Thrust into the spotlight by a school shooting, Uvalde’s former mayor finds his footing as a lawmaker

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Don McLaughlin wasn’t supposed to be mayor of Uvalde during the town’s darkest hour.

When he was first elected in 2014, the small city of 15,000 limited mayors to three two-year terms. As he was set to leave politics in 2019, McLaughlin asked the city council to change the city charter so that mayors could serve four-year terms just as members of the council did.

They agreed and the city’s residents voted to let McLaughlin run for the inaugural four-year term. In 2020, McLaughlin won that election with nearly 60% of the vote after leading the city through the COVID-19 pandemic.

That final term, McLaughlin would face the toughest challenges of his political career: on May 24, 2022, a gunman with a semiautomatic rifle barricaded himself in a classroom at Robb Elementary and killed 19 students and two teachers as hundreds of police waited outside the doors. The massacre would change Uvalde forever, adding it to the list of cities devastated by mass shootings.

It would also change the trajectory of McLaughlin’s political life. Two years later, he would launch a bid to represent Uvalde in the statehouse where he has promised to keep fighting for accountability for the botched law enforcement response to the shooting. One of his first bills at the Legislature is aimed at addressing many of the law enforcement shortcomings of that day which he has dubbed the “Uvalde Strong Act.”

Conspicuously absent from the freshman Republican’s solutions is any type of gun control legislation. Unlike his predecessor, Democratic state Rep. Tracy King, McLaughlin does not support a proposal to raise the legal age from 18 to 21 for purchasing, leasing or renting a semi-automatic rifle like the one used in the shooting. The Uvalde gunman was 18 at the time of the assault and had just purchased the gun he used. The proposal is supported by families of some of the victims.

“If all we want to do is raise the age, that's not going to solve the problem,” said McLaughlin, who said he favors an approach that focuses on addressing mental health and depictions of violence in movies and video games.

McLaughlin said he’s willing to sit down with those who have opposing views on issues to hash out a compromise, a tactic he said worked well for him as mayor. But reaching that kind of consensus will be a lot more difficult in an increasingly polarized Legislature.

Those close to him say McLaughlin will be a loyal advocate for causes he believes in and a fierce and vocal adversary to those he opposes — a characteristic that by McLaughlin’s own admission could get him in trouble with powerful players in Austin.

“If you ask him a question you’re going to get a direct answer, he will most likely tell you exactly what he thinks,” said John Yeackle, a one-time political opponent and friend of McLaughlin’s. “How popular that will make him? We’ll find out. But I can assure you he’s not going to change. The institution will not change him.”

Political beginnings

McLaughlin was born in Austin, the son of Don McLaughlin Sr., a former University of Texas football player, and Barbara Ann Neal, a Miss Travis County winner, who tied the knot six days after their first date.

The young family moved to Uvalde when McLaughlin was a toddler. His father coached football and started working in the pipe business. The younger McLaughlin spent his entire childhood in Uvalde before going to Texas State University and then San Angelo State University for college. He returned home to work with his dad before graduating. In 2000, the father and son team opened up a family business, DKM Enterprises, now a 92-employee business that installs and removes pipes for oil and gas services and also repurposes used pipes.

Owning the business has given McLaughlin a great degree of economic freedom and allowed him to donate large sums to local causes and self-fund his initial forays into politics, steps that frequently drew criticism from opponents who were not able to match that level of spending.

McLaughlin said he was recruited to run for mayor by the Uvalde Chamber of Commerce in 2014 because they wanted the city to be more “business friendly.”

Yeackle, then a city council member, was McLaughlin’s opponent but on the campaign trail the two men found that very little separated them on the issues. By the time they were campaigning at early voting sites, the two were introducing one another to potential voters.

“He would introduce me to people and say ‘This is John Yeackle, he’s running for mayor,’ and I would do the same,” Yeackle said. “It threw people… There was no animosity that there typically had been from other races. It was atypical. Our friendship developed from there.”

McLaughlin won the race by 77 votes.

