On May 2, 2026, Shelia Thorne won her election to the Kemah, Texas City Council with 61.6% of the vote. It was Thorne's fourth run for a council seat in four years, after losses in 2022, 2024, and 2025.
Thorne is a U.S. Marine Corps Gulf War veteran who spent years volunteering across Kemah before she ever appeared on a ballot. She ran on a platform of transparency and accountability, and used GoodParty.org's campaign toolkit to help turn three straight defeats into a decisive win.
"I felt blessed, elated, just thankful for the voters, thankful to God, thankful for GoodParty.org, because without those tools, it wouldn't have happened."
Fighting for Transparency from the Beginning
Thorne’s fight for transparency began long before she was elected to the city council.
For years, Thorne had been a fixture in Kemah's civic life. She co-founded Gardenkids of Kemah, a nonprofit that teaches families where their food comes from. She also helped start Keep Kemah Beautiful, a local affiliate of Keep Texas Beautiful.
When concerns arose about the city’s police chief, Thorne advocated for the release of public records.
“About three years ago, the city paid for a report on the concerns about the at-that-time-current police chief, and the city hemmed and hawed,” Thorne said. “I actually had to go to the attorney general and get a ruling, and the attorney general told the city to release it to me. The city still chose not to. It was amazing, because we have sister cities that are like 10 times our size. If the attorney general tells them to release it, they release it. My little city sued me and the attorney general to not release it.”
After a three-year legal battle, the city of Kemah finally released the investigation report in 2025.
That experience became a cornerstone of Thorne’s campaigns and, now, her time in office. Thorne said she will hold her local government accountable for as long as she is in office.
“That's not optional. You can't say, ‘Oh, I don't want to do it,’ because it's the people's information. It's not even the governing body’s. It's the people's data. If the attorney general tells you to release it, release it,” Thorne said.
Before running for office, Thorne noticed another way her city wasn’t listening to residents. She watched the city's public comment period become a formality rather than a real channel for community input.
I saw that citizens did not have a voice. We have a public comment section, but you were given lip service, and there was no action.
I've always said in my platform: I will represent you, and I will be your voice on the other side, because they may not agree with me, but they can't stop me from talking.
As a city council member, Thorne now has the seat at the table she needs to make real change for her community.
A Long Road to City Council
Thorne's path to the Kemah City Council ran through three difficult defeats:
- May 7, 2022: Running for Council Position 3, Thorne lost by 25 votes.
- May 4, 2024: Thorne ran again for Position 3 and placed third in a low-turnout race.
- May 3, 2025: Running for Position 2, Thorne lost by just 10 votes, the narrowest margin yet.
"On the first one, it was just raw. I had no idea what I was doing, other than I knew that there needed to be a change, and I lost pretty badly," Thorne said. "Then, the one when I first connected with GoodParty.org, I lost by 10 votes. That was very sobering. But GoodParty.org was there from the beginning on, encouraging me.”
Thorne credits GoodParty.org with steadying her after that close 2025 loss. As a member of GoodParty.org’s online community, she was able to share her experience and hear from other candidates who had stood in her shoes.
She also recalled emailing the organization outside of business hours and hearing back almost immediately from Rob Booth, GoodParty.org’s Director of Field and Mobilization.
“You know how you’ll just send out an email, and you don’t expect anyone to really even read it till business hours? He answered it, and it really steadied me, because that was very sobering for me to only lose by 10 votes,” Thorne said.
Turning Data and Community Support Into a Decisive Victory
Thorne shifted her approach for her 2026 campaign. Now armed with strategy support and voter outreach tools from GoodParty.org, she set out to run a more efficient, data-backed campaign.
Previously, Thorne had canvassed by picking a street and knocking on every door. This time, she used voter data to segment her outreach and focus on residents who reliably vote. She applied a similar logic to campaign texting.
"I don't think candidates really realize, if they dig into it, how they can segment their door-knocking and their texts. That’s what I was able to do, especially where GoodParty.org is able to say, ‘Okay, you don't target every door, like I was doing, literally door to door, but who are the people that get out there and vote?’ Even if they tell you no, at least you can do some math and say, ‘Let’s mark those off and move forward.’ It made me so much more laser-focused."
