The Chron has been doing endorsements a few days a week, one at a time, in no particular order. Here are three recent ones, to catch up a bit.
Marquette Greene-Scott
Marquette Greene-Scott says she never got to know the version of her father that her older siblings remember growing up in Louisiana — the active, loving parent who would walk his kids to school, provide for his family and do “everything that a father would do.”
The father she knew was the man who came back from fighting in the Vietnam War a shell of his former self: traumatized, irritable and abusive. That experience has shaped Greene-Scott’s advocacy for veterans and their families, an issue she has made a pillar of her long-shot Democratic campaign against incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls.
“It’s so important to me that we understand the sacrifices that military families make,” she told the editorial board. “I sacrificed my father for this country, nobody’s going to tell me I’m not patriotic.”
Greene-Scott’s perspective is an interesting contrast to Nehls, 56, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq and is running for his third term in Congress.
While that experience would seemingly give him an edge on veterans issues, Nehls has come under fire for wearing a Combat Infantryman Badge that he allegedly didn’t earn. A CBS News investigation found that Nehls’ Combat Infantryman Badge for his service in Afghanistan was rescinded due to the fact that he served as a civil affairs officer and not as an infantryman or Special Forces soldier. Yet Nehls continued to wear his Combat Infantryman Badge pin on his suit jacket, sparking accusations of “stolen valor” from several House Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, his colleague in the Texas delegation and an Iraq war veteran.
While Nehls finally stopped wearing the pin in June, rather than take accountability, he blamed the “dishonest media.” For Greene-Scott, 53, Nehls wearing a medal he wasn’t awarded personally offends her. Her father was a combat infantryman and “suffered as a result of it,” she said.
My interview with Marquette Green-Scott from the primary is here. She’s a fine candidate, she would be a breath of fresh air after a one-note wingnut like Rep. Troy Nehls. She hasn’t raised much money, which is unfortunate. CD22 is not likely to be competitive, but I hope it will show some improvement from 2020 and maybe put itself on the “districts to watch” for the future list.
Chase West
In May, Katy-area state Rep. Mike Schofield shared a message on his Facebook page saluting teachers’ “tireless efforts” as part of Teacher Appreciation Week. His otherwise sleepy page with posts from chambers of commerce gatherings, holiday celebrations and charity events earned just as many thumbs up as it did angry and laughing emojis.
The Republican incumbent has voted in support of “vouchers,” the concept of paying Texas parents public money to send their kids to private schools. In a session where increased public school funding was largely derailed by Gov. Greg Abbott’s obsessive quest to bring vouchers to Texas, Schofield’s appreciation of teachers came up a few dollars short.
That’s not to say he did nothing for education last session. He reached across the aisle to co-author a bill with state Rep. Jon Rosenthal, D-Houston, that would’ve allowed benefits for retired teachers to at least keep pace with inflation. Instead, they got a one-time, cost-of-living bump thanks to a generous state budget surplus.
Perhaps the most notable law he championed was a bill that returned Harris County’s elections to the county clerk, doing away with the short-lived, and troubled, county election administrator position. While some worried the bill was a partisan effort to meddle in local autonomy over elections, we believe restoring the elections to the capable hands of the Harris County clerk, Democrat Teneshia Hudspeth, has been a positive change so far. Schofield, 60, was also part of the sponsor pile-on that pushed through restrictions and penalties on “sexually oriented” performances. Beyond that, his record of recent successes skews far wonkier and niche.
When Democratic challenger Chase West looks at Schofield’s record, he sees a legislator divorced from the concerns he hears most while campaigning across the 132nd District, including education.
West has run before but, this time, with experience as a substitute teacher in Katy ISD, the 42-year-old said he’s really focused on helping struggling public school districts. In nearby Cy-Fair ISD, the budget tightening has tilted toward the extreme: deep cuts to the district’s librarians and fewer bus routes that have left some students walking much farther to get to school.
“There are kids that are walking up to 2 miles to and from school in the heat, rain, whatever,” West told the editorial board. He’s even gone to the school board meeting to share his concerns.
Our schools and students shouldn’t be in this position, West says. We agree. Teacher Appreciation Week should last longer than a week.
I interviewed Chase West for the 2022 primary, which you can listen to here. HD132 was made more Republican in the 2021 redistricting, and wasn’t particularly close in 2022, but I do expect things to be better this year. West has raised a little bit of money; with a good third quarter he could have enough resources to run something resembling a campaign. This district could be interesting in a strong Democratic year, but as with CD22 I’ll be hoping for an improvement to make it more of a target down the line.
Marisela Jimenez
Texas House District 150, which includes Spring and Klein, has been solidly Republican since it was created in the early 1980s. Just three representatives have filled the seat, including incumbent Valoree Swanson. The Spring area lawmaker won her most recent election with roughly 61% of the vote.
But Democrat Marisela “MJ” Jimenez still sees an opportunity.
“The community is radically different,” Jimenez said of the four-decade-old district, “not just demographically, but economically.”
A naturalized citizen born in Mexico, Jimenez, 47, wants to represent people she feels are currently left behind in the increasingly diverse area. Having lived all over the country, the management and public administration professional has a varied background working for private, government and nonprofit entities, including reporting to high-ranking military officers on a base in Hawaii. She moved to the district only four years ago but says it was her experience elsewhere that allowed her to see what she and her neighbors in unincorporated communities were missing out on as they dealt with aging infrastructure, underfunded schools and public safety gaps.
“That’s not what I was used to,” Jimenez told the editorial board.
Even though a state representative has limited jurisdiction to directly provide the services Jimenez highlighted as lacking, she argued that as the face of the district, a lawmaker’s ability to collaborate with other officials to get things done can make a difference at the local level.
She’s never held elected office and, in conversation, seemed a little light on the ins and outs of the legislative process that could help advance her agenda: funding public schools, advancing women’s reproductive rights and reforming immigration policies, among other priorities.
We believe she’s still a better candidate for the district than the incumbent, who has spent too much of her four terms in office advancing what we called a “divisive, even dangerous” agenda in the 2022 primary.
Jimenez was unopposed in the primary and I confess I had paid no attention to this race before I read this endorsement op-ed. Swanson, who like the other Republicans in these races didn’t show up for the endorsement interview, is a wingnut’s wingnut, who won her seat by out-crazying Debbie Riddle. HD150 is not competitive, though as with the rest of Harris County not nearly as red as it once was. That may someday catch up to Valoree Swanson, but this is not the year that will happen. I wish MJ Jimenez all the best, she’s doing good work in a tough district.
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This entry was posted in Election 2024 and tagged CD22, Chase West, Congress, Election 2024, endorsements, HD132, HD150, Marisela Jimenez, Marquette Greene-Scott, Texas, The Lege. Bookmark the permalink.
The only good thing I can say about Nehls is that he’s not Boebert or MTG levels of embarrassing. Although not through a lack of trying.
@Fly…. Don’t sell Nehls – he’s certainly doing his darndest.