One might wonder how Adrienne Quinn Martin, a hairdresser, former belly dancer, mother of two and long-ago brand girl for a liquor distributor, a woman who celebrated her husband’s birthday on TikTok by swaying against him while listening to Al Green, became the lone-elected Democrat in one of the reddest towns in Texas.

“Oh,” Martin says, “I’ve had lives.”

Fluent in social media, she is an array of personas: a hard to quantify free-spirit, who in one instant can offer fashion tips (“I’m having a Britney moment”) and, in another, analyze voter registration data. She is a fierce political operative, a guileless influencer and a relentless voice against the far right in this Christian, white, cattle-talking town of about 12,600.

“Wait,” she said, when asked to call up a Twitter post about a constable who once had ties to the militant Proud Boys. “I have that.”

Click, scroll, click.

“Here it is,” she said. “I have, like, 33,000 screenshots.”

She smiled and swiped through more images on her phone.

To the dismay of many here, Martin helped organize a Black Lives Matter protest and welcomed drag queens to town for an HBO series. She caused a stir two years ago when she attended a meeting of the Granbury Independent School Board and condemned conservatives who “rant and rave” about banning books on sexuality and LGBTQ+ themes. Her subsequent video post has been viewed millions of times.

Once underestimated by her enemies, Martin, a self-appointed watchdog tuned into the plots and players in a small, gossipy community, has found that her message is radiating beyond the fields and steeples of Hood County.

“I get furious about an injustice that happens to someone else,” said Martin, 46. “It’s a kind of a curse, to be honest.”

Martin, right, speaks during a Texas Democratic Women of Hood County meeting at Spring Creek Barbecue in Granbury.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

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Martin was born and raised in Texas. She is intimate with its maps and vernaculars, and the way summer settles hard on the north-central plains along the Brazos River south of Horseshoe Bend near Granbury. But even a provocateur with polished nails and the best intentions — “I want to make this town a more friendly and inclusive place” — has to navigate the fissures and divisions in a time of cultural unease, religious fervor and battles over the nation’s identity.

She marshals the allure and immediacy of Instagram and TikTok with ease. She often appears in videos wearing big earrings, blond hair brushed to the side and falling long, inviting her followers into the confidences of a politically astute beautician. She offers advice on cropped-flair jeans, secrets about evangelical wives who hate their husbands, and warnings against the antiabortion movement. Her following — 50,000 on TikTok, 11,000 on X and 4,169 on Instagram — is not huge, but she knows the back roads and the fairways and has a widening degree of influence.

Dusk over the Brazos River in Granbury, Texas. “I want to make this town a more friendly and inclusive place,” Martin says.

“You can change society if you have a message, even if you’re part of a small community. But you have to watch your politics. Watch what you say,” said Martin, the elected chair of the Democratic Party of Hood County, who once described herself on X as a “Locally hated/Dyslexic Hairstylist.”

“This is Texas,” she aded. “Everybody is armed, so there’s always that in your mind. We have relatives we have conflicts with. Friendships have ended. ‘Oh,’ people will say, ‘She’s that Democrat bitch.’ My husband gets anxious when I go places.”

“I support everything Adrienne does,” said her husband, a native of Granbury who asked not to be named. The couple met more than 18 years ago on MySpace. “My head’s on a swivel whenever she goes out. I’m looking here, looking there, to protect her. You never know when someone will do something stupid.”

Martin has two children, six cats and a dog. She drives around in a golf cart to neighborhood garage sales. Her playlist ranges from Elvis to the Beastie Boys. Her social media posts, even those that nod to fashion and accessories, are authentic takes on life by a woman who is at once unabashed and earnest, a progressive who understands her gravity in the scheme of things. She hopes her 14-year-old son makes the basketball team and has posted angrily about a woman abandoning cats in a parking lot.

“I have everything in my phone,” she said the other day over coffee while scrolling for the town’s latest transgression, sitting in a cafe where eyes take notice when she enters. Even amid political furies, Martin, who looks like she stepped off the set of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” appears more amused than startled, speaking in the low, accented voice of a woman paging through a family scrapbook, pointing out histories and disappointments. “It’s amazing what I’ve been able to get away with.”

Martin made the news after her Instagram posts on Texas’ confusing voter registration process went viral.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

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Martin became active in politics years ago when a family member was denied medical insurance for a pre-existing condition. Many here see her as the embodiment of an America undergoing a cultural shift that threatens the heritage and political sensibilities of an old frontier town disquieted by changing times and suspicious of alternative lifestyles. A confidant to her gay friends since high school, Martin started Granbury for All, an LGBTQ+ support group that has about 300 members.

