click to enlarge Nina Rangel
Former El Paso congressman Beto O'Rourke addresses the faithful.
During a Friday afternoon town hall at North San Antonio music venue Picks Bar, Texas gubernatorial contender Beto O’Rourke emphasized policy issues that he said could bring together a highly polarized state.
Supporters stood shoulder to shoulder as the former El Paso congressman explained how he's differentiating himself from Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican incumbent: “great jobs … world class public schools, having the backs of our schoolteachers … and ensuring everyone can see a doctor."
"Those three things can unify this deeply divided state,” added O'Rourke, who was accompanied by Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert and U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, both Democrats.
O'Rourke spoke to a packed house, eliciting cheers as he addressed those and more contentious items. He bashed Abbott's handling of the Texas power grid and extolled his own intent to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.
Additionally, O'Rourke accused the incumbent governor for robbing women of their ability to seek reproductive healthcare and parents of their right to obtain gender-affirming care for their transgender children.
“[Abbott] is fixated on transgender kids," O'Rourke said. "He’s calling special sessions to pursue them, to decide which bathroom stall they can go into, and now wants to criminalize their very existence in the state of Texas."
Abbott and the Republican-controlled Texas legislature pursued multiple punitive measures against transgender Texans during last year's session. In February, the governor directed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to open investigations into parents that provide gender-affirming care to their teens.
“If [those accusations are] sustained, that child is taken, literally, from the arms of their parents," O'Rourke said. "Loving parents who are trying to negotiate and navigate one of the most difficult times of a child’s life. And he does this at a time when there are 30,000 children in the foster care system in the state of Texas.”
O’Rourke and Abbott will go head to head in the gubernatorial election in November of this year.
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