Neither candidate appears up for the challenge
You have to have a lot of hutzpah to run as a Republican in the congressional district drawn with an overwhelming Democratic majority and long held by U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. And the two candidates facing each other in the primary certainly have that.
Lana Centonze, 51, is an immigrant and former federal officer, with years of experience at the international airport in the district, where she said she saw the inner workings and failures of our immigration system. She resigned from that job in order to run on a campaign around defending the border, investing in infrastructure, setting term limits and promoting the Texas conservative version of parental rights. She doesn't live in the district, just across from it, but she says she's motivated to serve it. She was reluctant to share specific policy ideas for fear that they would be stolen by her opponent, but when pushed she said she'd do away with birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants and wants to help small businesses flourish.
Aaron Hermes, 45, by contrast was not at all shy about sharing his ideas. He does live in the district and is perhaps better known as a sitar player. But he's hoping to win votes with his platform of human rights — by that he seems to mean: You have a right to do anything as long as you're not hurting anyone. He wants to eliminate income taxes for the bottom half of earners, legalize marijuana and require hand-marked paper ballots and receipts in elections as well as open source software to record
votes.
Our decision not to endorse comes down to beliefs espoused by both candidates that show a troubling disconnect with established facts or the demeanor we think is necessary to participate in governing. Hermes called
most of his would-be colleagues “idiots” and suggested Jan. 6 was in fact a “fedsurrection” — the idea that federal agents incited the violence that day. When asked about the possible need to clarify exceptions to abortion bans when a mother's life is in danger, Centonze went so far as to say that there would never realistically be a need for a medical exemption since modern medicine is advanced enough to avoid all life-threatening situations for mothers, citing her own high-risk pregnancy. And while Hermes said he would support exceptions in limited circumstances to save the mother's life, he also said he believes the emergency contraception Plan B counts as abortion.
We believe every race, no matter how blue or red the district, deserves a good challenger, but we don't think either of these candidates are up for the challenge. We try to avoid nonendorsements, but we see no benefit to voters in recommending affable yet unpredictable candidates who ultimately stand very little chance of winning the general election.