Wade Goodwyn
Wade Goodwyn is an NPR National Desk Correspondent covering Texas and the surrounding states.
Reporting since 1991, Goodwyn has covered a wide range of issues, from mass shootings and hurricanes to Republican politics. Whatever it might be, Goodwyn covers the national news emanating from the Lone Star State.
Though a journalist, Goodwyn really considers himself a storyteller. He grew up in a Southern storytelling family and tradition, he considers radio an ideal medium for narrative journalism. While working for a decade as a political organizer in New York City, he began listening regularly to WNYC, which eventually led him to his career as an NPR reporter.
In a recent profile, Goodwyn's voice was described as being "like warm butter melting over BBQ'd sweet corn." But he claims, dubiously, that his writing is just as important as his voice.
Goodwyn is a graduate of the University of Texas with a degree in history. He lives in Dallas with his famliy.
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The latest Federal Election Commission reports shed new light on the political largesse of two Texas businessmen. One has contributed to three active GOP presidential candidates, including a new $1 million check to the superPAC backing Rick Santorum. The other just gave $3 million more to Mitt Romney's superPAC. -
Fresh off victories in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum campaigned in Texas on Wednesday. He told a small group of pastors, some of them former supporters of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, that he is the true conservative left to challenge Mitt Romney. -
Texas Gov. Rick Perry likes to hold out the Lone Star State as a model — his vision for the country. But while Texas' growing economy has been a reliable jobs producer, the state's health care system is straining. Many family planning clinics that help serve the large numbers of uninsured in Texas have seen cuts. One supporter calls it a "war on birth control." -
The most dramatic moment of the GOP debate in Florida revolved around Gov. Rick Perry and his 2007 executive order mandating that young girls in Texas get the HPV vaccine. In 2007, this move mystified Republicans and revealed what some saw as a backroom deal. -
The 55-year-old leader of the nation's largest polygamist group has been sedated, pharmacologically paralyzed and placed on a ventilator as part of his treatment for pneumonia. Convicted of child sexual assault, he's serving a life sentence.
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Private sector job growth is a centerpiece of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential campaign. But the state has a consistent history in that area that can be traced back at least 20 years. -
When Gov. Rick Perry announces his candidacy on Saturday, there will be a new sheriff in the GOP presidential contest — a man who, in more than two decades of electoral politics, has never lost a race. Perry was born and raised in West Texas, where he picked up survival skills that could come in handy. -
Warren Jeffs' trial began with him firing his defense lawyers and announcing he would represent himself. Jeffs has been playing musical chairs with his lawyers for months now hiring and firing them, then asking the court for more time so his new lawyers could get up to speed only to fire them again and ask for even more time. Jeffs faces 95 years in prison if convicted of two counts of sexual assault of a child. -
In the past two weeks, Rick Perry has gone from ridiculing journalists' questions about a possible run for president to openly considering it. Perry is known as a fiscal conservative first and a social conservative second. But lately he has made a concerted effort to burnish his social conservative credentials.
