Democratic candidate Roland Gutierrez calls for common sense solutions

Roland Gutierrez, one of the best known of more than a dozen Democratic candidates running in the Texas primary to oppose U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, made a stop in Amarillo Saturday to make his case to be the party choice.

Gutierrez, currently serving as the Texas Senator for District 19, has served in that capacity since 2021. He had previously been a member of the Texas House of Representatives and a member of the San Antonio City Council. He served as a state representative from 2008 to 2021.

His district, which includes Uvalde, fell victim to the 2022 Robb Elementary School Shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead. This tragedy has led to him becoming one of the most vocal opponents of the police response to the shooting and an advocate for better statewide gun control policies.

During the Amarillo event, Gutierrez spoke about his ambitions and what he hoped to achieve if elected to the U.S. Senate, emphasizing what he felt were the failures of Cruz and the contrast between his positions and Colin Alred, whom he claimed has changed many positions on the border and gun control. After taking questions from the crowd, Gutierrez spoke about his trek across Texas and how he stood out from the crowded field.

“We are broken in Texas with Republican policies that have broken education, health care, women’s reproductive rights and our schools,” Gutierrez said. “Loose Republican gun laws are killing our kids; we need to come back and fix these things. We need to have some commonsense gun solutions and reproductive rights for women in this state. We can do so much more if we look at our problems and work on facing them together.”

When asked about the images that have inundated social media and television that have moved the discussion of immigration to that of an invasion, Gutierrez says that there must be comprehensive immigration reform.

“If you want to fix the border, we need to fix our immigration program,” he said. “We need to create a country-of-origin program and a real worker visa for our farmers and ranchers that makes sense. We can work together to solve the crisis at the border. This would also help our economy, which would, in turn, supplement our social security."

When asked about the governor’s holding up state funding for schools to get his school voucher program passed, Gutierrez said that holding these funds hostage is wrong.

“He has kept our state money because he did not get his voucher program, a program that only helps 50,000 kids,” he said. “What about the other 5 million children? This program does not help children in Amarillo or any other areas of the Texas Panhandle at all. They are keeping our teachers from getting the pay raises they deserve and keeping our schools from getting the revenue needed to educate our children. This is hurting our teachers and children.”

Addressing the fentanyl crisis, Gutierrez said that 88% of the drug is produced in the United States, and the same percentage of arrests are actually American citizens.

“It's great that these guys want to scare us with migrants coming across with fentanyl on their backs, but it is not true,” he said. “We can solve what is happening on our border, but they would rather scare us then really solve these problems such as fixing healthcare and loose Republican gun laws that are killing our kids like those in Uvalde. These are not Republican or Democratic problems.”

Gutierrez spoke about coming to conservative areas to get out his message.

“We are going to talk to people and tell the truth; these are problems faced by everyone who has been screwed over with Republicans like Ted Cruz, who has had the backs of big corporations that do not want to protect us,” he said. “Their worldview is about money and power; mine is about helping everybody. We all just want a chance to put kids through school and keep them safe. We just want women to have reproductive rights. If we can do this together, we can make our state truly a place where we all want to live, enjoy and prosper.”

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Democratic candidate Roland Gutierrez speaks in Amarillo