By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

The race for governor stopped in Pflugerville on Monday night as gubernatorial candidate Bill White spoke to a packed Justice Center alongside Gov. Rick Perry’s senior campaign advisor and PISD school board candidates. Mayor Pro Tem Victor Gonzales noted White is the first gubernatorial candidate to campaign in Pflugerville in 40 years.

Tina Benkiser represented Perry at the forum organized by the Pflugerville Community of Neighborhood Associations, but the night’s clear headliner was the former mayor of Houston, Democrat White, who spoke and answered questions from both PfCONA and the audience, while picking at points from Benkiser’s speech, which touted Texas’ strengths and indicted Washington lawmakers.

“Texas is very strong, it’s free and it’s prosperous due to republican leadership and conservative government,” Benkiser said, adding that Texas had weathered the recession well, citing it as one of only six states with a balanced budget. “In the midst of the potential for budget fall if our tax revenue drops, there’s really only two ways to handle that. You either cut spending to match available funds, or you raise taxes. Now Governor Perry, Lieutenant Governor [David] Dewhurst, and speaker [Joe] Straus have made it very clear which of those two choices they’ll have. In fact they’ve gone ahead and told every state agency to find a way to reduce their spending by at least 5 percent.”

White criticized the legitimacy of Perry’s cut-across-the-board management method.

“I’ve run businesses. No business does across the board. You set your priorities; you find out where you can find efficiencies; you do it from the bottom up,” White said. “That’s the way I’ll approach state government.”

Another point of contention between the two parties was education. Benkiser praised the state of Texas public schools under Perry and warned of the risk of federal intrusion.

“Obama wants to indoctrinate our children by having states abandon their own standards and actually conform to federal standards. Now Texas standards are currently set by the elected State Board of Education and we’re way ahead of most states in setting college and career preparedness standards,” she said. “Texas has been recognized as a leader among states in insuring that its young people complete their education. In fact Texas has a nearly 90 percent completion rate, with 79.1 graduating on time, 8.9 staying to complete their degree, another 1.5 who get GEDs.”

White said Perry’s numbers don’t quite add up, and is concerned that Texas students are falling behind.

“There were 3.2 million young people in high school classes that were due to graduate in the last 8 years in Texas. Two point one million graduated in four years and the rest there’s no accounting for – 3.2 to 2.1 – Governor Perry says that’s a 10 percent dropout rate?” White said, adding that Texans should treat their declining rate of college completion as an emergency. “Texas is different from other countries and many other states, in that our younger workforce, 25 to 35 (year olds) – and this is per a commission that the Governor appointed – has a smaller percentage of college degrees than 35 to 45 or 45 to 55. Well that’s eating our seed corn, and that effects all of us.”

On environmental issues, Benkiser noted Perry’s commitment to keep federal regulations from hindering the work and prosperity of Texans in industries from farming to oil, citing Perry’s lawsuit with the Texas (agricultural) commissioner and attorney general against the Environmental Protection Agency over its endangerment findings about greenhouse gas emissions.

“The EPA actually outsourced its scientific, and I use that term broadly, assessment to the International Panel on Climate Change, which of course has now quite frankly been discredited by a good bit of evidence. Key scientists’ objectivity, trying to hide their data, violation of freedom of information laws and the like. Well the EPA’s decision actually has huge regulatory and financial burdens on our state, specifically on our farmers, our ranchers, our small businesses, and the energy sector that employs hundreds of thousands of Texans,” Benkiser said.

While discussing his achievements as Houston’s mayor, which White said include cutting crime to lowest level in decades and tripling the number of community health clinics to take pressure off of emergency rooms, he also talked about his commitment to the environment.

“I had to go get a law firm to donate its services for free to fight the plan for 12 fast tracked coal fired power plants that were right in this air shed where Governor Perry said if we didn’t have them we’d have blackouts by now. And then when the company changed its mind, he changed his mind,” White said. “We need to use clean fuel. We don’t need more pollution because we need, in order to build this state, jobs for the future of our skilled workers. We don’t want people not coming to this state because they’re concerned about the asthma.”

Benkiser and White closed out their statements by addressing the controversial health care issue. Perry has filed a lawsuit with Attorney General Greg Abbott challenging the constitutionality of recent health care legislation.

“Now as I sit and watch Washington and I think as they lie, as liberty dies. That D.C. leaders really do continue their quest for unprecedented power grabs all over the country. They took our banks, they took our automobiles, now they want our lives, our gas, our guns and most importantly our children,” Benkiser said. “As a Houstonian I have lived under both of our choices, and I prefer leadership that believes in people rather than government, that understands that people make better decisions with their money than government does, and most importantly realizes that for people to truly realize the American dream, government has to stay out of their way.”

White said he would have to consult with attorneys about Perry’s suit before he could determine if it holds water. What he could say, however, is that certain people, especially military veterans deserve federal aid for their medical care.

“When I heard our current governor say to a national audience a couple of days ago that he wanted to make the federal government inconsequential to the lives of Americans – I sure think there’s a lot of disabled veterans that don’t want it to be inconsequential to their lives. You know what I’m saying?” He asked his opponent’s representative. “I guess really what I’m saying is, I’m tired of rhetoric and I want results. I want somebody who shoots straight that uses common sense. I was someone to bring us people together. The career politicians take all the credit while all the ordinary people do all the work and it’s been that way for a long time, and we need to move on from that in our great state.”

jrincon@pflugervillepflag.com