LUBBOCK — Thirty years ago, Suzanne Bellsnyder was a budding young Republican working in Austin, far from her home in the Texas Panhandle. She was on a mission to push Republicans — the likes of John Cornyn and Greg Abbott — into power.
Now, she’s returned to the Panhandle and is a known hellraiser for the same Republicans she helped elect. Her new mission is simple: advocate for better lives and treatment of rural Texans.
“They want our resources, but they don’t care about our people,” said Bellsnyder, who now publishes two rural newspapers and writes a regular newsletter about rural issues on Substack. “It’s up to us to step up and ask for equal resources now.”
For Bellsnyder, it’s personal. The Panhandle is her heritage, and she’s willing to fight for the region and other rural areas.
Bellsnyder’s advocacy — which harkens to a bygone era of sentry newspaper publishers defending their communities — couldn’t have come at a more crucial time for rural Texas. The small, quiet communities throughout the state face several existential threats, including population declines, a dearth of resources in a rapidly urbanizing world, and an unshakeable feeling that state and federal leaders take their votes for granted.
“Hearing from people who live and work in rural Texas is so important,” said Kelty Garbee, executive director of Texas Rural Funders, an organization that works to improve the lives of rural Texans. “When rural people aren’t at the table, decisions are made about them instead of with them.”
In the heat of these battles, Bellsnyder has become one of the loudest voices for the far-flung areas of Texas. As the Texas Legislature debated school vouchers last year — something public school advocates said would harm rural communities — Bellsnyder was a consistent voice on social media. Some days she informed people about how it could be the end of public education, and other days she argued with prominent Republicans, including Abbott. She never hesitated to say Austin-based Republicans didn’t know a thing about rural Texas.
“Abbott has adopted East Coast Bullshit. This is not the Texas Way,” Bellnsyder posted on X, referring to the governor’s push for private school vouchers.
Abbott shot back, suggesting Bellysnyder focus on “reporting the facts.”
Abbott’s office did not respond to a request to comment on the governor’s interactions with Bellsynyder.
Bellsnyder hasn’t felt any direct consequences from speaking out against Abbott — yet. Even if she did, it wouldn’t stop her.
“If you’re being criticized by someone who used to believe in you, then maybe you’ve changed,” Bellsnyder said of Abbott.
But many of her takes get her labeled as a RINO, or a Republican in Name Only, by other online conservatives. Bellsnyder insists she isn’t. She calls herself a Republican loyalist, baffled by how powerful conservatives have no interest in understanding her stance.
“It’s considered to be an apostasy,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “It’s expected that there’s dissent in these parties, you just don’t always hear about it because it tends to be a liability for people who want to work in politics.”
Staying quiet while rural communities get the short end of the stick is not an option.
“It’s frustrating to watch us sit and feel like we don’t have a voice anymore, like we’re just supposed to do what our elected officials say is best,” Bellsnyder said, adding that Abbott’s never been to her county. “So how can he say I don’t know what I’m talking about?”
Rural Texas is more than a talking point for Bellsnyder. Her family has lived in Hansford County, about 95 miles northwest of Amarillo on the Texas-Oklahoma border, for 100 years. She admits she sometimes wonders why she left Austin, which feels like the right spot for a self-proclaimed political junkie.
However, Spearman is home.
“I think God has given me experiences and exposed me to things that I needed to know, then brought me back here,” Bellsnyder said. “So I could be a credible voice, both for the people living in rural Texas and for people making policies about rural Texas.”
After 12 years of working at the Capitol, Bellsnyder moved back to the Panhandle in 2014. Her dad was in poor health, and she wanted to raise her daughter close to family. She says she retired from politics, but ultimately found herself working in economic development and, before long, was the city manager.
Then an opportunity came that would give Bellsnyder a new career, one that she calls accidental, as a journalist. The Reporter-Statesman, the Hansford County newspaper, was going to shut down in 2022. It would have added to the growing number of news deserts across the U.S. — 225 counties do not have a local newspaper. The problem is especially prevalent in rural Texas, where 21 counties go without a newspaper.
Bellsnyder ended up taking it. Eventually, she acquired her second newspaper in a nearby county, the Sherman County Gazette, in 2024.
She did this as the Canadian Record, a storied newspaper in nearby Hemphill County, closed. Bellsnyder felt it was important to keep the communities informed on what local governments were doing, and said newspapers write the history books for their communities.
Bellsnyder jokes that she’s trying to build a rural Texas media empire.
“But maybe that’s the goal,” she said.
A journalism novice, Bellysnyder has turned to others in the region for guidance when she feels in over her head, including The Record’s publisher Laurie Ezzell Brown and Tara Huff, the publisher for Fritch’s Eagle Press. Bellsnyder isn’t making money from her newspaper ventures yet. She’s breaking even, which she says she expected when she took them on.
While her newspapers are focused on facts and record-keeping, her Substack, the Texas Rural Reporter, is where opinions fly. She has around 3,000 followers on her Substack, which might seem small to some. But it’s quality over quantity, Bellysnyder said.
