Two lawyers with experience in elected office are facing off for a Texas House of Representatives seat that covers much of the West Texas border with Mexico, including a sliver of El Paso.
Eddie Morales Jr., a Democrat from Eagle Pass seeking his third term representing Texas House District 74, is being challenged by Republican Robert Garza, a former mayor of Del Rio who has run unsuccessfully for the Legislature three times.
District 74 is the largest Texas legislative district by land mass, stretching from El Paso County on the west to Del Rio on the east. The El Paso portion of the district, which includes about 56,000 people and 28,000 registered voters, is in the northeast portion of the county outside the El Paso city limits.
“I think one of the biggest problems is the whole demonizing of the border. If we were to change that perspective and that position from the top state leadership, we would actually embrace the fact that we have our biggest global trading partner across the Rio Grande from us,” Morales said in an interview with El Paso Matters.
Morales, 49, who was first elected to the House in 2020, said his campaign is focusing on border economic development, education and improved access to health care in the largely rural district.
Garza, 76, did not respond to an interview request from El Paso Matters or complete a voter guide questionnaire. His campaign website emphasizes increased border security, support for law enforcement, opposition to abortion and support for the rights of gun owners.
He lost to Democrat Roland Gutierrez in 2022 for the Senate District 19 seat, and unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for House District 74 in 2020 and the Democratic nomination for the House seat in 2012.
House District 74 includes Maverick County, which has been the focal point of Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, which has deployed the National Guard and Department of Public Safety in an effort to stop undocumented immigrants from crossing the border.
Morales said the influx of migrants in recent years in El Paso, Eagle Pass and Del Rio has created challenges in the district. But he accused Abbott and other Republicans of using the border as “a backdrop for political theater.”
He said recent steep declines in unauthorized border crossings are the result of policy changes by the Biden administration, not the state’s efforts. Morales said he and other border Democratic leaders successfully pressed the administration to do more to reduce the number of migrants coming to the region.
“I think even though our numbers are now below the numbers when Trump first came into office, it’s not sustainable in the sense that … we have a broken, outdated immigration system that’s needed to change for the last 30, 40 years,” he said.
The solutions to immigration issues have to come at the federal level, Morales said.
He said Abbott hasn’t accounted for the billions of dollars spent on Operation Lone Star.
“Now it’s an issue of, are we using these funds in the best form possible, and do we continue to do what the governor is doing, which is he’s just throwing money at this thinking it’s going to go away instead of being fiscally responsible and figuring out how do we recover these billions of dollars and put them back into the general budget so that our Texas taxpayers can benefit,” Morales said.
Another key issue facing the Legislature in January is education spending, including Abbott’s push to provide taxpayer support for private schools in the form of what he calls education savings accounts.
Morales said taxpayer funding for private schools will undermine public education. He said rural areas like District 74 will be the most impacted because they have few if any private schools.
“We have statewide leadership that for over 10 years, they have systematically defunded public education year after year,” he said.
Even though only about 6% of El Paso County’s population is in House District 74, it is the second most populous part of the district, just behind Maverick County. El Paso County is home to about 27% of the district’s population. Morales said he’s worked to build relationships with El Pasoans since the county was added to his district in 2022.
“I’ve built relationships with the local city and county officials. They keep me up to date. We have a field director in El Paso that we have assigned that works out of El Paso that knows the community well, and we’re on top of those issues,” he said.
Early voting in the election is Monday, Oct. 21, through Friday, Nov. 1. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5.
The post Eddie Morales, Robert Garza face off in Texas House District 74 election appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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