One may surprise how Adrienne Quinn Martin, a hairdresser, former stomach dancer, mom of two and long-ago model woman for a liquor distributor, a girl who celebrated her husband’s birthday on TikTok by swaying towards him whereas listening to Al Inexperienced, grew to become the lone-elected Democrat in one of many reddest cities in Texas.
“Oh,” Martin says, “I’ve had lives.”
Fluent in social media, she is an array of personas: a tough to quantify free-spirit, who in a single prompt can supply style ideas (“I’m having a Britney second”) and, in one other, analyze voter registration knowledge. She is a fierce political operative, a guileless influencer and a relentless voice towards the far proper on this Christian, white, cattle-talking city of about 12,600.
Martin washes Rose Simpson’s hair at 4 13 Salon in Granbury, Texas.
“Wait,” she mentioned, when requested to name up a Twitter submit a few constable who as soon as had ties to the militant Proud Boys. “I’ve that.”
Click on, scroll, click on.
“Right here it’s,” she mentioned. “I’ve, like, 33,000 screenshots.”
She smiled and swiped by means of extra pictures on her telephone.
To the dismay of many right here, Martin helped arrange a Black Lives Matter protest and welcomed drag queens to city for an HBO collection. She brought on a stir two years in the past when she attended a gathering of the Granbury Unbiased College Board and condemned conservatives who “rant and rave” about banning books on sexuality and LGBTQ+ themes. Her subsequent video submit has been considered hundreds of thousands of occasions.
As soon as underestimated by her enemies, Martin, a self-appointed watchdog tuned into the plots and gamers in a small, gossipy group, has discovered that her message is radiating past the fields and steeples of Hood County.
“I get livid about an injustice that occurs to another person,” mentioned Martin, 46. “It’s a form of a curse, to be sincere.”
Martin, proper, speaks throughout a Texas Democratic Ladies of Hood County assembly at Spring Creek Barbecue in Granbury.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Instances)
::
Martin was born and raised in Texas. She is intimate with its maps and vernaculars, and the best way summer time settles laborious on the north-central plains alongside the Brazos River south of Horseshoe Bend close to Granbury. However even a provocateur with polished nails and the perfect intentions — “I need to make this city a extra pleasant and inclusive place” — has to navigate the fissures and divisions in a time of cultural unease, spiritual fervor and battles over the nation’s identification.
She marshals the attract and immediacy of Instagram and TikTok with ease. She usually seems in movies sporting huge earrings, blond hair brushed to the facet and falling lengthy, inviting her followers into the confidences of a politically astute beautician. She presents recommendation on cropped-flair denims, secrets and techniques about evangelical wives who hate their husbands, and warnings towards the antiabortion motion. Her following — 50,000 on TikTok, 11,000 on X and 4,169 on Instagram — just isn’t big, however she is aware of the again roads and the fairways and has a widening diploma of affect.
Nightfall over the Brazos River in Granbury, Texas. “I need to make this city a extra pleasant and inclusive place,” Martin says.
“You possibly can change society when you’ve got a message, even when you’re a part of a small group. However it’s a must to watch your politics. Watch what you say,” mentioned Martin, the elected chair of the Democratic Social gathering of Hood County, who as soon as described herself on X as a “Regionally hated/Dyslexic Hairstylist.”
“That is Texas,” she aded. “Everyone is armed, so there’s all the time that in your thoughts. We now have kin we’ve got conflicts with. Friendships have ended. ‘Oh,’ folks will say, ‘She’s that Democrat bitch.’ My husband will get anxious once I go locations.”
“I assist all the things Adrienne does,” mentioned her husband, a local of Granbury who requested to not be named. The couple met greater than 18 years in the past on MySpace. “My head’s on a swivel each time she goes out. I’m wanting right here, wanting there, to guard her. You by no means know when somebody will do one thing silly.”
Martin has two kids, six cats and a canine. She drives round in a golf cart to neighborhood storage gross sales. Her playlist ranges from Elvis to the Beastie Boys. Her social media posts, even people who nod to style and equipment, are genuine takes on life by a girl who’s without delay unabashed and earnest, a progressive who understands her gravity within the scheme of issues. She hopes her 14-year-old son makes the basketball workforce and has posted angrily a few girl abandoning cats in a car parking zone.
“I’ve all the things in my telephone,” she mentioned the opposite day over espresso whereas scrolling for the city’s newest transgression, sitting in a restaurant the place eyes take discover when she enters. Even amid political furies, Martin, who seems to be like she stepped off the set of “The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills,” seems extra amused than startled, talking within the low, accented voice of a girl paging by means of a household scrapbook, mentioning histories and disappointments. “It’s wonderful what I’ve been capable of get away with.”