“I’m putting the message in the right ears, the people who have the ability to make some of the changes or at least understand the perspective,” Bellsnyder said.
That’s what she says is missing from policy decisions now. Bellsnyder said Texas policies are not favorable to rural communities. There’s a disconnect between elected officials and rural Texas, along with the deteriorating conditions that plague them, Bellsnyder said.
“I wish Gov. Abbott would not fly across the state and actually drive,” Bellsnyder said. “I hope these other candidates that are running for office are driving through the towns and on these roads the same way I am, because I think they would have a completely different view of what Texas is struggling with.”
For so many years, Bellsnyder considered herself retired from politics. Then she saw a shift in Austin. The idea that billionaires control everything in politics is largely seen as a Democrat talking point, but Bellsnyder buys the argument. She describes it as an “us versus them” dynamic — the people versus the big checkbooks.
Bellsnyder believes Republican leaders are now more interested in listening to the demands of their billionaire donors than voters.
“You can’t run a Texas House race for less than a million dollars,” Bellsnyder said. “Something is messed up about that system because it takes people out of the mix.”
The private school voucher debate proved her point, she said.
Abbott, who is running for reelection, has one of the largest campaign war chests in the history of Texas. One reason is Jeff Yass, a GOP megadonor from Pennsylvania who championed private school voucher programs. He alone gave Abbott a $6 million donation in 2023.
A voucher program quickly became Abbott’s top priority. He called four special legislative sessions in 2023 to pass a voucher bill. He was blocked each time by a coalition of rural Republican lawmakers who wouldn’t vote for it.
Abbott and other supporters of private school vouchers argued that the program empowers families to select the best education option for their children. They also argued the program would inspire public schools to compete for students and lead to better performance.
Yass kicked in another $4 million to boost the governor’s mission to oust the Republicans who opposed the program. Abbott was successful in replacing most of those members.
After some negotiating during the 2025 legislative session, the bill finally passed on an 86-61 vote. The Legislature also passed a separate bill that increases funding for public schools by nearly $8.5 billion. Abbott signed the bills into law, calling it a victory for families.
Bellsnyder consistently argued against the program on social media throughout the session. She says the few rural lawmakers left in the Legislature had to vote for the bill, whether they wanted to or not. There’s nothing conservative about the bill, she said, as it creates a new program that uses one-time money. She called it a violation of conservative fiscal policies.
She likened it to SNAP benefits, saying Republicans don’t want to give food stamps, but they do want to give “education stamps” that don’t go to the people who need them.
“I know the difference between marketing an issue and the realities of an issue, and vouchers are one that the Republican Party sold out and bought into the marketing of,” Bellsnyder said. “They didn’t really think about the impact it would have on its most loyal communities, which is red, rural Texas.”
Rural lawmakers secured some safeguards for rural communities in the final bill, Bellsnyder said. They didn’t win the war, but she said they were able to protect rural Texas the best they could.
“That’s what the legislative process is all about, right? It’s messy and ugly, and it is what it is,” Bellsnyder said.
The voucher battle may be a loss for Bellsnyder, but her mission to protect rural Texas is far from over. Bellsnyder is expanding her efforts to include a self-guided tour of rural Texas and building a new coalition of newspaper publishers in small towns.
This month alone, she has written about how rural roads are failing and being ignored by lawmakers, and how data center developers are treating rural Texas like the next land rush. She breathes rural Texas, but wants to know more. She started a Dirt Road Tour where she travels across the state to small town after small town.
Rottinghaus, the political science professor, said Bellsnyder does a public service by talking about rural policies in a way that makes people in big, urban areas understand more.
“It’s useful to understand those things that otherwise, you’d have to learn about in a poll or go and visit,” Rottinghaus said. “It’s a great way for these sort of voices to be heard beyond the places where they exist.”
Last year, Bellsnyder started the Grama Institute of Texas. The name comes from grama grass, a resilient prairie grass native to West Texas. If it burns, it’s able to grow back quickly. Bellsnyder said it represents who the people in the High Plains are.
The organization focuses on being a resource for rural Texas through rural media content, building a network of rural newspaper editors, and doing community engagement. It would also build a policy agenda for rural communities throughout the state. She calls the idea “dirt democracy.”
And, as elected officials shift priorities, the need for a policy agenda specifically for rural Texas becomes clearer. Garbee, with Texas Rural Funders, said the organization believes rural and urban are interconnected, and that a strong state requires both communities to be healthy.
“Sometimes our decisions about policies or funding or programs don’t acknowledge this, which creates winners and losers,” Garbee said. “So we do think it’s important to keep rural perspectives and experiences included in the conversation.”
The goal for the institute, which Bellsnyder calls “GRIT” for short, is to get rural Texas more informed and engaged about what is happening. The board is composed of people she met through her Substack.
“Rural Texans are an endangered species in Austin,” Bellsnyder said. “We have to fortify ourselves against what potentially could come our way. We’re not going to have legislators with the power to protect rural Texas in the way we have in the past.”
Disclosure: The Texas Rural Funders and the University of Houston 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.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.