From “blood and soil” to “you still want to keep running this camera?”
Just 28 days before Election Day and some of the most competitive races in Texas continue to heat up more and more every week. Here’s a glimpse into what voters across Texas are reading heading into the final weeks of the 2018 midterm elections.
TX-07
For the 7th Congressional District: Lizzie Pannill Fletcher
By The Editorial Board || Houston Chronicle
[…]
Rarely do we meet a first-time candidate so well prepared, so knowledgeable about the job, so right for the district.
Fletcher, 43, has run an impressive campaign and garnered national attention for turning a solidly red district into a swing seat, and she did it by extolling the virtues of hard work, advocacy and cooperation.
[…]
At a time when plenty of Democrats and Republicans sprint for the partisan hinterlands, Fletcher has reclaimed the center. She opposes single-payer health care and backs offshore drilling. Her immigration policy models the bipartisan 2013 comprehensive bill that passed the Senate but didn’t get a vote in the House.
More than longtime Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. John Culberson, or even her opponents from the heated Democratic primary, Fletcher understands this diverse, changing district and has demonstrated a passion for putting its residents ahead of rank partisanship.
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Culberson was first elected to public office in 1986 and has rarely faced a serious challenger outside a Republican primary. It shows. His career has been spent promoting his own pet projects rather than serving the local needs of his home district. That’s why it took the greatest natural disaster in Houston history to compel him to act with necessary passion.
It’s not that Culberson doesn’t care about water. He does. But most of the time, he seems to care a bit more about the water on Europa, an icy moon orbiting Jupiter, than he does the water in the Addicks and Barker dams. Or in our bayous. Or in our homes. Culberson has expended untold political capital trying to force NASA to send probes to Europa in search of alien life. That’s an admirable scientific mission, even if some planetary researchers think the limited resources could be better spent.
Here on Earth, Houstonians can rest assured that Fletcher will prioritize human life over the extraterrestrial. That includes life-saving flooding policies that emphasize prevention over costly recovery.
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No surprise that Culberson was one of the few Congress members reported to have a friendly relationship with former White House Chief Strategist and alt-right leader Steve Bannon.
Houstonians deserve a representative who considers health care and education more important than blood and soil.
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When it comes to health care, only Fletcher has an articulable vision for bringing costs under control. She wants a public option to create a baseline safety net for all Americans and to allow the federal government to negotiate drug prices to bring down the cost of pharmaceuticals.
Culberson, on the other hand, still doesn’t have much beyond repealing Obamacare.
Today, Texas’ 7th Congressional District is represented by a lifelong politician. That means seniority on key committees. It also means stagnancy, stubbornness and stilted policies.
Houston is changing. Voters need a representative who can keep up. We thank Culberson for his service in the weeks after Harvey, but now it is time for someone new — Lizzie Pannill Fletcher.
Voters worried about pre-existing condition protection
By Jenny Deam || Houston Chronicle
Voters in west Houston’s hotly contested Congressional race say taking away protections for pre-existing medical conditions — or even just appearing to do so — could spell doom for a candidate, a new survey finds.
A poll of 562 voters in the district represented by Republican John Culberson found that 46 percent were less likely to vote for him because of his staunch support of efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
A major piece of the health care law known as Obamacare is that health insurers must cover people with pre-existing medical conditions at the same rate as those without. Eliminating that protection was considered a major concern for 61 percent of those polled.
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Culberson is being challenged by Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, a Democrat, who has aired campaign ads hammering the incumbent to trying to dismantle the health care law.
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TX-23
Gina Ortiz Jones on sacrifice, commitment to serving community she grew up in
By Steve Spriester || KSAT
In a race featuring big money and a multitude of television ads sits a woman who has never seen her name on a ballot before.
“You’ve never run for an elected office before?” “No,” Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, who is running for the District 23 House of Representatives seat, said.
But she is a political newcomer, in familiar territory.
El Rodeo De Jalisco on Potranco Road is where Ortiz Jones and I chat over coffee and take a trip down memory lane.
“Yeah, well I live about a mile and a half from here. This is the neighborhood, this is my community. The duck pond is right down the street (and) I went to Pease Middle School right down the road,” Ortiz Jones said.
Ortiz Jones was raised by a single mother, went to John Jay High School and then Boston University on an Air Force ROTC scholarship.
But the road wasn’t without its bumps.
Trouble in junior high was a fork in that road and a choice that would change Ortiz Jones’ life.
