By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

State representative candidates from District 50 headlined the group of national, state and county political candidates who spoke Monday night at the Pflugerville Community of Neighborhood Associations political forum in the Pflugerville Justice Center.

District 50 Republican candidate Pat McGuinness as well as incumbent Democratic Rep. Mark Strama were on hand to discuss their views on the economy, the job market, technology and education.

McGuinness, an engineer for a semi-conductor corporation said he was ready to help Texans tackle the tech challenges Americans will faces in the future.

“I’m running because I got concerned enough and opposed enough to what’s going on in Washington that I figured I need to stand up and do something a bit more,” McGuinness said.

He described himself as a principled conservative candidate for the district who has a different philosophy than Strama, who McGuinness said supports the Obama administration and many of its policies.

A self-proclaimed fiscal conservative, McGuinness said he supports policies that keep taxes and spending in check, grow the economy and promote excellence in education.

“As state representative, I’m going to be asking this question for every bill I vote on, ‘Will this help create jobs and build our prosperity?’ We’ve got to get that focus back, because we’ve lost it clearly,” he said.

McGuinness said the primary impediments to job creation have been policies coming out of Washington, referencing increased regulation and a growing deficit.

He said Texas has been the country’s top job creator because it’s stuck to that formula more than other states.

A proponent of lean government, McGuinness said there is a serious budget issue impending and pledged to oppose tax increases and increased spending.

“We are going to have to make tough decisions in the state budget, and that may mean some things that are pretty harsh for some people, but again, if we take a different path, it’s going to dig us into a deeper hole,” McGuinness said.

Part of his lean government policies include lowering property taxes and lowering the 10 percent appraisal cap to 5 percent.

To help small businesses he said he wants to expand the margins tax exemptions so small they can invest in helping grow the Texas economy.

In a state with one of the worst high school dropout rates in the country, McGuinness said he will look to instill high standards and solid curriculum in the public school system. He said Texas schools need better focus in the science, technology, engineering and math areas as well as more vocational education opportunities for students who aren’t ready for college.

“I’ve got a parent perspective on education. Parental involvement in education is so important to schools’ success. So we should empower parents to choose the best schools for their children and we should empower and reward the best teachers as well,” McGuinness said.

He said districts could better balance their annual budgets if they were free from mandates that don’t help students learn. He referenced the current inequities in the funding formulas under which Pflugerville gets less than $5,000 per student while smaller Jarrell gets $6,500 per student.

Touching on many of the same points as his competition, incumbent Mark Strama said the main reason employers are sitting on capital and not hiring is the fact that consumers are not spending money.

Strama attributed both corporate and consumer spending freezes to the precarious nature of partisan politics in Washington.

“The biggest reason I think that consumers aren’t spending money is because they look at Washington, D.C. today and they say ‘Those people can’t solve our problems; they can’t even talk to each other,’” Strama said. “I think there is real fear on the consumer end of disfunction in Washington D.C. and because of it, people are hoarding cash.”

Strama said Texas has always had a different kind of bipartisanship, referencing his own position as chair of the House committee on economic development. His position would be an anomaly in the U.S. House, where there are no leadership positions for minority party members.

He talked about his own bipartisan ideology that led to him supporting the current Republican Speaker of the Texas House, Joe Strauss from San Antonio.

Moving his focus from the national to the local economy, Strama said the ups and down in the Texas economy correlate directly with the price of oil.

“In 2008, when the state of Texas created more jobs than the rest of the country combined, the price of oil reached $146 a barrel. As painful as that was for us as consumers, it was good for the Texas economy and it was great for the state treasury. It was flooding money into this state. But it also represented a tipping point,” he said.

That tipping point was when global consumers, policy makers and federal government decided at that point to seriously turn in the direction of alternative energy, Strama said.

Strama said in a state where oil makes up 15 percent of the GDP, Texas can’t afford to be left behind in the rapid change affecting the energy sector.

“We have to lead it, not fight it,” he said.

Strama emphasized the importance of being a farsighted state, lest the free market will turn the Texas economy the way of the city of Detroit if Texans refuse to hedge their reliance on the fossil fuel industry.

“We’re happy about the way things are now, but complacency’s a killer,” he said.

Strama also talked some education points, particularly on the importance of not neglecting students ages zero to 4.

He said half of all Texas students are two years behind when they enter kindergarten because they need more stimulation at daycares. This early-prevention strategy would affect schools’ budgets because districts would spend less money remediating students who are playing catch-up to where they should already be.

Strama closed by citing some of the issues that have been his mainstays since joining the legislature, such as campaign finance reform and regulating redistricting.

“Money has a pernicious influence on the political system. It diminished the impact of voters. It undermines the principal of one person, one vote,” he said.

Texas has no limits on individual or PAC contributions to campaigns.

Every session he has introduced legislation to limit contributions and expenditures to independent campaigns to reduce the indebtedness of the politicians to the groups that give them money.

Another problem with the system is redistricting, he said.

“We have politicians choosing their voters rather than voters choosing their politicians,” he said.

He has also introduced legislation to strip legislators of the power to draw their own districts, he said.

“We should do these things to restore the power where it belongs – to the voters.”

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of candidate profiles represented at the PfCONA political forum.