It’s been a busy 2026 for Larry Pfeil, and it’s not slowing down now that the votes have been counted. He was able to pull off a win in the March primary and recently solidified his future as Polk County Judge in the runoff with a little over 60% of the vote.
Pfeil took time from a packed schedule to speak with the Enterprise on a variety of topics, including his thoughts on chances to win upon entering the race, issues he plans to tackle, and AI political cartoons.
Part of Polk County for 13 years now, the county judge-elect is originally from Refugio, then made his way to Houston before settling locally.
“I've developed some great relationships with people. I haven't really had a lot of the people making me feel like an outsider,” Pfeil said. “I've always felt very welcomed here and have made some great friends, to the point that my wife and I decided to make this our full-time home, where we will spend the rest of our lives up here. I tell people, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I spent the first 18 years of my life in a small town trying to figure out how to get out of the small town and get into a big city. Then, I spent the next 40 years of my life trying to figure out how to get out of the city.”
He has spent the past few weeks building relationships with local leaders.
“It's definitely a shifting of gears. We're going from campaign mode to starting to think about the transition. I've started off by trying to meet with each of the county commissioners that's currently in office, each of the mayors and police chiefs, and going to be reaching out to all of the department heads and just starting to make introductions and building alliances. That's the first step, just becoming familiar with all of the people in various offices.”
In his “down time,” he is a volunteer fire fighter in Scenic Loop and part owner of Lake Life Brewery and Lake Life Rental Company, located in the Indian Hills area of Livingston. Pfeil and his business partner came up with the idea last year when looking for something less seasonal than a rental company.
“It's something that we don't have anywhere in Polk County. We're always trying to bring something new, something different, something interesting, and we settled on the brewery. We started that last year, and we just finished our first full year in operation.”
What is it that made him jump into the race for county judge?
“There were a few things that caught my attention,” he said pausing. “I look at Polk County, and I see it being one of the poorest counties in the state. I look at what we have going on here, and the opportunities that we have here, between the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe and all of the things that they're doing with their current casino and their plans for a new casino. We have one of the largest lakes in the state that's here.
“And I'm watching, and I'm seeing no investment in the lake. I see no promotion of the lake. What it appeared to me, is that there was no coherent or published plan for the future of Polk County. We have change that's coming. The population is increasing dramatically, and I'm concerned about the future of the county. I think there's no reason that this county should not be prospering. There's no reason that we should not be bringing new business and bringing industry in, and developing the economy in a planned way, not in a haphazard or avoidance.
“The change is going to come whether we want it or not. And so, I feel like the county ought to be involved in that. We ought to be participating in it. We ought to be helping plan it. And, we ought to benefit from it.”
To bring that economic development, Pfeil believes public safety and infrastructure are key. There is a list developing for what he hopes to accomplish in the first 100 days in office, but wasn’t ready to share it just yet. What he did share is what he feels are the county’s most pressing issues.
“Public safety has been largely underfunded and somewhat ignored,” he said, echoing a major talking point of his campaign. “That has to change. The infrastructure – the roads, the water systems – I think that we need to get those two things under control, that we need to have a plan going forward with those.
“Probably the biggest issue that we have is a perpetually novice sheriff's department. We have a very hard time keeping tenured deputies. It's sort of become a revolving door, where we're continuously training young, new deputies either through or right out of the academy and keeping them for a few years. Then, they end up having to go somewhere else, just because of the pay issue. I think that has led to an increase in crime.
“Those will be my priorities – fully funding and fully staffing the sheriff's department, trying to integrate the constables with the sheriff's department so that the sheriff's department has support when they need it. Properly funding EMS – I don't know if you're aware of this, but Allegiance that provides our EMS service is on a $0 contract. The county does not pay anything for our EMS service.”
The firefighter also spoke about promoting the local volunteer departments to encourage participation, volunteerism, and the public to support each department. He said fire departments receive little money from the county that mostly covers insurance, leaving them to fund themselves.
Many have detested the political mudslinging that occurred on social media, not necessarily between candidates, but amongst voters. AI-generated political cartoons and memes were used by voters supporting both Pfeil and Sydney Murphy.
“I saw all of that starting and I saw all of the activity back and forth,” Pfeil said. “I largely ignored that. What I did was I developed my message and I posted – I didn't follow the community boards. I posted what I wanted to say on my Facebook page.
“I had the benefit of a lot of people who had longstanding grievances with the county. They aligned themselves with me because they wanted to see a change. They would come in and they would share my posts, and so I got a lot of exposure that way, but I did not participate in the cartoons, and I stayed strictly on my own message. You look at my Facebook page, you go through it, that's the only place that I posted and that was the only thing that I really tried to follow.”
While a firefighter or with the radio club helping with disasters, Pfeil said his interactions with the current county judge were always positive, professional and polite.
“I just simply disagree with some of her decisions and some of her policies.”
There was some doubt when Pfeil started to build his campaign. Murphy has been a popular figure in Polk County, not only serving over a decade as county judge, but also leading the chamber of commerce and in education prior to politics.
“I had a realistic view of the race,” he admitted. “And, effectively an outsider trying to come in and unseat a local incumbent, I did not think that I had huge odds in my favor. But, I got on message. I created a message that I think resonated with people and I stayed on message. I avoided the negativity of the campaign to the best that I could. By February, I really started feeling the tide turn.
“By the time, the March election came, I had good confidence and came very close to winning the vote outright in the primary. We just came 130 votes short of a majority, which put us into the runoff. I was 10 points up going into the runoff. And my focus from that point forward was just trying to make sure that everyone who voted for me in the primary showed up again to vote for me in the runoff. And fortunately, I was successful.”
Pfeil wished to acknowledge those who voted in his favor for two elections over a few months.
“I want to thank the people of Polk County for stepping up and putting their trust and confidence in me. That's a very tall ask for somebody who is relatively new to the county and relatively unknown, for them to listen to the things that I said. And a lot of it was not necessarily a vote for me. It was a vote for change. And, I happened to be the only one offering change. So, I know that I'm going to have to prove myself. And so, I appreciate the opportunity and I'm looking forward to being a county judge and to making county government work for all of Polk County.”