“I learned then that if you’re not a little bit uncomfortable (then) you’re probably not learning anything, and the importance of giving back to a community that’s given me so much,” Ortiz Jones said. “That’s what this race is all about.”
It’s a willingness to challenge the “status quo” that Ortiz Jones said she demonstrated in school, in college, in the Air Force, and in life.
But as a member of the LGBTQ community, Ortiz Jones served during “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a time she
admits her outspoken nature was tested.
“I knew there were some sacrifices that I was going to have to make. But you know, I have a long record of putting country above everything else, and now more than ever it’s important to do that,” Ortiz Jones said.
Hers is a run for office that’s getting national attention. She has been on CNN and others, Ortiz Jones said this run is all about her roots.
“I’ve gone from reduced lunch to the Executive Office of the President. This is a special country (and) it’s always reinforced to my younger sister and I,” Ortiz Jones said.
“My sister still serves, she’s in the Navy now, and we were going to have to give back to a country that’s given us so much,” she said.
Ortiz Jones also talked about the issues she thinks are important to District 23, which stretches from San Antonio to the border and all the way to the edge of El Paso.
“Yeah, the biggest issue is health care, people either can’t afford it, they are fearful they won’t be able to afford it tomorrow, or they physically can’t get to it.”
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TX-32
This Texas Republican Would Really Prefer You Don’t Ask Him About the Violence Against Women Act
By Edwin Rios || Mother Jones
… at a forum in Dallas on Thursday, a local TV reporter asked Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions about voting against VAWA reauthorization five years ago. Sessions, who is in the middle of a contentious reelection campaign against Democrat Colin Allred, a former NFL player turned civil rights attorney, decided to use the opportunity to mansplain to a reporter how Congress works.
A video of the exchange shows Sessions, chair of the House Rules Committee, going back and forth with NBC 5 reporter Laura Harris in an increasingly testy manner. Sessions said he supported the law but eventually told Harris she was “confused” before lecturing her on the difference between policy and appropriations. When Harris pushed him further, Sessions responded, “You still want to keep running this camera, or you want to learn about this?”
[…]
Domestic violence gun laws are contentious in the Pete Sessions, Colin Allred race
By Rachel Cohrs || Dallas Morning News
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The Violence Against Women Act expired Sept. 30, but Congress extended funding through December. That gives both parties more time to build consensus on an issue that has proved contentious in the past — the last reauthorization, in 2013, took a year and a half to pass.
A flash point in this renewal could be an expansion of gun control measures to prohibit individuals under protective orders and with stalking convictions from possessing guns. The issue is a clear distinction in the race between Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas, and his Democratic challenger, Colin Allred.
Sessions believes gun laws related to domestic violence are strong enough as they are. Allred wants to expand gun restrictions for violent partners.
“We should be doing more to take guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, and make sure they don’t get them in the first place,” Allred said Thursday at a candidate forum on family violence in Dallas.
Gun control is an especially relevant policy issue in Texas where gunmen in two mass shootings last year had histories of domestic violence.
In September 2017, Spencer Hight killed eight people in Plano when he opened fire on a Dallas Cowboys watch party hosted by his estranged wife, who had filed for divorce two months earlier. Meredith Hight’s mother says Hight physically abused her daughter at least twice, including slamming her face against a wall.
In November, Devin Kelley shot and killed 26 people and injured 20 in First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs.
Kelley was supposed to be barred from purchasing firearms because he had been court-martialed for domestic violence. But the Air Force did not submit the determination to the relevant federal database, which allowed him to pass a gun buyer background check.
According to the Texas Council on Family Violence, 146 women were killed in domestic violence incidents in Texas in 2016. Firearms were used in 68 percent of those cases.
At Thursday’s candidate forum at the Dallas Women’s Foundation, Allred said he supported a full, five-year reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and added gun control measures. He criticized Sessions for not pushing harder before the expiration and for voting against the 2013 reauthorization.
“My opponent should have gone to Speaker [Paul] Ryan and said, put the Violence Against Women Act on the table so we can vote for it and have a full five-year reauthorization, full funding for it, and he did not do that,” Allred said.
Sessions did not commit to reauthorizing the act in its entirety, and said he would follow the Trump administration’s requests. He also said he was satisfied with current federal gun regulations on domestic violence, and wanted to keep that out of the conversation so discussions could stay “bipartisan.”
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Sessions came under fire in August for comments he made claiming that a Highland Park woman was at fault for her death because she was “unfair” to her husband, who shot her while the two were in the process of a divorce.