You may have heard about the upcoming battle in 2020 for control of the Texas Legislature. What do you know about Texas statehouse elections? What will it take for Democrats to flip the Texas house? And why should you care so much?
Welcome to HouseCleaning, a new segment where we will focus on a Texas State House district targeted for Democratic pick-up every week.
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This week we are looking at House District 93 in Tarrant County. The district includes portions of Arlington and Fort Worth.
According to the last census, the district is majority white, with sizable black, Hispanic and Asian populations as well.
The current representative of District 93 is Matt Krauss, an extreme Republican who’s now running for his fifth term. Krauss is a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus. Before running for office, he was a lawyer for the Liberty Council—anti-gay hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Since joining the Legislature, Krauss has filed extreme bills on guns, abortion, and to end no-fault divorce. He has also referred to women protestors at the Capitol as devil-worshippers and claimed same-sex marriage is linked to mental illness, suicide and cancer.
It’s time to do some house cleaning.
Meet Krauss’s would-be replacement, Lydia Bean, who is running unopposed in the March 3rd Democratic Primary. As a small business owner who comes from a family of preachers and teachers, Bean would expand Medicaid, fight for paid sick time, fully fund public schools, and pass a statewide rate cap to battle payday lenders.
Bean believes it’s “fiscally irresponsible not to expand Medicaid, because the federal government covers 90% of the costs—that means our federal tax dollars are going to other states instead of helping Texans.”