When even the most hardened political observers are becoming jaded, Martin, who does have her cynical days, is fascinated by the intricacies of power. She’s become an expert on the maneuverings in the state capitol, and she made the TV news in Austin recently after her Instagram posts on Texas’ confusing voter registration process went viral. Martin criticized the Texas secretary of state’s office, which suggested that prospective voters who had filled out an electronic form and hit submit were successfully registered. They were not. The form had to be printed and mailed into a registrar’s office.

“This is a voter suppression trick,” Martin posted on Instagram, noting that Republican lawmakers have long opposed online registration. Days later, the state updated its website to make the process clearer. It was a rare win and Martin was ecstatic. She posted a follow-up video, saying, “Oh, my God look at this. . .Victory.”

Austin Odgers fishes with his sons Liam, 3, and Wyatt, 6, right, in Granbury.

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Much of Martin’s furor has been directed at the Granbury Independent School District, which was investigated by the U.S. Department of Education after it removed LGBTQ+-themed books from its shelves. The board had targeted more than 100 books to be purged but only about eight were eliminated. Martin criticized Christian right-wing residents, some of whom have no children in school, for pressuring the district to limit access to gender and racial topics. At a 2023 school board meeting, she used the word “weird” to describe MAGA Republicans before vice presidential candidate Tim Walz turned it into a meme.

“Some community members have developed an unhealthy obsession with book banning,” she said at the meeting, suggesting that those calling for bans wanted to “prove [their] righteousness so that [they] can bring down the school district. Is that for the kids? Why the obsession with finding these books? Why is that your fantasy? It’s weird.”

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Martin grew up in the Dallas suburb of Grand Prairie. The daughter of a business manager and a teacher, she has been a belly dancer at a hookah bar and a “promo-girl” for a liquor distributor. She moved to Los Angeles when she was 18 to study at the Joe Blasco Makeup Artist Training Center. She returned to Texas months later and worked on TV commercials and independent movies before moving to Granbury, which she describes as “a little place” with a racist tinge (”the N-word is rampant”) where the far-right Republicans have become “chaos agents. Deconstructionists. They’re so friggin negative it’s exhausting.”

Conservatives either get riled by Martin or pay her no mind. She is harassed online. She’s been called a “whore” and a groomer; someone threatened to burn down her house. Steve Biggers, former chair of the Hood County Republican Party, said, “God bless Adrienne, although we disagree on just about everything.” Another former Republican official said: “She can be very radical, but she’s in such a vast minority that people ignore her.”

“Republicans don’t like Adrienne at all. She gets in their face,” said Sherry Johnson, a retired teacher and president of the Texas Democratic Women of Hood County, which has about 70 members. “Adrienne has come into her own. She’s a force that got Democrats involved again. I remember when she became party chair. She was a young woman. Inexperienced. She was nervous about public speaking. That’s all changed. She’s a rock star.”

Linda Peacock checks in for a Texas Democratic Women of Hood County meeting in Granbury.

A vastly outnumbered Democrat, whose progressiveness confounds even some in her own party, Martin keeps her gaze on the infighting between far-right and traditional Republicans. Her phone often glows with backbiting messages from Republican factions going after one another, notably in a recent intraparty skirmish over the appointment of a district clerk, which led to name-calling and a lawsuit. She follows the social media pages of both wings and occasionally supports traditional Republicans in key races.

“It’s more effective for Democrats and moderate Republicans to work together,” said Martin, who recently attended a local campaign kickoff for traditional Republican candidates, including a school board member who betrayed the far-right by opposing wide-scale book banning. “This is Granbury. You have to take a small win over nothing at all. The far-right wins on low-information voters. Just like Trump.”

Martin carries Harris-Walz signs for others to post.

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Her adopted home has a rural charm with a well-swept downtown visited on weekends by people from Dallas and Fort Worth. Granbury, which is overwhelmingly white, has become a popular retirement community with gated neighborhoods and second homes on the lake. It is the seat of Hood County, where rodeos and “cowboy tourism” are popular and preachers conflate Bible parables and politics. Jesus and Trump — who carried the county by 81% of the vote in 2020 — are often spoken in the same breath.

The town has a reverence for the past and a fascination for the slightly odd, including a museum with more than 6,000 dolls dating back to 1868. Banners with photos of veterans and dead soldiers peer over sidewalks and legend has it that Jesse James lived here in an age of stagecoaches and outlaws. A frontier attitude brims among older folks, some of whose grandchildren are homeschooled and whose enmity toward the government runs deep. Many here want to keep Granbury as it was, as if nostalgia, both real and invented, lay claim to the future.

