Bulla highlights differences between her and her opponents in House District 87 race

In the race for the Texas House 87th District Seat, Cindi Bulla wants to stand out for her advocacy for the Texas Panhandle during her time as a real estate broker in her race.

Bulla said she grew up in Plainview as the daughter of a farm equipment salesman but left home at 16 years old to journey out on her own. She has lived in Amarillo since the early 1980s. When she arrived in Amarillo, she worked in the banking industry, which made her familiar with the real estate business, which led to her opening her real estate firm in 2006. Bulla has served as the state chairperson of the Realtors Association in 2020 and as the national vice president in 2023.

She said that she is immensely proud of her advocacy to have real estate designated an essential service during the COVID-19 pandemic and her work with former congressperson Mac Thornberry and his work to help local farmers and their water sources.

With the Texas Legislature in a constant battle over education vouchers over the last four special legislative sessions, Bulla said that she does not support universal school vouchers or a voucher program with no accountability. She said she supports school choice, with a system that allows parents to send their children to their choice of schools in the district.

“I have a very critical interest in making sure that we have robust public schools in every geographic region of Texas, including the many rural schools in the Panhandle,” Bulla said. “I would always push back on someone saying that my taxes should not pay for public schools because I have no children in the school system. Public schools are in the best interest of Texas, period. I can relate to that argument if we are funding private schools. Even a private school student’s well-being depends on Texas public schools doing an excellent job. The public school system touches every piece of Texas.”

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She said that while she sees issues in the public schools, labeling all public schools as indoctrination centers is wrong, and issues should be addressed at the Texas Education Association.

“Teaching students to critically think about everything they do as they learn all the basics of history, math, science and language objectively is so essential for our state’s future,” Bulla said. “Our public school system is the backbone of our state’s education; when Texans see something broken, they fix it rather than abandon it. Local control and oversight are important.”

Bulla says that while she is a conservative Christian, she does not agree with state tax dollars funding religious private schools.

“Our founders established some separation between the church and state; this wasn't to protect the state but the church,” she said. “I am not opposed to children and teachers respecting their own religious beliefs in these public spaces, but writing public tax dollar checks to private institutions is a slope that is dangerous to all religions. I see this as a threat to all who practice their own religion. Public tax dollars should not be supporting the private religious schools.”

Her top priority in representing the district is to advocate for better control of the border and the influx of migrants coming into the state illegally.

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“This is a threat to our health care, public school, private nonprofits and to our personal safety,” Bulla said. “It is egregious what has happened at the border, and we need to be able to control access to our borders. Texas taxpayers have been on the hook for millions to billions of dollars trying to do their part to secure the border. Closing the border and immigration reform have been conflated with both issues that need to be addressed, but they are not one in the same. Too often, we have seen our legislature tie one issue to another, which hurts the solution to another.”

She said that this was the case with the Texas Legislature fighting on school vouchers with school funding being held up by this issue.

“This is why I am running; we have to be more transparent and honest with the taxpayer,” she said. “We have to trust them to understand the nuances of these legislative battles. A voucher disagreement should not be construed as one is working against the governor.”

Bulla said she faced pushback because her organization supported one Democrat who supported an agenda that was good for all Texans. She said the support was about furthering a conservative proposal not supported by a specific political party. Emphasizing that her organization has staunchly supported conservatives during her time, Bulla said this is being used as a dishonest attack.

The top issue facing the Texas Panhandle for Bulla is making sure there is a preservation of the water table that is greatly needed by the farmers, ranchers, industry and cities for their lifeline.

“We have short-term issues that we are trying to address very responsibly by trying to preserve our water table,” she said. “We have local control water districts, where we can at a local level self-impose preservation standards to sustain our water supply. In the long range, we have great scientific developments that can make desalination practicable and affordable to increase the available water further. We have an abundance of briny water that could sustain the water need for the area.”

Bulla said that while we are not there, scientific development is moving rapidly and must be encouraged to provide food, fuel and fiber to the state and nation.

“There is a small window where the aquifer may not sustain us until desalination is available, so it's in the state's best interest to do what they can to fill that gap and bring this technology as soon as possible,” Bulla said. “Our water is so important to our economy, and we must make the best use of our resources.”

Citing her personal expertise based on her lifetime of experience, Bulla emphasized that she has a history of advocating local state and national positions that affect real estate and other businesses in the region.

“I have worked with all groups to find a common interest to bring parties together to achieve positive results on public policy,” she said. “If you look up broker, it means someone that brings disparate interests together. So, a tremendous amount of my expertise has been in finding ways to unite groups. We have so many industries in the area, and we need someone who can have these difficult conversations to do what is best for all of us."

When asked if she was concerned about all the endorsements and money that her opponent, Caroline Fairly, has received from politicians that her father has given money to or endorsed, Bulla said that it would be prudent for those who endorsed to state their reasoning for voters to have a better understanding of those endorsements. "I urge people to vote in their best interests,” she said.

“People have seen my work ethic and my work in action. We do not need someone with no experience representing a region that is so important to the state,” she said. "I have been working for over 15 years on policy and for the area to prepare me for this moment. The future of our district is so important that we need someone who knows the region and will serve its interests best.”

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Cindi Bulla cites her experience, expertise in District 87 race