When Averie Bishop became the first Asian American contestant to win the crown at the Miss Texas pageant in 2022, it was not the first time she’d broken ground, and it wouldn’t be the last. By June 2022, Bishop was already the first Asian American Miss Lufkin in 2019 and Miss Dallas in 2020 in the Miss America pageant circuit. Now the McKinney native is running for a North Texas House seat.
While it’s not customary for the Miss Texas role to be outspoken about political topics, Bishop took the chance to speak up. Born and raised in McKinney, the daughter of a Filipino-immigrant mother and a fourth-generation Texan dad, the first-generation college and SMU law school graduate was never shy about her political views regarding reproductive rights, diversity and inclusivity using her robust social media following to voice her concerns and hopes.
And it’s not all talk either. At 26, Bioshop is quite accomplished: She previously interned for U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat who recently received a death threat for her role in former President Trump’s indictment. Bishop is a member of Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson’s Anti-Hate Advisory Council. Since her reign as Miss Texas ended, Bishop’s met with lawmakers in Austin to discuss the DEI ban passed in the latest legislative session and she visited the White House to speak up about the struggles young professionals face with student loans.
“A lot of the politicians in our state government are willing to sit and listen, but not necessarily act on what they hear,” Bishop told FOX 4 in July 2023 during her visit to Washington DC. “So I’m taking it into my own hands and possibly I’ll run for public office this year, especially since I think there needs to be more fresh perspectives in our government.”
On Aug. 15, 2023, Bishop posted a video on her Tik Tok account announcing to her nearly 850 thousand followers she was researching to run for public office.
The same day, the San Antonio Express-News reported that the pageant queen filed as a candidate for House District 112, encompassing parts of eastern Dallas County. Since 2009, the seat is occupied by GOP State Representative Angie Chen Button, an accountant from Garland.
“We just need more normal people to run for office,” said Bishop in her Tik Tok video, where she discusses the challenges that expensive public office campaigns pose for women and people of color. “We need normal people to run so we can change the system from within because these politicians are enslaved to the expectation that they have to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions sometimes because they’ve set the precedent.”