“It was once a small town and now it’s one of the fastest growing counties in the U.S.,” said Jim Cato, who works with Martin on Granbury for All. In 2015, he and his partner were denied a license for a same-sex marriage by an ultraconservative county clerk, resulting in a lawsuit and settlement that ultimately granted the license. “The Hispanic population is increasing. People here are threatened by anyone who is not white, straight and Christian,” said Cato, adding, “diversity is coming.”

The sun sets behind a set of three crosses outside a church in Granbury.

Martin challenged that sensibility two years ago. On July 4, the same week her Democratic Party parade float was decorated with rainbow banners, which received boos and jeers from some, the cast from the HBO drag queen series “We’re Here” appeared in town. The series is a gender-fluid travelog that visits American communities and stages drag shows. It landed in Granbury after the school district made national news over book banning.

Much of the town’s reaction was predictable: “Big city evil has been slithering into Granbury,” said one post on social media. Martin saw an opportunity to educate. Her politics and support of the LGBTQ+ community led to her being featured on the show, including the drag queen performance in which she dressed like Barbie and slipped on a plumed-out pink wig. She was in tears at the end. In a town less accepting than many, she had stood with those at the edges and found, for a moment, while her husband clapped, couples danced and a disco ball glittered, righteous exhilaration in a billiard hall.

Martin takes a break at the Four Thirteen Salon in Granbury.

“Things like racism and transphobia piss me off,” said Martin, who has a biracial nephew. “My mom said I was always like that. I didn’t go to college and it took me awhile — years — to build up confidence. But you don’t have to be educated to get people to listen to you. I followed a need. I started thinking, ‘I’m good at this. I can help people.’ ” She added: “I know I’m privileged too. I’m a white, blond mom.”

That comes with its own liabilities. She said she has grown accustomed to sexism, including from men in her own party, one of whom refused to give her a key to the Democrats’ headquarters. A joke about oral sex was once told in her company by a fellow party member. Men have critiqued her videos on production and grammar, and one party man decided to write a newspaper column for her, believing she wasn’t up to the task. She turned him down and composed her own. “It was impacting how I did my job at the beginning,” she said. “Now, it’s just a nuisance.”

The county, she said, can be confounding. She drove the curved road the other day to the DeCordova Bend Country Club, which overlooks Lake Granbury. The air was calm and boats glimmered far off. “People think we’re ass-backward rednecks, but that’s not true,” said Martin, who ordered a salad and kissed her husband before his round of golf. “There’s good people here.” She added, though, that conservative agendas like the county clerk denying a marriage license to a gay couple in 2015, “start in Granbury and then spread.”

She looked across the dining room. Big windows shone in the noon light. A few men in from the fairways drank beer at a nearby table. Her phone hummed with messages. She has learned when to respond and when not; she knows the eccentricities and calibrations at play. “Two extremist candidates for the school board lost in the last election,” she said. “The Democrats helped make that happen by joining with the moderate Republicans for a common cause. That’s a win, no matter whether we’re in power or not. I like the fight. It gets me passionate.”

Adrienne Martin, left, recites the Pledge of Allegiance.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Martin doesn’t mind silences, where a glance will often reveal more about a person’s politics than a raft of chatter, but she’s busy and likes to keep things moving. She recalled the most recent Fourth of July town parade when she waved from the Democrats’ float. She watched the cheerleaders and the veterans, the posse of sheriff’s deputies and the firetrucks, the passing faces in the crowd. A kid stood among them. The kid didn’t clap or yell, but she saw a shudder of recognition across his face, a slight smile of solidarity for LGBTQ+ rights, perhaps, she said, on the road to a town’s acceptance.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, apologized amid scrutiny for a social media video in which she wore a Harris-Walz campaign hat and fed Doritos to a kneeling podcast host to promote the CHIPS Act.

Whitmer was seen in the clip taking a Doritos chip out of a bag and placing it into the mouth of liberal podcaster Liz Plank, who was kneeling down on the floor, before the video panned to the governor wearing a camouflage Harris-Walz hat.

The use of Doritos chips appeared to be a clever way to put a spotlight on the CHIPS and Science Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 that allocated nearly $53 billion towards efforts to bring semiconductor supply chains back to the U.S., create jobs, support American innovation and protect U.S. national security.

MICHIGAN GOV FEEDS KNEELING FEMALE PODCAST HOST DORITOS WHILE WEARING A HARRIS-WALZ HAT

“Chips aren’t just delicious, the CHIPS Act is a game-changer for U.S. tech and manufacturing, boosting domestic production of semiconductors to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers! Donald Trump would put that at risk,” Plank wrote in the caption of the video she posted on Instagram.

