State Sen. Roland Gutierrez drawing strength from Uvalde tragedy in US Senate campaign

For state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, the shock and tragedy at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last year were the beginning of his arduous U.S. Senate bid.

The San Antonio Democrat, who kicked off his campaign to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in July, is an experienced legislator representing Senate District 19, which covers a wide swath of South Texas and the U.S.-Mexico border.

Beyond the bloodshed on May 24, 2022, when an 18-year-old gunman shot and killed 19 elementary school students and two teachers and injured more than a dozen others, Gutierrez said the failure of government to adequately respond to the violence weighed heavy on his decision to enter the race.

More: How a false tale of police heroism in Uvalde spread and unraveled

"I saw it all, I saw all those dead kids," Gutierrez remembered. "No one should ever see a dead child like this."

He reviewed hours of body cam footage and remembered the moment the school doors were thrown open and people saw for the first time the carnage left in the gunman's wake — in seconds, he said, grown men began to weep and vomit.

"It was the most gruesome thing you've ever seen in your life," Gutierrez said. "From all of that pain, I saw what our government did, which was pretty much nothing ... and we need to do more than that. So, from that moment, I took what this campaign is all about."

"People are in pain," he added. "They're in pain, for sure, and we need to do better."

Growing up in the 'Mexican Brady Bunch'

Gutierrez was born and raised in San Antonio by immigrant parents. His father arrived in the United States at only 17 years old and met his mother, who died when Gutierrez was still a child.

After his mother's death, he was raised by his stepmother, who moved to the U.S. from Mexico along with her children. They were all eventually adopted by Gutierrez's father.

"We were like the Mexican Brady Bunch," he remembered with a laugh.

Gutierrez's father worked various jobs but eventually worked his way up to branch manager for an insurance company, an accomplishment he took great pride in being a first-generation immigration with only a third-grade education.

"For my father," he said, "that was truly his American Dream."

Gutierrez graduated from law school at St. Mary's in San Antonio and launched his first political campaign for San Antonio City Council in 2001. He lost by 50 votes and later lost a bid for a seat on the Bexar County Commissioners Court to "entrenched political families."

In 2005, he ran for City Council again and won with the support of the local police union. Gutierrez won again in 2007 and then made the move to the Texas House of Representatives in 2008 before moving to the Texas Senate in 2021.

"The rest, as they say, is history," he said.

Gutierrez joins crowded field of Texas Democrats

Gutierrez is far from the only Democrat looking to take on Cruz in next year's General Election — nearly a dozen Democrats are set to appear on next year's Super Tuesday ballot, including San Antonio law professor Steven Keough and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, who has seemingly emerged as the frontrunner in the primary race.

With Allred's current ties in Washington, which early on garnered him the backing of El Paso's U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, Gutierrez will have an uphill battle to win the Democratic nomination in March, but he noted that he's got endorsements of his own.

More: U.S. Rep. Colin Allred receives Borderland endorsements in bid to oust U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz

"I think we've got substantially more endorsements than he does," Gutierrez said. "That said, that's not how you win — you win by working hard and I'm going to work harder than Colin Allred, I'm going to work harder than Ted Cruz."

Gutierrez has picked up around 40 endorsements over the last few weeks, including from former El Paso state Sen. Jose Rodriguez, El Paso state Rep. Claudia Ordaz, El Paso County Commissioner David Stout and El Paso city Rep. Art Fierro.

But while that support is a key element to any successful political campaign, Gutierrez concedes that he's behind the curve in the race, especially as "people in Washington have already made their decision about who will win."

"We are going to continue to talk to people across this state about the things that matter most to them," Gutierrez said. "We're certainly the tortoise in this one, but the tortoise won. I'm going to win this thing."

Gutierrez 'not sure' who Cruz represents

Cruz, who has represented Texas in the U.S. Senate since 2013, has raised the ire of Texas Democrats for years —whether his staunchly conservative views, his jaunt to Mexico as most of Texas weathered a blizzard-induced blackout, his extreme anti-immigrant views and, most recently, his opposition to a measure to keep the government running — but so far the party has had no luck in unseating him.

Former presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke came close in 2018, being edged out by a margin of only 2.6%, but Democrats remain stymied in unseating. Gutierrez believes the time is now.

"We need a senator who is going to be there for all Texans," Gutierrez said. ""His constituents are hurting. When you go to the grocery story and see that people have to make real big decisions about what kind of food they can buy, that's hard. Ted Cruz and people like him have no clue how people are having to deal with this at home."

Among Cruz's greatest offenses, Gutierrez mused, were his votes against the Build Back Better Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and a rural broadband bill, each of which represented hundreds of millions in federal dollars for Texas.

"This guys votes against the things that are good for us," Gutierrez said. "Not only did he vote against (the Inflation Reduction Act), he joined a group of people that are suing the government saying that was illegal. Whose side are you on, man?"

"Ted Cruz, I'm not sure who he represents," he continued. "He doesn't represent Democrats, I don't think he represents Republicans, and he certainly doesn't represent Texas."

AR15 restrictions, health care access and immigration reform

With the senseless violence in Uvalde still front and center in his mind, one of Gutierrez's main priorities if elected to the U.S. Senate would be an assault weapons ban.

"We need to talk about an assault-weapons ban with exceptions," he said. "I don't want to take anybody's rifle away — if they've got them, they've got them — but we need to have an assault-weapons ban and we need it right now."

For Gutierrez, it is the AR15, which has been used in numerous mass shooting across the U.S., that is of specific concern.

"That assault weapon, that particular assault weapon, people should understand that AR15 is actually the M16 that was used during Vietnam," he said. "That's not hyperbole, that's a fact."

"My whole life, I've gone hunting and fishing," Gutierrez added, "and you just don't need this for that."

But Gutierrez believes more should be done to address the culture of violence that continues to plague America, including raising the age limit to 21 to purchase a firearm, implementing universal background checks on firearms purchases and adopting extreme risk orders, which he said would go a long way in ensuring dangerous people don't have ready access to firearms.

"If you see some kid that buys an AR15 one day and buys 900 rounds of ammunition the next day and buys another AR15 the next," he said, "surely there's something going on there."

Extreme risk policies, he said, have wide support among both Democrats and Republicans.

Beyond gun laws, however, Gutierrez also has his eye on ensuring that Texans never have to suffer through a blizzard without electricity as they did in February 2021 when more than 75% of the state faced rolling blackouts for days resulting in at least 246 deaths.

To avoid that end in the future, Gutierrez is calling for the state to tie onto regional power grids.

"We have to tie onto the eastern and western grid and get rid of (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas) altogether," Gutierrez said. "El Paso never saw a blackout, East Texas never saw a blackout, but the vast majority of Texas saw rolling blackouts and (hundreds) died."

More: Electricity primer: Not being connected to rest of Texas helped El Paso in cold wave

Gutierrez also plans to push for a single-payer health care system in the U.S., which is currently among the only advanced industrialized countries in the world to not offer such a program.

"Health care is a human right," Gutierrez said. "It's one of those things we can't do for ourselves. We can't fix ourselves when we're sick, especially if we have a serious malady. We have created a health care system that digs deep into the pocket of working-class families. That is a situation that is untenable."

"I will continue to talk about that issue and try to find solutions," he added.

Gutierrez likewise has his eye on the U.S.-Mexico border, calling for a pathway to citizenship and residency for arriving migrants, including all Dreamers.

That move alone, he said, could fill 32 million jobs in the United States, which continues to struggle bringing people into the workforce.

"The fact is, we need to solve this problem," said, Gutierrez, an immigration attorney. "The vast majority of these people are coming here because they want work and opportunity."

Gutierrez called for establishing immigration kiosks in Latin American countries where migrants could find and apply for jobs before ever arriving in the states.

"Just imagine that — you go in there, you find a job, you interview online, they like you and you like them ... and now that company in Omaha, Nebraska, is going to give you a job," Gutierrez mused. "And you're never going to see a line for a cartel. Imagine a program like that."

"Anything you can think of, I'm trying to find a solution to the problem," he continued. "But people would rather kick this political football back and forth and it's disgusting."

No matter the challenge, from beating back the frontrunner and unseating the incumbent to pushing unpopular legislation in a hyper-partisan environment, Gutierrez continues to pull strength from his community's greatest tragedy.

"We've got to keep pounding rock," he said. "This is an ambition for me. That moment, and the weeks that followed and the months that followed after Uvalde ... have led me to this point. When you take a good look and what we've done and what we haven't done ... I've got to do everything I can to make this thing better for (my kids) and better for everyone else."

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Democratic Texas Sen. Roland Gutierrez looking to move to US Senate