Thorne stretched her outreach further by encouraging supporters to spread the word about her campaign.
When you don't necessarily have a large team, we call it ‘friend of a friend.’ If you've got someone in your sphere of influence that really believes in you, ask them: ‘Can you talk to two of your friends, two of your neighbors, and make an introduction for me, so I can talk to them and they can ask me specific questions? Or can you put out a sign for me?’
That’s small, but it can branch out. If I have one person that asks five people, and those five people ask even three more people, that is a multiplier.
At the same time, Thorne applied learnings from the GoodParty.org Community to tighten her campaign’s visual branding. She settled on a consistent color palette and a single throughline across signs, palm cards, and flyers. That way, every time her campaign connected with a voter, that touchpoint resonated consistently.
As an independent candidate, Thorne didn’t have a paid campaign manager or consulting firm. Overall, she said GoodParty.org helped fill in those gaps.
There are other entities that candidates use — for lack of a better term, campaign managers and campaign organizations. They charge in my area anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 a month.
For someone that's an independent, that's just not in the budget. That's why I was a voracious reader on the GoodParty.org platform, doing whatever I could to bridge that gap — and it worked.
Between leveraging voter data, sending texts and robocalls, and implementing GoodParty.org’s strategy suggestions, Thorne ran a campaign that connected with voters across Kemah.
When a reporter called to tell her she had won the election, Thorne almost didn’t believe it.
“I was concerned that I was being, I think you young people call it being punked. I told the gentleman, ‘I'm looking at the [election] website. I do not see what you're saying. Give me your number. I'll be happy to contact you with a statement after I see the results, because I don't see the results that you see,’” Thorne said.
“Later on, I found out he was literally, actually at the election headquarters where they were doing the final tallies. That's why there was a time lag between when they put it out on the website and made it public, to when they announced it.”
Once she saw the election results confirmed, Thorne let the feeling of gratitude truly sink in. She then began looking forward to serving Kemah as a member of the city council.
Even in her first weeks in office, Thorne began following through on her campaign promise to improve transparency.
The current council is very much used to the status quo. They’ve called me out, and it’s like, ‘Go ahead, go for it.’
I have a voice now, and no one's going to browbeat me, because if I speak truth, I'm going to speak it. I'm going to be civil about it, but I’m not going to not do my utmost best.
Can you promise that everything that you said you stood for is going to pass? No, because there’s X number of people that have to agree on it, but it won’t be because I didn’t try and put it up for a vote. I'm going to make sure voters know: You asked for transparency, and I made the effort to do it.
Passing on Campaign Insights to Future Candidates
In addition to serving her community in Kemah, Thorne is also giving back to the online community she’s found through GoodParty.org.
“I wanted to give back as much as I'd received. I'm constantly recommending posts or lessons. That's been very good for me in terms of giving back to the community,” Thorne said.
Thorne has two poignant pieces of advice for anyone thinking about running for local office.
First, she recommends understanding the “why” behind your decision to run:
"You have to know your why. It can't just be, ‘Oh, well, I'd like to be able to put by my name, I was mayor, I was congressman. Know your why, and it's service. It's public service. It’s not about making oneself a household name, especially at the local level."
Second, Thorne suggests taking advantage of GoodParty.org’s tools for independent and grassroots candidates.
Join that Pro community. It will give you so much guidance. It gave me a weekly checklist — do this, do this — and it backdated from when my campaign is. That's going to be perfect instruction for someone who's floundering.
Are you going to be able to do everything? No, but you will definitely be able to hit those things that you have control over.
Four elections, three defeats, and one hard-won victory later, Thorne's path shows what's possible for independent candidates who keep showing up.
GoodParty.org offers the same campaign plan, voter data, and community support that helped Thorne turn a 10-vote loss into a 53-vote win. Our tools have helped over 13,000 independent and nonpartisan candidates across the country win their elections since 2024.