From the San Antonio Report:
Of the many candidates who originally filed their intention to run for office without a party affiliation this year, only a handful managed to collect enough signatures to get their name on the November ballot.
Among them is defense attorney Jason Wolff, whose candidacy creates a three-way race to replace retiring District Attorney Joe Gonzales.
The Secretary of State’s office confirmed Friday that Wolff had successfully gathered at least 500 signatures from Bexar County voters — making him one the few candidates in all of Texas to qualify for the November ballot without the nomination of a political party.
“It was 30 days of — when I wasn’t at work — going out and being on the street or going into restaurants and going to flea markets and getting signatures,” said Wolff, who estimated he’s spent about $2,000 so far on his campaign. “I had my wife help me, and I had [a] campaign coordinator, and then I had friends and family members circulating petitions. So it was difficult.”
Another independent candidate, Roy Anthony II, qualified for the ballot to challenge Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert in Precinct 4, according to the Bexar County Elections Department, which handles the signature petitions for most local races. Calvert, a Democrat, didn’t draw a Republican challenger this year.
Meanwhile Ben Mendoza, an El Paso man who has run for local office several times, qualified for the ballot in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District, which stretches east into San Antonio. Republican Brandon Herrera and Democrat Katy Padilla Stout are raising big money for that race, after then-U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio) resigned earlier this year.
Independent and third-party candidates rarely win in November, but they frequently shape how major party candidates approach a race.
[…]
Of the 125 independents who signed up to run months ago, many said they spent real time and money campaigning — before realizing how difficult it would be to find enough signatures in the short window.
In the end, no independents qualified for the ballot in any of Texas’ statewide contests.
[…]
This year the battle for the U.S. House and Senate both run through Texas, where independent and third-party candidates could play a role in close races.
But now that the ballot is largely set, few independents, Green Party candidates or Libertarians are expected to appear in the most hard-fought races, including the San Antonio-area 35th and 23rd Congressional Districts, in which Democrats are targeting.
The Libertarian Party, which aligns more closely with conservatives, has a candidate in Texas’ 34th Congressional District, where national Republicans are spending big to target U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-McAllen).
It also has contenders in nearly all of the statewide races on the ballot in 2026, including the governor’s race and the U.S. Senate race.
The Green Party, which aligns more closely with left-leaning values, doesn’t have a candidate in U.S. Senate contest between Ken Paxton and James Talarico.
It has candidates in statewide races for comptroller, agriculture commissioner and lieutenant governor, as well as Gonzalez’s 34th Congressional District, and the 28th Congressional District, where Republicans are targeting U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo).
See here and here for some background. I don’t know if Bexar County is an outlier for its independent candidate activity – we sure don’t see anything like that here in Harris County – or if this is just an odd year. It’s hard to find a list of independent candidates anywhere. The Secretary of State’s webpage doesn’t list general election candidates anywhere – you can see a listing of who’s filed for the primaries, but nothing new since then. You can find their list of who filed a declaration of intent to run as an independent – I see my old college chum Scott Cubbler is on there, for CD38 – but not who actually followed through. As the SA Report story suggests, that number is much smaller.
Ballotpedia does provide a more comprehensive list. It’s in an interactive form so I can’t just quote from it, but it does cover all the races. Using their handy filter for the different race types, I confirmed that Ben Mendoza in CD23 was the only indie listed as “On the ballot” in any Congressional or state legislative race. However, they still have Jason Wolff in Bexar County as “Candidacy declared” and not “On the ballot”, so they may not be fully up to date just yet. Beyond that, we’re still waiting for an update in the Mike Collier lawsuit, so until then this is what we know.
UPDATE: Thanks to Souperman in the comments, whose Google-fu is stronger than mine, for finding this page of indie candidate statuses on the SOS website. I was sure something like that had to exist, I just couldn’t get there.
The SOS has a rather hidden page here (I had to google it to find it) that says the status of independent candidates – https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/laws/independent-declarations-2026.shtml
Basically, it’s only CD23 and DAs in Bexar and Hays with confirmed independent candidates.