Martin made the information after her Instagram posts on Texas’ complicated voter registration course of went viral.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Instances)
Martin grew to become energetic in politics years in the past when a member of the family was denied medical insurance coverage for a pre-existing situation. Many right here see her because the embodiment of an America present process a cultural shift that threatens the heritage and political sensibilities of an outdated frontier city disquieted by altering occasions and suspicious of different existence. A confidant to her homosexual mates since highschool, Martin began Granbury for All, an LGBTQ+ assist group that has about 300 members.
When even probably the most hardened political observers have gotten jaded, Martin, who does have her cynical days, is fascinated by the intricacies of energy. She’s turn into an skilled on the maneuverings within the state capitol, and he or she made the TV information in Austin just lately after her Instagram posts on Texas’ complicated voter registration course of went viral. Martin criticized the Texas secretary of state’s workplace, which steered that potential voters who had stuffed out an digital type and hit submit have been efficiently registered. They weren’t. The shape needed to be printed and mailed right into a registrar’s workplace.
“This can be a voter suppression trick,” Martin posted on Instagram, noting that Republican lawmakers have lengthy opposed on-line registration. Days later, the state up to date its web site to make the method clearer. It was a uncommon win and Martin was ecstatic. She posted a follow-up video, saying, “Oh, my God have a look at this. . .Victory.”
Austin Odgers fishes together with his sons Liam, 3, and Wyatt, 6, proper, in Granbury.
A lot of Martin’s furor has been directed on the Granbury Unbiased College District, which was investigated by the U.S. Division of Training after it eliminated LGBTQ+-themed books from its cabinets. The board had focused greater than 100 books to be purged however solely about eight have been eradicated. Martin criticized Christian right-wing residents, a few of whom haven’t any kids at school, for pressuring the district to restrict entry to gender and racial matters. At a 2023 faculty board assembly, she used the phrase “bizarre” to explain MAGA Republicans earlier than vice presidential candidate Tim Walz turned it right into a meme.
“Some group members have developed an unhealthy obsession with guide banning,” she mentioned on the assembly, suggesting that these calling for bans needed to “show [their] righteousness in order that [they] can convey down the college district. Is that for the youngsters? Why the obsession with discovering these books? Why is that your fantasy? It’s bizarre.”
::
Martin grew up within the Dallas suburb of Grand Prairie. The daughter of a enterprise supervisor and a trainer, she has been a stomach dancer at a hookah bar and a “promo-girl” for a liquor distributor. She moved to Los Angeles when she was 18 to check on the Joe Blasco Make-up Artist Coaching Heart. She returned to Texas months later and labored on TV commercials and impartial films earlier than shifting to Granbury, which she describes as “a bit place” with a racist tinge (”the N-word is rampant”) the place the far-right Republicans have turn into “chaos brokers. Deconstructionists. They’re so friggin detrimental it’s exhausting.”
Conservatives both get riled by Martin or pay her no thoughts. She is harassed on-line. She’s been referred to as a “whore” and a groomer; somebody threatened to burn down her home. Steve Biggers, former chair of the Hood County Republican Social gathering, mentioned, “God bless Adrienne, though we disagree on nearly all the things.” One other former Republican official mentioned: “She might be very radical, however she’s in such an unlimited minority that folks ignore her.”
“Republicans don’t like Adrienne in any respect. She will get of their face,” mentioned Sherry Johnson, a retired trainer and president of the Texas Democratic Ladies of Hood County, which has about 70 members. “Adrienne has come into her personal. She’s a drive that received Democrats concerned once more. I keep in mind when she grew to become social gathering chair. She was a younger girl. Inexperienced. She was nervous about public talking. That’s all modified. She’s a rock star.”
Linda Peacock checks in for a Texas Democratic Ladies of Hood County assembly in Granbury.
A vastly outnumbered Democrat, whose progressiveness confounds even some in her personal social gathering, Martin retains her gaze on the infighting between far-right and conventional Republicans. Her telephone usually glows with backbiting messages from Republican factions going after each other, notably in a current intraparty skirmish over the appointment of a district clerk, which led to name-calling and a lawsuit. She follows the social media pages of each wings and infrequently helps conventional Republicans in key races.
“It’s more practical for Democrats and average Republicans to work collectively,” mentioned Martin, who just lately attended a neighborhood marketing campaign kickoff for conventional Republican candidates, together with a faculty board member who betrayed the far-right by opposing wide-scale guide banning. “That is Granbury. It’s important to take a small win over nothing in any respect. The far-right wins on low-information voters. Identical to Trump.”
Martin carries Harris-Walz indicators for others to submit.
Her adopted house has a rural appeal with a well-swept downtown visited on weekends by folks from Dallas and Fort Value. Granbury, which is overwhelmingly white, has turn into a well-liked retirement group with gated neighborhoods and second properties on the lake. It’s the seat of Hood County, the place rodeos and “cowboy tourism” are fashionable and preachers conflate Bible parables and politics. Jesus and Trump — who carried the county by 81% of the vote in 2020 — are sometimes spoken in the identical breath.
