By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Democratic candidate for Texas governor Beto O’Rourke campaigned in Del Rio Saturday.
Before O’Rourke took to the Doc Holliday’s dance floor, two other Democratic Party candidates for statewide office, Susan Hays and Rochelle Garza, spoke to the crowd. Hays is running for agriculture commissioner, and Garza is seeking the position of attorney general.
Former Del Rio Mayor Bruno “Ralphy” Lozano also addressed the crowd.
Just before O’Rourke spoke, former Del Rioan Chris Carrillo, who was a teacher at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde during the deadly shooting there on May 24, spoke about his experience.
O’Rourke walked to the center of the dance floor amid a surge of clapping and cheering and sign waving. He thanked those who spoke before him and urged those attending to vote for Hays and Garza.
O’Rourke immediately waded into the issues, decrying the state’s treatment of teachers and foster children. He promised when elected to end STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) testing.
He blasted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for not calling a special session to address gun violence after the horrific school massacre in Uvalde.
“We need to put the lives of our kids before the interests of the NRA,” he said.
As governor, O’Rourke said, he would take a bipartisan approach to solving issues “and not allow perfect to be the enemy of the good.”
O’Rourke said he would seek consensus with Republican lawmakers to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15 in Texas from 18 to 21 years of age. He also spoke in favor of red flag laws and universal background checks for gun purchases.
“We have to do more than what we are doing today to protect the people in our lives while still defending the Second Amendment,” O’Rourke said.
O’Rourke also called for higher pay for working teachers and regular cost-of-living increases for retired educators.
O’Rourke also pledged his support for the Ports-to-Plains transport corridor and said Del Rio needs four-lane highways to connect it to the rest of the state.
“Del Rio, like so many parts of this state, this border, is taken for granted by those in power. If we win this election, we will start investing in ourselves right here,” he said.
O’Rourke said he would prioritize the lives of children, work toward common-sense gun laws, invest in health care, lift up public school educators, fund improvements to infrastructure and attract more and higher-paying jobs to the state.
O’Rourke called Abbott “the worst governor in the United States of America.”
He blasted Abbott’s “trigger law,” which outlaws abortions beginning at conception with no exceptions for rape or incest. O’Rourke promised “to fight for the right of women to have control of their own bodies, their own futures,” which drew resounding applause.
He also attacked Abbott’s handling of the statewide outages in the winter of 2021 “in the energy capital of the world.”
O’Rourke charged that Abbott “gas traders and pipeline CEOs” took $11 billion from Texas utility ratepayers over the five-day outage.
“Here is what we do after we win. Number one, we weatherize every single part of our grid so that it runs even when the temperature drops. Number two, we connect our grid, ERCOT, with the national grid so we can pull power when we need it and send it back when we want to sell the surplus, and number three, we get those $11 billion back that were stolen from us and return it to the rate payers of Texas to lower your utility bills going forward,” O’Rourke said.
O’Rourke said Abbott has had seven-and-a-half years to fix the state’s problems and has done nothing.
“You deserve a governor whose number one priority is you and your families, who does everything in his power to deliver for you,” O’Rourke said.
After speaking, O’Rourke answered questions from the audience on an array of topics ranging from immigration to mental health. He then took time to meet and take photos with everyone in the audience who wanted to meet him.
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Contact the author at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com
