San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Dems’ Senate hopefuls take aim at Cornyn
WASHINGTON — With two U.S. Senate candidates who generally agree on most policy matters — as Saturday night’s debate made clear — the July 14 Democratic runoff is essentially a choice of who can turn out the votes needed to defeat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in November.
State Sen. Royce West, who has served nearly three decades in the Texas Legislature and would be the state’s first black senator, said he can build a multiracial coalition that Democrats need to win statewide.
“I’m going to keep on working as hard as I have been,” said West, who leaned on his experience in the Legislature throughout the debate. With the coronavirus outbreak, mass unemployment and political unrest over the killing of African-Americans by police, West said it’s an historic moment.
“This is a perfect storm — a perfect, historic storm,” he said. “And people are tired of being tired and they’re fed up of being fed up. The fact is we’re going to see people turn out. We’re going to see a coalition as we have seen in these protests — between Anglos, African-Americans, Asians, Latinos — that will come together.”
Then there is MJ Hegar, who has pitched herself as a political outsider and motorcycle-riding “badass” aiming to take on political cronyism she says Cornyn represents. She said Democrats can’t take “groups for granted and assume they’re going to support us.”
“We need to earn everybody’s support,” said Hegar, who said with Cornyn’s approval rating at just 37 percent in one recent poll,
Democrats have an opportunity — but not a “guarantee.”
“I’m going to seize on that opportunity by connecting with every community across the state and making sure that I’m giving them a reason to vote and that they understand that I hear them, that I’m going to take their solutions and their ideas and their challenges and their struggles — which are also mine — to D.C.” Hegar said, saying she plans to follow the same game plan that led to her a surprise near-victory in a deep-red congressional district north of Austin in 2018.
West and Hegar emerged from a crowded Democratic primary field earlier this year, with Hegar leading the pack with 22 percent of the vote. West finished with 14.5 percent, drawing more than 143,000 fewer votes than Hegar. Hegar, meanwhile, held a massive lead over West in a Dallas Morning News-University of Texas at Tyler poll released in May, up 32 percent to West’s 16 percent.
Hegar has drawn national support — from Senate Democrats in D.C. and major groups like EMILY’s List and gun safety organizations, as well as prominent progressives such as U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren. West has drawn key endorsements from the Congressional Black Caucus and Carol Moseley Braun, the first black woman to serve in the Senate, while building a robust slate of backers within Texas, including nearly every Democrat in the legislature and most other Democratic senate candidates.
On Saturday night, the two met face to face for the first time in the runoff for an hour-long debate that touched on police violence, racial inequality and the coronavirus.
“We don’t have a few poison apples, we have a plague of locusts that have come through the orchard,” Hegar said of police violence. The militarization of police is wrong, she said. “You’re not doing them any favors, because the civilian population will respond like they’re at war.”
“You begin to think about what’s going on,” West said of the protests. “We’re finally getting to the point where we can harness that energy so we can effectuate change.”
The candidates tackled perennial issues, as well, like energy and the environment, education and health care.
There were very few moments when the two disagreed. And when they did it was mild. West said he supports two years of free college and some student debt forgiveness. Hegar was less certain saying cost was “part of my hesitation.” West said he would support a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing until we know more about the chemicals it uses and how it impacts the environment. Hegar again was less certain, saying she supports “aggressive action on climate change” and is in favor of moving in that direction “as soon as we can do it safely, as soon as we can do it without overburdening the economically disadvantaged.”
Cornyn’s campaign hit at
Hegar for not staking out clear positions on some of those issues.
“At least Radical Royce owned up to his radical agenda to change Texas,” John Jackson, Cornyn’s campaign manager, said in response to the debate. “At some point, Hollywood Hegar will need to tell Texans where she stands on banning fracking, reparations and defunding ICE. Considering her endorsement of Elizabeth Warren, we can only conclude that she supports all of these things but doesn’t want Texans to know.”
The Democrats were laser-focused on Cornyn throughout the night, with neither candidate addressing the other at any point.
“He’s followed Donald Trump frankly off the cliff,” West said at one point. “We need to make sure we have someone in Washington who will take care of Texas values.”
Hegar on multiple occasions accused Cornyn of legislating at the whim of donors.
“As long as John Cornyn is cashing gun lobby checks, he’s going to be legislating in their best interest,” she said.
Whichever Democrat emerges will go up against the three-term senator and his nearly $13 million campaign fund.