2022 Democratic Primary Recommendations

Early voting in the Texas Primary has started, you’ve got nearly 10 days of early voting left then election day so really no excuse not to cast a ballot. Whether or not you think Democrats have a chance at winning statewide positions like Governor, there are two really important seats with districts that Democrats can and should continue to hold. One of those is the Texas 28^th Congressional District which I’ve already written about and hope you’ll vote for Jessica Cisneros. The other seat is State Board of Education District 5 in which Rebecca Bell-Metereau is the excellent incumbent, she’s a career educator, a professor at Texas State University in San Marcos and a strong advocate for teaching historical truth and real science as well as replacing Texas’ high stakes testing which benefits the test making companies and not the students. Our children deserve the continued efforts of her leadership and scholarship.

In the statewide races the race for Governor has five candidates but the only one with a track record on public policy issues and running for election is Beto O'Rourke. O’Rourke had a strong run against Ted Cruz four years ago and is our best chance to beat whoever Republicans put up including the incumbent who is backed by corporate funds including the very power companies that he failed to hold accountable for last year’s statewide power outage during the snow storm. The power companies got off the hook and those of us who pay our electric bills were left holding the bag, many of us will be paying extra on our electric bills for many years to come in order to cover it.

There are three outstanding candidates for Lieutenant Governor and I’m siding with Mike Collier who has worked tirelessly for years working to unseat the unscrupulous incumbent. Collier ran for the spot previously and has built name recognition around the state. He faces Carla Brailey, a university professor and social justice advocate. Also running for the seat is Michelle Beckley who won a state house seat in District 65 in 2018 beating the Republican incumbent, she’s an advocate for expanding Medicaid in Texas and fixing the power grid among other widely supported Democratic priorities.

There are five contenders for the Attorney General nomination. Joe Jaworski made a strong impression on me when I had the opportunity to listen to his pitch and ask him questions. Jaworski is a practicing attorney in Galveston and has held various local political offices over the years. His platform includes starting a Civil Rights division within the Attorney General’s office to insure that Texans are able to count on the Office of the Texas Attorney General to protect civil rights in employment, education, housing, voting, the courts, physical access to accommodations and above all interaction with our criminal justice system.

Comptroller of Public Accounts is a position that most of us don’t even recognize but is a truly important job. Janet Dudding is a CPA who began her governmental accounting career with the Office of the State Auditor investigating allegations that governmental officials had embezzled taxpayer money or taken kickbacks. She’s spent her professional life holding government officials accountable to the citizens, not special interests. Dudding is ready to hit the ground running and deserves your support.

There are four contenders for Commissioner of the General Land Office provides funding for Texas public schools. Jinny Suh is a community organizer, former patent litigator, and when I spoke to her expressed her determination to use the office to protect the environment while expanding funding for education.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - February 16, 2022

Republicans White-washing History Again

Republicans are now trying to prevent our children from learning about the ways in which our country has too often failed to live up to the promise of our constitution. They don’t want kids to learn about the way that wealthy whites have often used propaganda and economic power to build and maintain their wealth and control over the lives of not just minorities but others who are less well off as well.

A few years ago when there were efforts around the nation to take down statues honoring Confederate leaders and slaveholders, Republicans made ridiculous claims that it was an effort to rewrite history. They made the same non-sense arguments about efforts to stop flying Confederate flags over state government buildings. All activists really wanted was to put a stop to honoring traitors and those who enslaved and abused other human beings for the benefit of themselves.

Over the last year or so all over this nation state legislatures controlled by Republicans are enacting laws outlawing the teaching of topics that might make a student uncomfortable. While using vague and often inaccurate language these efforts are aimed at discouraging teaching about how so much of this nation was built by enslaved Africans on the grounds that white children shouldn’t be shamed for what other white people did over 100 years ago. Of course, they give no consideration to the black student who feels uncomfortable when only white historical figures and achievements are discussed. Texas Republicans don’t want teachers to talk about the racist actions of the Texas Rangers toward Hispanic citizens.