The city has a reverence for the previous and a fascination for the marginally odd, together with a museum with greater than 6,000 dolls relationship again to 1868. Banners with images of veterans and useless troopers peer over sidewalks and legend has it that Jesse James lived right here in an age of stagecoaches and outlaws. A frontier perspective brims amongst older people, a few of whose grandchildren are homeschooled and whose enmity towards the federal government runs deep. Many right here need to preserve Granbury because it was, as if nostalgia, each actual and invented, lay declare to the longer term.
“It was as soon as a small city and now it’s one of many quickest rising counties within the U.S.,” mentioned Jim Cato, who works with Martin on Granbury for All. In 2015, he and his accomplice have been denied a license for a same-sex marriage by an ultraconservative county clerk, leading to a lawsuit and settlement that finally granted the license. “The Hispanic inhabitants is growing. Individuals listed here are threatened by anybody who just isn’t white, straight and Christian,” mentioned Cato, including, “range is coming.”
The solar units behind a set of three crosses outdoors a church in Granbury.
Martin challenged that sensibility two years in the past. On July 4, the identical week her Democratic Social gathering parade float was adorned with rainbow banners, which acquired boos and jeers from some, the solid from the HBO drag queen collection “We’re Right here” appeared on the town. The collection is a gender-fluid travelog that visits American communities and phases drag reveals. It landed in Granbury after the college district made nationwide information over guide banning.
A lot of the city’s response was predictable: “Huge metropolis evil has been slithering into Granbury,” mentioned one submit on social media. Martin noticed a possibility to coach. Her politics and assist of the LGBTQ+ group led to her being featured on the present, together with the drag queen efficiency by which she dressed like Barbie and slipped on a plumed-out pink wig. She was in tears on the finish. In a city much less accepting than many, she had stood with these on the edges and located, for a second, whereas her husband clapped, {couples} danced and a disco ball glittered, righteous exhilaration in a billiard corridor.
Martin takes a break on the 4 13 Salon in Granbury.
“Issues like racism and transphobia piss me off,” mentioned Martin, who has a biracial nephew. “My mother mentioned I used to be all the time like that. I didn’t go to varsity and it took me awhile — years — to construct up confidence. However you don’t should be educated to get folks to take heed to you. I adopted a necessity. I began considering, ‘I’m good at this. I will help folks.’ ” She added: “I do know I’m privileged too. I’m a white, blond mother.”
That comes with its personal liabilities. She mentioned she has grown accustomed to sexism, together with from males in her personal social gathering, certainly one of whom refused to provide her a key to the Democrats’ headquarters. A joke about oral intercourse was as soon as informed in her firm by a fellow social gathering member. Males have critiqued her movies on manufacturing and grammar, and one social gathering man determined to put in writing a newspaper column for her, believing she wasn’t as much as the duty. She turned him down and composed her personal. “It was impacting how I did my job initially,” she mentioned. “Now, it’s only a nuisance.”
The county, she mentioned, might be confounding. She drove the curved street the opposite day to the DeCordova Bend Nation Membership, which overlooks Lake Granbury. The air was calm and boats glimmered far off. “Individuals assume we’re ass-backward rednecks, however that’s not true,” mentioned Martin, who ordered a salad and kissed her husband earlier than his spherical of golf. “There’s good folks right here.” She added, although, that conservative agendas just like the county clerk denying a wedding license to a homosexual couple in 2015, “begin in Granbury after which unfold.”
She regarded throughout the eating room. Huge home windows shone within the midday gentle. Just a few males in from the fairways drank beer at a close-by desk. Her telephone hummed with messages. She has discovered when to reply and when not; she is aware of the eccentricities and calibrations at play. “Two extremist candidates for the college board misplaced within the final election,” she mentioned. “The Democrats helped make that occur by becoming a member of with the average Republicans for a typical trigger. That’s a win, regardless of whether or not we’re in energy or not. I just like the struggle. It will get me passionate.”
Adrienne Martin, left, recites the Pledge of Allegiance.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Instances)
Martin doesn’t thoughts silences, the place a look will usually reveal extra about an individual’s politics than a raft of chatter, however she’s busy and likes to maintain issues shifting. She recalled the latest Fourth of July city parade when she waved from the Democrats’ float. She watched the cheerleaders and the veterans, the posse of sheriff’s deputies and the firetrucks, the passing faces within the crowd. A child stood amongst them. The child didn’t clap or yell, however she noticed a shudder of recognition throughout his face, a slight smile of solidarity for LGBTQ+ rights, maybe, she mentioned, on the street to a city’s acceptance.
