White seeking to sell interest in border-security company
AUSTIN — Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew White, facing continuing controversy over his ownership in a Houston company with border-security ties, said Tuesday that he plans to sell the firm.
White, who was confronted at a Sunday political town hall in Austin about his ownership of Geovox Security Inc., said he has been trying to sell the company for three months and plans to do so if he becomes the nominee in a May 22 runoff.
White is facing former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez, who has been facing questions of her own about her enforcement of federal immigration laws. Those questions were raised at the same forum.
“I want to be above reproach,” White told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday. “Nothing else that I have interests in markets to the government. … I am marketing the business, have been for the last three months or so, and I plan to sell it before the general election.”
Asked about his ownership in the company Sunday, White had insisted the technology is being used in several countries to curb sex trafficking along with border-smuggling interdiction “to protect people’s lives” by detecting them inside trucks, rather than have them die in summer heat.
Latino activists who sponsored the Jolt the Vote forum were unconvinced, even though they later gave White their endorsement over Valdez, the first Latina to run for governor in Texas.
Geovox sells electronic devices that can detect heartbeats and has been used in border-security operations to detect the presence of people inside semitrailers at border checkpoints.
Both White and Valdez have supported defunding the state’s $800 million border-security initiative supported by Gov. Greg Abbott and the GOP-controlled Legislature, and using that money instead to pay for improved public education, health care and other initiatives.
White said he came to own the company in the 1990s with his late father, former Gov. Mark White, and that it makes up “a very small part” of his business portfolio. Texas’ prison system bought the technology years ago to detect convicts trying to escape inside delivery trucks, and federal officials have said it has been effective in busting humansmuggling rings.