Yeackle, who now leads the chamber of commerce and serves on the Uvalde County Commissioners Court, said the two men’s interactions during the race show why McLaughlin is such a popular figure in his hometown. They don’t see eye-to-eye on everything: Yeackle describes himself as a traditional Reagan Republican while McLaughlin is more combative, even Trumpian, in his approach. But Yeackle said McLaughlin is willing to talk with those who disagree with him.

“He will meet anyone in the community to discuss a problem regardless of where they're coming from,” Yeackle said.

Combative and popular

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, said McLaughlin worked with him after the shooting to call for more transparency about the law enforcement response and to push the state to remove Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell as the overseer of a fund to help families of shooting victims after some complained they were experiencing delays and the compensation did not cover their needs.

“I won’t sit here and play partisan politics with Don McLaughlin because in that moment he met the moment as best he could and others did not,” said Gutierrez, who spent much of last session advocating for Uvalde families. “We were on the same page with the idea that we were getting zero transparency from DPS and people at the state. I know he was very helpful in trying to push for those things to happen.”

But political adversaries said McLaughlin can also be blistering in his opposition. County Commissioner Ronald Garza, a Democrat whose father ran against McLaughlin in 2020, recalls a city council meeting where McLaughlin used profanity to express his displeasure with Garza’s comments.

McLaughlin had proposed a city resolution that would authorize local police to charge people with a misdemeanor and up to a $500 fine for campaigning outside of city-designated areas at the town’s civic center. Garza argued that such enforcement was the purview of the state and its approval could trample on free speech rights.

“Nobody is denying nobody nothing, that’s a bullshit deal,” McLaughlin fired off, according to Garza and news reports.

The resolution was voted down 4-1 and McLaughlin later called him to apologize, Garza said, but it was an example of McLaughlin playing to his conservative base, which has increasingly voiced concerns about the integrity of elections.

“He plays that role of ‘I’m not gonna back down,’ ” Garza said.

McLaughlin’s pugilistic temper manifested itself in other ways during his time as mayor. When record crossings at the Mexican border led to high-speed pursuits of smugglers in Uvalde that damaged property and endangered roads, McLaughlin took to national television to blast the response of federal and state leaders.

As a frequent guest on Fox News, he called the Biden administration’s response to an influx of Haitian migrants at the border a “clown show,” said “the border is wide open” and claimed migrants had more rights than American citizens.

Even his own party was not spared. In 2021, he endorsed Gov. Greg Abbott’s opponent in the Republican primary for governor, calling Abbott a “fraud” for not doing enough to control migrant crossings in Texas.

He also used his bully pulpit to pressure VF Corporation, the Colorado-based apparel company, to reverse its decision to shut down the Dickies plant in Uvalde. After the company announced the shuttering of the plant and the relocation of its 156 jobs to Mexico and Honduras, McLaughlin wrote to President Donald Trump, Abbott and U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. Then he went on television to urge the company to reopen the factory. In the end, VF reopened the plant as a warranty fulfillment center and rehired 30 people.

Still, McLaughlin remained a relatively unknown small-town mayor.

Then, in 2022, a gunman tore through his small town’s peace.

Uvalde shooting

The Uvalde shooting gripped the nation’s attention because on top of its death toll which included small children, the law enforcement failures were laid bare almost immediately. Nearly 400 police officers waited outside as a shooter barricaded himself in conjoined classrooms with students and teachers. Videos spread on social media showing police stopping parents from entering the building to try to save their kids. And 911 calls revealed terrified teachers and students calling police for help as the gunman moved through the school.

Still, police did not confront the gunman for more than an hour.

McLaughlin has blasted the law enforcement response. His biggest criticism has been for the Department of Public Safety which had 91 troopers at the event and whose leader initially praised the actions of police. But McLaughlin has also criticized his city’s own report that “exonerated” local police officers who responded to the shooting and denounced Mitchell, the local district attorney investigating whether there were prosecutable offenses by law enforcement officers who responded to the scene, for moving too slowly.

The moment that brought him to national prominence, however, was a day after the school shooting at a news briefing when Beto O’Rourke, then a Democratic candidate for governor, interrupted the proceedings and accused Abbott and other state officials of “doing nothing” to stop mass shootings.

McLaughlin, still in a walker from having his hip replaced a week before, jabbed his finger toward O’Rourke from the stage and lit into him.

