A languid response from future Rio Grande Valley leaders, mostly Republicans, led to the scale back of a day-long forum meant to educate voters about the choices they will face at the ballot box in November.
“I’m just sorry that we are not able to present more of them, but when the candidates don’t respond you can’t have a good forum,” Nedra Kinerk, president of Futuro RGV, said of Futuro Fest scheduled for Sept. 17.
The forum will go on with the candidates of three state races who responded by the deadline, but the event was supposed to be much larger.
Futuro RGV attempted to make it easier on voters by wrangling candidates from nearly a dozen races for an all-day event instead of holding forums separately. They worked along with their partners, League of Women Voters and McAllen Citizens League, to host up to a dozen forums.
“We made numerous attempts to contact them. Some of my board members reached out and tried to reach them by phone, but we were unable to get a response,” Kinerk said.
Futuro RGV has hosted these types of political forums year after year, most recently in January when they hosted up to a dozen forums before the March primaries. But this election cycle is different, Kinerk said.
“We have been doing candidate forums since 2001, first as Futuro McAllen, then we transitioned to Futuro RGV. We have never, ever had this kind of problem when scheduling nonpartisan candidate forums,” Kinerk said. “I think we set a standard for nonpartisan candidate forums for a long, long time. This is the first time we’ve had this kind of a problem, never before.”
The response was uneven between parties. Only three of all Republicans responded, while among Democrats only two failed to respond.
Kinerk said their forums try to push through surface-level issues to have voters informed about how the candidates will make changes locally.
“Our forums are always on issues that affect the RGV communities, our own people. They are not on personalities or rumors,” Kinerk said.
One of the forums that fell through was for U.S. Dist. 34, which U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores won via special election in June. Congressman Vicente Gonzalez from Dist. 15 is currently campaigning for that seat and agreed to participate in Futuro RGV’s forum; Flores did not. Recently, however, Gonzalez announced Flores agreed to a debate hosted by KBGT-TV.
Kinerk would not venture a reason for the lack of response among Republicans, but she believes their decisions have a detrimental effect on the community as a whole.
“How can the voters determine how they want to vote if they are not able to hear the candidates discuss the issues that pertain to our communities, to our RGV, and to our families,” Kinerk asked “My personal opinion is that it’s a threat to democracy when the candidates are not available to present their issues.”
Forums for the three races in which republicans answered will be hosted on the originally scheduled date, Saturday, Sept. 17. The event will be livestreamed on Futuro RGV’s Facebook page.
The first forum for the State Board of Education District 2 seat between Democratic candidate Victor Perez and Republican candidate L.J. Francis will start at 9:30 a.m.
The second forum for State Senate District 20 between incumbent and Democrat Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa and the Republican challenger, Westly Wright, will start at 11 a.m.
The last race for State Senate Dist. 27, recently vacated by Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., will be between Democratic candidate Morgan LaMantia and Republican candidate Adam Hinojosa. It’s scheduled to begin at 1 p.m.
Those who miss the live-stream will be able to see the forum recordings on the nonprofit’s website, futurorgv.org, and their Facebook page throughout the campaign season until Election Day on Nov. 8.
