Sights are narrowing on Edinburg as preparations are made and expectations raised for the first and only gubernatorial debate on Friday.
“It’s great that we’re going to have this type of attention in the Rio Grande Valley, because the debate is going to be here,” Danny Diaz, political director for LUPE Votes, said Thursday morning during a press call. “However, we’re concerned about a series of actions from politicians like Greg Abbott and Republicans who have made it a tradition to come to the Rio Grande Valley for photo ops.”
Beto O’Rourke challenged the incumbent to three debates, but Gov. Greg Abbott only agreed to one.
“One debate in one community for the entire state of Texas is not nearly enough,” O’Rourke said in a statement at the time.
Meanwhile, Abbott felt confident that it would be a good platform to address “efforts to secure the future of Texas by securing the border, defunding cities that defund the police, lowering property taxes, and protecting our oil & gas industry,” according to a statement sent in August.
The debate, which will be available in every Texas media market but won’t include any Valley journalists, has drawn criticism over the exclusion of an audience.
“A lot of students are very disappointed that the debate is closed-door,” Mireya Garcia, a UTRGV student leader, said Thursday.
The decision was not made by the university, however. Marci Caltabiano, the university’s director of news and internal communications, said via email on Thursday that the campus was chosen as the venue for the debate and referred further questions to Nexstar and the individual campaign managers.
“Students want to be able to participate,” Garcia said. “They want to ask both candidates about solutions and what issues they’re dealing with and what issues they care about.”
While immigration, Abbott’s campaign focus, is the presumed reason for the debate’s location, and social issues are bandied about by both candidates, locals are hoping to hear about “bread and butter” issues.
“Economics and money,” those are the two issues that surface among Valley residents who communicate with LUPE (La Union del Pueblo Entero), Diaz said. “There are people — because we see it here every single week — we have members walk in, or community members walk in who haven’t been paid, been exploited, or their wages were stolen. They’re not even paid $7.25 an hour.”
The same issues have stayed on residents’ minds since LUPE conducted a large-scale survey during the pandemic and discovered one of the top concerns through the global public health crisis was health care.
Since the school shooting that claimed 21 lives in Uvalde, safety and gun regulations have come to the forefront.
On Thursday, a day ahead of the debate, U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores announced that she introduced the “RGV” act which stands for Reduce Gun Violence. The approach bolsters school safety and provides resources for mental health services at campuses.
“The RGV Act contains three key pillars, all of which build on each other: promoting physical school security, increasing access to mental health resources, and the establishment of a federal ‘School Safety Best Practices Task Force’ to share and implement best practices,” the statement added.
Democrat O’Rourke promotes a different approach. On Friday before the debate, he will be holding a news conference along with family members of the Uvalde school shooting victims.
“Beto O’Rourke will once again stand with the families as they demand that Abbott call a Special Session to take the popular, bipartisan and commonsense step of raising the minimum age to purchase an assault weapon from 18 to 21 at a time when gun violence has become the leading cause of death for kids and teens across Texas,” O’Rourke’s news release stated.
Political organizations are working to motivate voters to the polls in the midterms.
“I do think we expect a strong turnout compared to other midterm elections. There’s been a lot of money spent,” Diaz said.
However, there are some inherent challenges in the area.
“Generally, the folks I’m talking about, that we’ve been trying to reach, our low propensity voters and a lot of them happen to be living in colonias or dissatisfied with government, feel like they got the short end of the stick,” Diaz said. “At times they’re the hardest folks to convince, because of the environment that they’re in or the life that they’re living.”
LUPE expects to have a higher engagement of voters this time around, not only because of the issues of a post-pandemic economy, but also due to the increase in efforts like their organization are making.
“But making that connection and actually spending resources, sending organizers and canvassers does help uptick that and organize folks to mobilize them to come out to vote,” Diaz said.
Democrats and Republicans are holding watch parties on Friday.
O’Rourke will be hosting the watch party at the Real Del Valle Center located at 4631 S. Veterans Blvd. in Edinburg starting at 6 p.m.
Texans for Greg Abbott will be gathering at the Embassy Suites by Hilton McAllen Convention Center Madison & Adams Rooms located at 800 Convention Center Blvd. in McAllen. The event will start at 7 p.m.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct Danny Diaz’s title.
