At Fuel City in Dallas, a 24/7 gas-station-and-taco-stand where taxidermy deer guard the entrance, cashier Alina Cardenas watches Texans fill up $10 or $20 at a time instead of topping off their tanks. Cardenas, 19, a radiology student, has cut her own driving to work-and-school only. She says high gas prices have "probably made me go more Democrat." She plans to vote for James Talarico, the state representative trying to become Texas's first Democratic senator in over 30 years. The numbers tell the story plainly. A gallon of gas in Texas now averages $3.68, up from $2.59 a year ago — a 42% jump. Diesel, the lifeblood of the rigs and tanker trucks that move Texan oil, has surged more than 80%, from $3.18 to $5.79. Texas still pays less than the national average, but the year-over-year shock is what voters feel. "Texans are feeling the pain just like everyone else," says Tom Seng, a professor of energy finances at Texas Christian University. The political stakes are concrete. Talarico faces Republican Ken Paxton, a scandal-plagued former state attorney general, in a midterm Senate race where recent polling gives the Democrat a slight edge. The war in Iran has driven global energy costs up, and in a state where commuters can spend six hours a day on the road, the price on the gas station sign is the last thing voters see before they walk into the polling place. Seng makes this point explicitly: people aren't checking their electric bill Tuesday morning, but they are watching the pump. The extraction dynamic is unusually visible here. Trump stood in front of a Venezuelan oil tanker in Corpus Christi to celebrate the arrival of the first million barrels from his deal, calling it "the greatest oil victory in history." At a Georgia rally, he boasted that higher gas prices are bringing "hundreds of billions of dollars" to American gas companies — two of the largest, Exxon and Chevron, are headquartered in Texas. "We're making a frickin' fortune," he told the crowd. The beneficiaries are named; the cost-bearers are the people at the pump. The ground-level testimony is damning. Tom L, 40, a data analyst who voted for Trump in 2024, now spends $400 a month on gas — double last year — and says he's "not sure if that was the right decision." Diamond M, a warehouse worker, estimates gas now takes 20% of her take-home pay; she fills up on payday and stretches it all week. Kobe Montgomery, a security guard who moonlights delivering for UberEats and Domino's, says he has no choice but to fill up whenever needed — "It beats walking" — but won't vote at all, afraid of picking the wrong person. What's structurally interesting is the split between state-level wealth and household-level pain. Texas is a top oil producer, and high crude prices do enrich the state's corporate base and tax revenues. But the benefits flow to Exxon, Chevron, and the upstream industry, while the costs land on commuters, gig workers, and warehouse employees who have no public transit alternative. The classic resource-curse pattern — extraction wealth that doesn't reach the extractors — is playing out inside American borders. Whether Talarico wins or not, the signal is clear: voters in the heart of oil country are not persuaded that high energy prices are a national victory when the fortune is being made by corporations and the bill is being paid at the pump. The political question is whether this frustration converts into a durable realignment in Texas or dissipates once prices stabilize.
