A flamboyant restaurateur, a good ol’ boy and a political ingénue, walk into a small town political contest and compete head to head…to head, for a non-paid mayoral seat of the Tomato Republic. What happens next is anyone’s guess. The only thing that could slow this race down is a freight train. Let the takeover begin.

Awards– Special Jury Prize in the Texas Competition at 2014 Dallas International Film Festival

'Tomato Republic is a marvel. Unlike any other documentary I have ever seen, it takes its audience striaght into the glorious, laugh-out-loud eccentricities of small-town Texas life. The film, which follows a mayoral race in the East Texas town of Jacksonville, is full of characters that seem to have sprung straight from a novelist’s imagination. But the fact is that everyone in Tomato Republic is very real, their off-the-cuff comments completely unscripted. Just wait until you see the county judge talking about how he judges food contests. Or the mayoral candidate waxing philosophical about politics while he scratches the chin of a dog sitting on his lap. Or the townspeople who go “mudding.” And then there are the railroad trains that constantly roar through town, the blare of the locomotives’ horns interrupting everyone in mid-sentence. By the end of the movie, I was just shaking my head in wonder.'
- Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly