Students meet Senate hopeful Ruben Cortez

Democratic hopeful for the Texas Senate and Brownsville native Ruben Cortez attended One-to-One with UTRGV students on Nov. 21.

The event, hosted by Texas Rising, aims to help student voters become acquainted with the candidates’ views.

Students voiced their concerns with the Senate hopeful regarding abortion, health care, education, gun laws, LGBTQ rights, legalization of marijuana and immigration laws.

Cortez currently serves on the Texas State Board of Education and said he plans to implement those same principles in the Senate.

The Senate hopeful said he believes in a bottom up approach, going to the classroom first to see first hand what implementations need to be made in the boardroom. Cortez said he will carry out this philosophy in the Senate, if elected.

Asked why he decided to run for public office, Cortez replied, “As I’ve been able to see what goes on in Austin, I get outraged and, believe me, deciding to run against this guy who’s gonna raise millions of dollars is not an easy decision to come to because I’m gonna be outspent 10, 15 to one. I’m not afraid of his money because I believe people are ready. I think people are concerned.”

One in 10 voters this election cycle will be 18 years old, according to Cortez, and for this reason he said, “That means the younger generation, all of you guys, those 25 and under, you guys can make such an impact in this race and being able to connect with you guys is critical.”

The Senate hopeful said an advantage that he has is that he has already been elected in this Senate district three times, which means voters approve of him.

Student Ofelia Alonso, a field coordinator for Texas Rising, asked Cortez what he would do if elected to make sure women in the Rio Grande Valley receive proper reproduction and abortion care.

He replied, “If I’m fortunate enough to win this Texas Senate District 27, I would be a strong advocate to make sure that women have the opportunity. I don’t think that a woman’s right should be infringed by the state of Texas.”

In regard to universal health care, Cortez said a family, undocumented or not, should never have to decide between taking their child to the doctor or putting food on the table.

“In communities like this, that are amongst the poorest if not the poorest, according to the U.S. Census, there’s so much that we could do to create these opportunities and create the opportunity for health care, which should be a basic human right,” Cortez said. “I would absolutely stand in favor of it and would champion it at any legislation I could.”

The Senate hopeful supports the LGBTQ community and said, “Whatever I can do to champion civil liberties not to be restricted and to help reinstate some of these things that Eddie Lucio [Jr.] has fought hard for, including discrimination to disenfranchise a group of people, I
will do everything in my power to undo that.”

Using the example of incumbent Eddie Lucio Jr., students asked Cortez how they can ensure that he will be able to separate his religious ideologies from decision making in the Senate.

“The last time I checked, God’s doors were open to everybody. If he’s made these choices and he blames it on his religion, I think, that’s a cop-out,” Cortez said.

Cortez said in his current position he pushes to keep politics out of the classroom and that same idea transfers to his beliefs that, “My personal view and my ideology should have nothing to do with my decision making.”

In regard to education, Cortez said the Texas State Board of Education is already working on how to address accurate sex education in schools for LGBTQ students.

“As students are coming into their identity, they need to be able to have these conversations. … We need to have real discussions and abstinence-only is not the way to go,” Cortez said. “We need to have medically accurate information that is available to our students and that is something that I’m directly fighting for currently.”

With the recent school shooting in California, student Fernando Alonso, a physics sophomore, asked the Democratic hopeful, “What will you do in terms of gun reform and also would you agree that we need to barricade schools and basically militarize them?”

Cortez replied that it is traumatic enough for students to have to do active shooter drills today and that he does not believe that schools should be militarized.

“More guns in schools isn’t the solution and yet, [Eddie Lucio Jr.] is one of the primary reasons we have the martial school program from the original legislation,” he said. “We need to have a real heart-to-heart discussion in this state about common-sense gun reform.”

Cortez said he is not in favor of arming educators with weapons and said too many people having guns in schools is not a solution.

Cortez commented on Sen. Lucio’s failure to meet with organizations saying, “we need a senator who’s gonna be there for the hard ones, not just the easy ones.”

The Senate hopeful said, “You want somebody that’s actually gonna listen and fight on the tough issues and I have a history of doing that. That’s what I would do as your next senator, is take on some of these tough issues.”