Local Candidates Launch Their 2022 Campaigns: Off to the races with Greg Casar, Eddie Rodriguez, and Jose “Chito” Vela – News

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Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, flanked by Texas House colleagues including Gina Hinojosa (right), announces his candidacy for Congress on Wednesday, November 10th at Joe’s Bakery in East Austin (Photo by John Anderson)

From Austin to San Antonio, the 2022 election cycle began with a mix of candidates for local, state and federal office. Jose “Chito” Vela stood in front of the library in Windsor Park on Tuesday, November 9, announcing his entry into the January competition to fill the seat on Austin City Council, which will be vacated by Greg Casar, while running for Congress.

Originally from Laredo, Vela joined UT-Austin in 1992 and has been in town ever since to start a criminal defense and immigration law firm. In 2018, he took first place in the triple area code for Texas House District 46, which ended Eastside firm Dawnna Dukes’ long laying career but then lost a nerve-wracking runoff to today’s Rep. Sheryl Cole (himself a former Austin councilor) with 170 votes.

“I’m running for Congress because I want to give working Texans the economic and educational opportunities that can benefit their families and provide their children with a better future. I want to stop what the Republicans are doing right now. ” – State Representative Eddie Rodriguez

Vela has made a name for himself in the town hall as an outspoken pro-housing member of the planning commission, where he acted as Casars representative from 2015-17. Vela told the Chronicle on Monday, “We need to build more housing, period. We need affordable housing, middle-class housing, condominium, and we need housing.” That means finding a way to end the stalemate with neighborhood activists and their allies in the council about whether, where and how the market can provide these apartments. “We need to have a serious discussion with opponents of the revision of the Land Development Code,” said Vela, adding that a “restart of the whole discussion” may be required in order to make significant progress.

Vela also aims to improve local infrastructure – including delivering the Project Connect transit system on time and on budget – and making Austin’s resilience to climate catastrophes like winter storm Uri. He is also thinking about reshaping the balance of power in City Hall between Austin’s mayor, city council and city administrators – perhaps not quite a “strong mayor system” like the one that voters so decidedly rejected in May, but changing the city administration so that People, through their elected officials, have more control over the huge bureaucratic machinery we call “city staff”.

Chito Vela announces its campaign for City Council District 4 on Monday, November 8th (Photo by Jana Birchum)

So far, Vela has the D4 race to himself, despite the fact that local GOP chairman and Save Austin Now co-founder Matt Mackowiak has endorsed a candidate, as his party did in each of Casar’s three races. Vela supporters include MP Celia Israel, who is standing up for re-election while examining an application for mayor’s office, as well as Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Harper-Madison and Councilor Vanessa Fuentes. Casar says he will consider assisting in the council and other races after submitting both the D4 special elections and the March primaries, which will close in December.

Promotion to Congress

Casar is running for the TX-35 seat, which will be handed over by the 14 incumbent US Representative Lloyd Doggett, who is instead seeking a new (perhaps his final) term in the new TX-37 that will transform the Central and Western Austin Democrats into one safe blue place where they won’t threaten the GOP incumbents who did most of the work drawing the new map. Casar soon joined State Representative Eddie Rodriguez, who officially campaigned on November 10, the day the Chronicle went to press; Both candidates organized events and named supporters along the long Austin-San Antonio corridor from the Alamo to Pflugerville, which Doggett represents today. Austin attorney and longtime Democratic activist Lulu Flores announced on Nov. 4 that she would run to succeed Rodriguez in the Texas House; Matt Worthington, vice president of the Del Valle Community Coalition, announced on Nov. 8th that he was exploring a run.

The local organizer Claudia Zapata had already announced that she would take over Doggett; Although the dynamics of the TX-35 race have since changed, she remains a candidate. Most analysts (and Casar and Rodriguez) expect the Austin district end to surpass the San Antonio end in both fundraising and voter turnout. If a Bexar County candidate steps in, it won’t be State Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, an ally of Rodriguez who publicly considered running before announcing November 9 for re-election to the State House. During this chamber’s debate on the new card, Martinez Fischer supported an amendment to add more Bexar voters (and more Hispanic voters) to TX-35, but those efforts died in plenary.

For now, the most likely outcome is a May runoff between Casar and Rodriguez. Casar is already campaigning for his progressive victories on the council, collecting donations – such as paid sick leave (later abolished by the Texas Supreme Court) and the historic $ 300 million bond for affordable housing in 2018, he recalled remembered a moment during the Uri winter storm when he was trudging through the snow to deliver food to the neighbors and heard Governor Greg Abbott blaming the storm on Fox News “windmills and the Green New Deal.” (Vela also cited the February disaster as a key factor in his own decision to run.)

“We are facing a leadership that believes that,” said Casar. “We must use the power of the federal government to support cities, counties and their communities while we still have terrible leadership in Texas.” What if Republicans take control of the US House of Representatives next November? Casar referred to freshman Rep. Cori Bush, D-Missouri, as a model; the St. Louis progressive activist staged a protest overnight on the steps of the US Capitol, prompting President Joe Biden to extend a national eviction moratorium. “It didn’t take me [the] Collaboration by centrist elected officials, “said Casar, but” a brave member with an organizational background dedicated to corporate power and government intransigence. “

On Wednesday, Rodriguez officially started his run in front of Joe’s Bakery in East Austin, near his own home in the Lege district where he has worked since 2002, with visible support from his colleagues – Reps. Israel, Cole, Donna Howard, Gina Hinojosa and Vikki Goodwin. Rodriguez positions himself as a seasoned veteran with an “excellent career providing advanced leadership and solutions to Texas families,” as his campaign announcement states. “I’m running for Congress because I want to give working Texans the economic and educational opportunities that benefit their families and offer their children a better future,” he said. “I want to stop what the Republicans are doing right now.”

The council will vote on November 18 to approve plans for a special election on January 25 in D4, with a submission deadline of December 16 – three days after submission ends for the March primaries, assuming the current election calendar is 2022 not by the multiple lawsuits filed against the state’s cards. The city’s new 10-1 card, which was certified last month, won’t be used for the November 2022 council races until next summer. It adds several thousand new residents to D4 based on 2020 census data, but the special offer will be held using current limits and the winner will serve through the 2024 cycle.

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https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2021-11-12/local-candidates-launch-their-2022-campaigns/