The video was made as part of a viral TikTok trend where one person feeds another person, who is acting sexually, with the song “Dilemma” by Nelly and Kelly Rowland playing in the background before the first person stares uncomfortably into the camera.

MICHIGAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS CONDEMN WHITMER’S DORITOS VIDEO STUNT AS OFFENSIVE

The use of Doritos chips appeared to be a clever way to put a spotlight on the CHIPS and Science Act. (AP Photo/Al Goldis, File)

Some critics mistakenly perceived the video as Whitmer pretending to participate in Holy Communion as a way to mock Christians who participate in the Eucharist. Following the backlash over these accusations, Whitmer apologized for the video and emphasized that the video was not meant to mock people of faith.

“Over 25 years in public service, I would never do something to denigrate someone’s faith,” the governor said in a statement to Fox 2. “I’ve used my platform to stand up for people’s right to hold and practice their personal religious beliefs.”

Whitmer apologized for the video and emphasized that the video was not meant to mock people of faith. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

“My team has spoken to the Michigan Catholic Conference,” she continued. “What was supposed to be a video about the importance of the CHIPS Act to Michigan jobs, has been construed as something it was never intended to be, and I apologize for that.”

More than 200 people packed the pews at Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights on Wednesday, and they all had one question on their minds:

Where was Kevin de León?

It was 5 p.m., and the debate was about to start. His opponent, Ysabel Jurado, was in the parish hall, where she had talked to reporters from Boyle Heights Beat.

Where was he?

The L.A. City Council member was just pulling into the parking lot, as it turned out.

He stayed in his white electric SUV, chatting with a campaign consultant, while other staffers gathered nearby. After finally getting out of the car, he went inside a school building for a few minutes before ambling across the street to the historic church.

For the last two years, De León has insisted to anyone who’ll listen that he learned his lesson from the racist City Hall audio leak that upended L.A. politics and torpedoed — but didn’t sink — his career.

On the recording, he mocked Black political power and schemed with former council president Nury Martinez, former council member Gil Cedillo and ex-L.A. County Labor Federation head Ron Herrera to get back at their adversaries.

Attendees listen to Kevin de León and Ysabel Jurado debate at Dolores Mission Church.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

The conversation, revealed by The Times exactly two years ago that Wednesday, captured the De León that political insiders have long known: a man with a huge chip on his shoulder eclipsed by an ego as large as the General Sherman tree.

Ever since, he has strained to remake himself as a municipal Daddy Warbucks, handing out Christmas gifts to kids and groceries to poor families.

Now, he was 10 minutes late.

As De León stopped to pose for photos on the church patio, I thought: same old Kevin. He sees himself as a picaresque hero in the novel that exists in his mind — and forces the rest of us to deal with it.

Supporters roared and yelled his name when he finally walked into the church. They booed Jurado — but her supporters countered with “Y-sa-bel!”

Father Brendan Busse welcomed everyone before letting church volunteer Delmira Gonzalez speak.

“It’s a church and sanctuary, and we want it to be respected,” she told the audience in Spanish before laying out the ground rules. No cheering, clapping or booing. Don’t talk while the candidates are talking.

Attendees give their approval during a debate between Kevin de León and Ysabel Jurado in Boyle Heights.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

The two sat at tables on the altar. Next to De León was a statue of the church’s namesake, Our Lady of Sorrows, hands clasped and face frozen in misery. Jurado was near a painting of Maria del Camino — Our Lady of the Way, the patron saint of the Jesuits who run Dolores Mission.

They took gulps of water simultaneously, as the moderators began.

That would be the last time they agreed on anything.

Jurado, who wore a surgical mask because of a recent bout with COVID, used her one-minute opening remarks to say she was happy to return to Dolores Mission, where she had participated in two candidate forums during the primary.

“Unfortunately, some other people were absent,” she said, a playful dig at De León.

He wasn’t playing.

“There’s a clear difference in this campaign,” De León replied in Spanish. “I’ve dedicated my life to public service, for the well-being of our people. My opponent, to date, has never done a single thing for the good of our people.

“I’ve committed my errors,” he admitted a few seconds later. “But I don’t lie. And my opponent …”

He grinned. “She has lied a lot.”

City Council candidate Ysabel Jurado is challenging incumbent Kevin de León.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

In the previous weeks, the candidates had barnstormed across District 14 in their own version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates — but even more bitter.

Jurado, a Highland Park native, has promised an Eastside free of corporate influence and the scandals that have cursed the area’s councilmembers for decades.