“I can’t believe you’re a sick son of a bitch that would come to a deal like this to make a political issue,” he said.

As a lawmaker, McLaughlin has made addressing the failures of the Robb Elementary shooting response a top priority. One of his first bills will require law enforcement agencies to have plans for mass shooting events and mandate exercise drills at least once a year. The bill would also provide training to local officials about best practices for sharing information with the public during mass shootings or other critical events.

But some families of the victims say they are disappointed McLaughlin will not fight for their priority gun control bill. Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was killed in the shooting, said she and other family members of victims met with McLaughlin last month to ask him to support “Raise the Age” legislation but McLaughlin did not commit to doing so. She said she would continue asking for his support.

“We really wanted a straight answer,” Mata-Rubio said. “As someone who saw first-hand what gun violence can do to a community, we would hope he would support something like this to save other Texas residents… Had this bill been law in May 2022, my child and 18 other children and two teachers would still be alive.”

McLaughlin previously expressed support for a “Raise the Age” bill and the city council had unanimously approved a resolution calling for lawmakers to pass such legislation. McLaughlin missed the meeting but told a reporter at the time: “I would support raising the age, and I’m a gun owner, but still, there’s nothing wrong with raising the age.”

Now, McLaughlin says his support for the legislation was a reactionary response. In a statement for this article, he said “someone determined to kill will not be deterred by gun laws” and the state “must focus on ensuring that when a person does gain access to a firearm, we are prepared to respond effectively.”

Setting his own course

Outside of addressing the aftermath of the shooting, McLaughlin said he wants to focus on issues important to his district like immigration and ensuring his district has enough water to maintain its agriculture-based economy.

But McLaughlin said he doesn’t want to be a rubber stamp on bills just because they’re pushed by fellow Republicans. He wants to talk to stakeholders and come to his own decision.

“I will get in trouble at some point because I’m gonna call it like I see it,” McLaughlin said. “If more people would do that, we would have a better government.”

Take the Texas GOP priority to ban cities and counties from paying lobbyists to advocate for them in Austin, the so-called ban on “taxpayer funded lobbying.” McLaughlin said there are some lobbyists who take advantage of cities but he does not support a ban.

Uvalde pays a lobbyist to track legislation in Austin, which was crucial in 2017 when the Edwards Aquifer Authority changed its rules to allow the sale or lease of water meant for farming for other uses like house development. The city of Uvalde, along with other plaintiffs, sued and temporarily blocked the rule change, which is still under litigation.

Had the rule change been allowed, McLaughlin said, it would have devastated Uvalde’s farming and economy.

The lobbyist is “watching things that may affect not only the city, but the county and our region,” McLaughlin said. “Do I think it’s wrong to spend money on that? I don’t.”

McLaughlin also said he’s watching the school vouchers proposal – Abbott’s priority legislation – very closely because he wants to make sure his local school districts aren’t hurt.

“I'm not opposed to school choice,” he said, “however, I'm not gonna pass something, I'm not gonna vote for something, if it's gonna gut my public school systems.”

Still, McLaughlin signed on as a co-author of the school voucher bill and supports a related bill to increase funding for public schools. Abbott endorsed him in a contested primary last year, emphasizing that he would be a fighter for expanded “school choice,” the governor’s preferred terms for his voucher-like legislation.

Critics said that cuts against McLaughlin’s self-styling as his own man. They say he is ignoring the needs of his community for partisanship.

“He has an open door policy,” Garza, the county commissioner, said, “but on the two issues of gun reform and school vouchers it’s a flat out ‘No.’ He got on the Abbott bandwagon and he’s gonna ride it out.”

The former mayor is unbothered by the criticism. He knows he’ll have to take tough votes and sometimes anger constituents as well as political allies. He hopes it won’t lead him to be a “one-term wonder” but he said it won’t affect how he plans to vote.

He steels himself for criticism by thinking back to a lesson an old minister taught him about hiding a skunk under a table.

“It’s better to throw it on the table and deal with it,” McLaughlin said, “because if you stick it under the table it ain’t going to go away.”

Disclosure: Edwards Aquifer Authority 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.

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