The four candidates vying for the Republican nomination in the March 1 primary to run for Texas’ 34th Congressional District seat covered everything from illegal immigration to the border wall, abortion and inflation during a candidate’s forum Wednesday night sponsored by Futuro RGV.
Naxeley Lopez of The Monitor newspaper in McAllen monitored the forum, which took place at the VentureX co-working building in Brownsville where The Brownsville Herald has its offices. Futuro RGV is a non-partisan citizen organization that focuses on quality-of-life issues, among them education, healthcare recreation opportunities and government.
“Futuro RGV’s mission is to inform people of the RGV, and certainly elections affect all of us,” Nedra S. Kinerk, an organizer for Futuro RGV, said at the forum’s outset.
The candidates include former Channel 5 news anchor Frank McCaffrey, Mayra Flores, a daughter of migrant farm workers who became U.S. citizens and wife of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Gregory Scott Kunkle Jr. of Harlingen, a Texas A&M graduate who has worked in agriculture, engineering and now cybersecurity, and Juana Cantu-Cabrerra, a nurse practitioner of 38 years who worked with the Veterans Administration but said she quit the job to run for Congress.
The four are vying for the GOP nomination to run for the seat currently held by Filemon Vela, Jr., who previously announced he would not seek re-election.
On abortion rights, the candidates were asked, “Texas and other states across the country are limiting access to abortion. Do you favor these measures? Why or why not?”
Three of the candidates, McCaffrey, Flores and Kunkle, said they favored the measures and were pro-life, while Cantu-Cabrerra said she opposed them and was pro-choice.
“I have been a sexual assault examining nurse for 31 years and I am pro-choice,” Cantu-Cabrerra said. “It’s all about the uterus. It is that individual’s choice, what they want. We need to not just think about the adults.”
She said that in her work she had encountered a 9-year-old girl who had tried to commit suicide four months earlier. “I assessed her and she was pregnant. When you have a baby that says, ‘I’m a baby and I don’t need to have another baby,’ I’m going to listen to that little girl. It is about that individual. I will be the voice for that individual,” Cantu-Cabrerra said.
Kunkle said: “We are the pro-life generation and as we approach the 50th anniversary of Roe v Wade we know that the incoming red wave will overturn this, and I thank President Trump for the Supreme Court justices that he put in. Science tells us that life begins at conception. It’s undeniable. … My campaign is pro-life and we must protect the unborn.”
McCaffrey said: “Well, I believe that God has created life in the womb at conception and I don’t believe we should take that away from anyone, especially a defenseless child. Everyone here had a chance at life.” He said the Texas case and one in Mississippi will eventually lead to overturning Roe v Wade. “We cannot ever interfere with God’s creation, which is life,” he said.
Flores said: “Well, we are the pro-life generation. I’m very proud to support this. I was raised with strong conservative values, to always put God, life and family first and I believe that if we are so proud of our culture and our community, we should always defend life. For me it is a top priority, and I am very proud to say that I was endorsed by Texans for Life.”
Other questions included citing the Valley’s greatest asset and greatest liability, taking a stance on illegal immigration and the border wall and stating a solution to the 7% inflation now plaguing the country.
The forum can be livestreamed through March 1 at Facebook.com/FuturoRGV and viewed at futurorgv.org.
Editor’s note: This story was updated Jan. 17 to correct Frank McCaffrey’s job status.