De León — who has raised more money, while Jurado has secured more prominent endorsements — focused on his accomplishments at City Hall during his first term and in the state Capitol last decade. He dismissed Jurado as a dilettante whose ties to the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America make her dangerous to public safety.

Throughout his 18 years in elected office, De León has positioned himself as a progressive champion standing against conservatives. That night, he took a page from the Donald Trump playbook to blast Jurado.

He accused her of lying six times, while offering few concrete examples. He mentioned socialism four times. He spoke almost entirely in Spanish and said “nuestra gente” — our people — at least 29 times to imply that his opponent, the daughter of Filipino immigrants, couldn’t possibly care for the mostly Latino audience.

He ridiculed people who keep bringing up the audio leak scandal, proclaiming that he has moved forward while they “see the scab” from the wound it caused and “continue to scratch and scratch and scratch.”

He claimed that Jurado faked her recent COVID diagnosis, citing “community members” who supposedly saw her at the Glendale Galleria. He even brought up the fact that Jurado — who was eight months pregnant at the time — didn’t vote in the 2008 presidential election and thus didn’t get to pick “the first African American in the history of the United States of America, Barack Obama.”

His face got sweatier and sweatier until he looked like a sinner in the confession booth.

“To this date, you haven’t lifted a single finger to help nuestra gente,” De León later said in Spanish as the moderator kept ringing a bell to let him know his time was up. “You just come with quejas [complaints] y quejas y quejas y quejas y quejas.”

The slightest of silences passed. “Quejona,” he finally muttered. Complainer.

The scene outside Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, where Kevin de León and Ysabel Jurado held their debate.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

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His supporters — many of them men who had hopped from debate to debate like Deadheads — laughed and whooped it up, despite the admonishments of Father Busse and church volunteers. De León never once tried to calm them down.

The barrage shook Jurado. She frequently went over her time limit. She kept delivering lines — quoting St. Oscar Romero, yelling, “Go Dodgers!” while pumping her fist and bringing up De León’s San Diego roots — that fell flat because her supporters followed the rules and largely stayed quiet. She spoke of a school-to-union job pipeline to combat youth violence and of having city staff keep better tabs on broken street lights and parking meters — plans that sounded good but couldn’t get traction against De León’s blitzkrieg.

When the councilmember wasn’t insulting his opponent, he rattled off accomplishments — investments in parks, tiny homes for unhoused people, affordable housing projects — that were an effective counter against Jurado’s critique that he had done nothing for constituents. His quip that he was about “results, not ideology“ was clever.

If he had stuck to his record, De León might have convinced me that he truly was a changed politico. Instead, he sounded like the man the world heard on the leaked audio: someone infuriated that people don’t think he’s “incredible,” a word he used to describe his first term.

Here was a man who had once showed enough promise and ambition to mount a campaign against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and to run for mayor in 2022. Now, he was reduced to questioning whether someone faked her COVID diagnosis.

Jurado and De León shook hands at the end of the 55-minute debate. She stepped outside to talk with supporters. He finally had the altar to himself.

De León hugged tearful acolytes and took photos with them, letting his million-watt smile flash. I waited my turn in line to see if De León — whose staff had blocked me from entering his primary night party in March — would take some questions.

“It was a spirited debate,” he said when I commented on the barbed tone.

When I asked how he thought he did, he responded, “I think I spoke to the issues that were important to the community here in Boyle Heights. I think we demonstrated our real body of work.”

What about all the times he called Jurado a liar?

De León smiled even wider.

“Oh, we can sit down, we can go through all of things, if you want. Trust me.”

His followers formed a blockade around him as their man walked to the patio to bask in their love a bit longer.

“It was more decent than before,” South Pasadena resident Jorge H. Rodriguez said of the debate as someone whispered, “He’s the enemy,” while pointing at me. “Both of them got their points across, but Kevin has more experience.”

De León talked to reporters as supporters chanted his name from afar. Suddenly, 34-year-old Stephanie Luna confronted him.

“Why won’t you make a real apology about the tapes?” the lifelong Boyle Heights resident asked. He ignored her as his handlers ushered him to the parish hall. Luna followed until they shut the door.

She then went to the front of the church, where Black Lives Matter Los Angeles members were protesting and waiting for De León to return to his car.

His fanboys cussed them out or went up to their faces and shouted, “Kevin!”

“It’s symbolic of who Kevin is,” said Luna when I asked about her encounter with him. “How can you ask your constituents to vote for you when you run away from them?”

That’s when I looked at the parking lot. De León’s car was gone. The Eastside’s Artful Dodger had sneaked off into the night.