trump's] going to do a lot better than he did back in 2020,” Siegel said, arguing that national polls showing stronger support for Trump among Black and Hispanic voters would be borne out in Harris County's diverse pool of voters.

Democratic state lawmakers and legislative candidates stayed largely silent throughout the debate, mostly resharing other posts that called out Trump's repeated falsehoods and criticized the debate format for letting said falsehoods run unchecked. State Rep. John Bucy of Austin, one of the few Democrats in the Legislature who said anything during the debate, wrote that Trump, in claiming credit for the demise of Roe v. Wade, was “directly responsible for Texas' extreme abortion ban.”

Abortion rights are perhaps the leading issue for Texas Democrats up and down the ballot, including at the Texas Supreme Court, which has upheld the state's abortion bans. A political group called Find Out PAC is targeting three GOP justices over the issue, including the court's refusal to allow a Dallas woman to obtain an abortion for a nonviable pregnancy that her doctors said was life-threatening.

The PAC's leader, former Under Secretary of the Air Force Gina Ortiz Jones, expressed optimism in the wake of Biden's poor performance, citing Trump's abortion comments.

“Last night, we saw why Texans should be alarmed, motivated, and optimistic about ousting Texas Supreme Court Justices Jimmy Blacklock, John Devine, and Jane Bland,” Jones said in a statement. “Trump brags about eliminating Roe, but these justices are more extreme. They've shown that medical exceptions can exist on paper, but not in reality.”

Nothing new

Though Texas is a national priority for U.S. House and Senate races this cycle, the Biden campaign has not put much focus into flipping the state. Texas voted for Trump by 5.6 points in 2020, and Biden remains deeply unpopular in the state.

Espinoza, the Democratic strategist, said the lack of national investment — and the possibility of an unpopular president dragging down the rest of the ticket — is nothing new for Texas Democrats.

“It's not like ​​there have been a ton of coattails to ride in years past,” he said.

Gonzalez said he expected to overcome GOP attacks by touting his record over four terms in Congress.

“The problem with [Republicans'] strategy is people in my district know me well, and tie me to $9 Billion dollars in Federal funding I've delivered, funding that has created jobs and is transforming South Texas infrastructure, healthcare & education,” Gonzalez said in a text message. “And they tie [Flores] to the fact that she was a 5 month special election fluke that embarrassed South Texans by not offering a single bill or proposal that would improve lives and not delivering a single dollar in resources during her short tenure.”

The collective Democratic panic has led to questions about whether Biden should remain at the top of the ticket. On his podcast Friday, Cruz, who characterized Biden's performance as an “old man on his front porch screaming get off my front porch,” theorized former First Lady Michelle Obama could be tapped in a last minute salve for the Democrats.

The party still hasn't officially named its nominee. If Biden does step down, party delegates would determine their pick at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

Biden, who said he had a sore throat during the debate, attempted to assuage concerns at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Friday. Appearing considerably more alert and using a more forceful tone than during the debate, Biden said he would not be running unless he firmly believed himself capable of the job.

“I don't walk as easily as I used to. I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth,” Biden said to the crowd. “When you get knocked down, you get back up.”

Disclosure: Progress Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!