Shelley Luther, the Dallas Salon owner who gained national attention when she was jailed for reopening Salon A La Mode in defiance of lockdown orders, is now a member-elect of the Texas House of Representatives, representing District 62.
Luther will assume office on January 14, 2025.
The Dallas Express was at her watch party in Dennison on November 5, asking Luther how victory felt.
“It feels pretty awesome,” Luther said. “It’s been a long, heavy, hard road, and it’s a little bit surreal right now. I think when I wake up tomorrow and think about it, it’s going to be, you know, kind of sink in.”
The ‘long road’ began with Luther being jailed.
“I got thrown in jail for three days. It was actually seven days, but I got out in three,” Luther said. The Texas Supreme Court intervened and freed the business owner on a technicality in 2020.
Luther participated in a bid for Texas State Senate District 30, where Drew Springer defeated her in the special general runoff election on December 19, 2020.
In 2022, Luther ran for Texas Senate, where she lost to State Rep. Reggie Smith in the Republican primary for District 62.
“Lost that by like 17 points. Major failure,” Luther said.
Subsequently, she and her husband, Tim Georgeff, withdrew from politics.
“Then, April 4 of 2023, I had that major brain aneurysm and honestly should have died,” she reflected. Luther suffered several strokes, and according to the North Texan, on several occasions, it appeared she would not make it.
“And after walking out of that hospital, after being in ICU for about a month, God was just telling me, I’m still protecting you. You’re gonna run one more time,” said Luther.
And so she did, bucking traditional political wisdom that suggests rematches and challenges to incumbents usually fail.
Luther challenged Smith to a rematch in the 2024 Republican primary, where she defeated the incumbent for Texas House of Representatives District 62.
Luther credits the shift in her favor to Texas Att. Gen. Ken Paxton, telling DX that Smith’s vote to impeach Paxton outraged voters in her district.
Paxton came to the district to campaign. Luther explained, “When a big name like that comes out, people will start paying attention.”
Luther noted that voters began reconsidering her arguments about Smith’s voting record. “You know he is saying one thing to you and then going to Austin and doing another,” she recalls telling voters.
School choice was another major electoral factor that Luther identified.
Luther previously worked as a Spanish teacher and softball coach for 13 years in several school districts across the state. She says she understands the problems in the schools, and “we want to fix the problems that are in the [public] schools but also make sure that kids in urban areas get what they need to go to a good education.”
In a previous exchange, Luther had told DX that Texas was at “war” because of the number of illegal crossings, including violent altercations with border agents, at the Southern Border.
DX asked what she sees happening on the border in the next state legislative session, what her current position is, and if she stands by her earlier statement.
“I do,” Luther responded.
“I think we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what has been let into our state as far as the drugs, the sex trafficking, and all of those things,” Luther said, adding, “We’ve got to close our border, and we need to close off any incentives to come to our state.”
She followed up with specifics for how this could be achieved, focusing on cutting off support for those who had entered the state through unlawful means.
“We’re giving out all of this Medicaid, phones, money [to illegal aliens]; if we cut that off, they’ll stop coming to Texas. It’s very simple,” she explained.
DX spoke to Grayson County Republican Party Vice Chair Sara Buskirk about Luther’s race and others in the state.
After Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz’s decisive victory over Democrat challenger Collin Alred in what became the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history, DX asked Buskirk for her thoughts on what this outcome revealed about the biased news media’s inability to deliver Texas to a Democrat.
“I still think the media is leaning in the wrong direction,” she said. “They are projecting something onto Texas that is not a reality.”
Buskirk served a red velvet cake to celebrate Luther’s victory, and the crowd cheered as the results from Luther’s race and others came in.
Luther won with 77% of the vote, and Cruz won with 53%.
Luther’s full comments can be heard on the Cowtown Caller podcast.