While they literally white-wash history Republicans claim that Liberals are at fault for something they’ve named cancel culture. That’s what they call it when an educational institution or media outlet decides that some individual with a hateful message should not be given an opportunity to use that organization’s resources to spread their ugly propaganda. In fact, it is Republicans who are the big cancel culture proponents, besides delegitimizing the teaching of black history; their latest efforts are to ban more books from public schools. One such book is Maus, which is an award winning children’s book about the holocaust using mice as stand-ins for people. Many of the books Republicans find offensive are written by members of the LGBT community about children and adults that don’t fit their narrow-minded heterosexual orthodoxy.

When the Texas legislature took up the topic if restricting what could be taught in public schools last session the Republican Speaker of the House admonished all our representatives to not use the term racist to attack the regulations that they were working to pass even though much of what they were doing was in fact racist and that’s why it needed to be attacked. That’s like telling the prosecution that they can’t say the goods were stolen when the perpetrator did in fact take things that didn’t belong to them from the premises of the rightful owner.

Last week Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick announced he would seek to abolish tenure for professors at Texas’ public universities. In addition he said “The law will change to say teaching critical race theory is prima facie evidence of good cause for tenure revocation.” Critical Race Theory is another boogeyman for Republicans with many claiming it is taught in elementary and high school when in fact it isn’t. The reality is it is a method used in graduate level courses to see the connections between government policy and the economic and social consequences of minorities.

Republican censorship won’t solve our problems, talking those problems and our differences out might.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 2, 2022

Cisneros For Congress

Primary elections are an opportunity to choose a standard bearer for the values we hold. The March 1^st election features numerous such opportunities including half a dozen state wide offices and both congressional seats representing Guadalupe County. The 28^th congressional district which will cover the westernmost corner of the county is a strongly Democratic leaning district currently held by a 16 year incumbent who represents big money more than the people of the district.

For the second election in a row the incumbent is being challenged by Jessica Cisneros, an immigration attorney from Laredo who once was an intern in his Washington, D.C. office. In the last election she lost by a mere 4% and this time around she has much better name recognition. Ms. Cisneros is passionate about the need to reform our broken immigration system with which she is intimately familiar as the child of Mexican immigrants with family members on both sides of the border.

Ms. Cisneros is a strong advocate for addressing climate change and is endorsed by the “Texas Drought Project” because she recognizes that south Texas is one of the first areas that will suffer from higher temperatures and more erratic weather. When I spoke to her about her views on the issue she made clear that she recognizes that many on the district worry about jobs more than climate which is why she also reminds voters that green jobs are good paying jobs. Building and maintaining wind farms or installing and caring for solar panels is safer and healthier for the workers while paying just as well or better than oil and gas jobs. Drilling for oil and gas is a cyclical business so those jobs come and go often leaving communities in debt with damaged infrastructure like the roads that get beaten up by all the heavy trucks going up and down them. Solar and wind farms need constant attention so jobs are steady and numerous by comparison.

Jessica Cisneros is supported by “Justice Democrats” because she advocates for raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation so that workers never again see their earnings eroded by inflation while congress fails to act to restore their buying power. The last time minimum wage was raised was 2009 which makes this the longest period in history between adjustments. The buying power of minimum wage has fallen 21% since then. Had minimum wage kept up with inflation since 1968 it would now be well over $11 an hour. The incumbent has withheld support for raising minimum wage using the excuses dreamed up by his wealthy campaign donors.

24% of citizens in TX-28 didn’t have health insurance when the pandemic broke out, leaving our community particularly vulnerable to the global public health crisis. The average family with health coverage is spending $12,000 out of pocket on health care premiums and deductibles. The incumbent voted to weaken the Affordable Care Act, reducing the number of workers eligible for coverage and making long-term and comprehensive care more expensive. Ms. Cisneros believes that health care is a right, not a privilege. She supports single-payer, Medicare For All which would insure every American with comprehensive health care. Medicare For All would eliminate premiums and deductibles while expanding coverage to include dental, hearing, vision, and mental health, thereby lowering overall costs to families, small businesses, and government.

While Tannya Benavides holds similar positions she doesn’t have the experience that Ms. Cisneros has.

When early voting starts Tuesday February 14 I’ll be voting for Jessica Cisneros, I hope you will too.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - February 2, 2022