Midterm election day in Texas takes place on Tuesday, Nov. 6. In the race for senate is incumbent Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Houston who has served in congress since 2013, and Congressman Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat from El Paso who has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2013.
Here is where they stand on a few of the most contentious issues surrounding this year’s election.
Immigration:
On July 31, O’Rourke held a town hall event at Lubbock’s Cactus Theater in which many of these issues were discussed with those in attendance.
“Although we have the lowest north-bound apprehensions (since 1971), we still are living with a president who wants to build a 2,000-mile border wall,” said O’Rourke.
With Texas’ situation on the southern border escalating into a near crisis, immigration policy has dominated much of the conversation regarding the senate race. The Trump Administration has recently walked back its policy of separating the children of detained immigrants, but it has yet to abandon its “zero tolerance” policy on the border.
In June, Cruz introduced emergency legislation which directed additional resources to help federal judges arbitrate asylum claims from immigrants. The “Protect Kids and Parents Act” included provisions to nearly double the number of federal immigration judges to hear individual cases and authorized new temporary shelters to be built with accommodations to house families together, according to congress.gov.
On the campaign trail, Cruz has pointed out his endorsement by the National Border Patrol Council and authored the “EL CHAPO Act”. The bill would redistribute funds forfeited from convicted cartel members to construct a wall on the southern border of the U.S, according to Cruz’s campaign website. In addition to this, Cruz has also helped introduce “Kate’s Law” and the “American Jobs First Act of 2015”.
Kate’s Law was authored in response to the 2015 shooting death of Kathryn Steinle at the hands of a Mexican national who was residing in the U.S. unlawfully. The bill would subsequently punish repeatedly deported offenders with a fine, incarceration or both, according to congress.gov.
The American Jobs First Act of 2015 represents another aspect of Cruz’s border policy: disincentivizing employers from replacing domestic workers with foreign workers during work stoppages such as “employee-initiated strike or an employer-initiated lockout”, according to congress.gov. The bill would instead direct employers to prioritize nonimmigrant labor more highly through the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program.
Kate’s Law passed the House without amendment and the American Jobs First act currently awaits a vote within the House.
O’Rourke’s border plan would instead shift resources away from the militarization of the border and would ensure migrants who legally seek asylum in the U.S. are guaranteed due process, according to his campaign website. In addition, O’Rourke’s platform calls for the abolishment of private immigration detention centers.
Prisons owned by for-profit companies were responsible for detaining nearly three-quarters of federal immigration detainees in 2016, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. O’Rourke’s immigration policy also advocates for the passing of the “DREAM Act”, which would grant lawful permanent status to beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy.
Congressman Beto O’Rourke-D at a veteran’s town hall in San Antonio, Tx. Photo by Reece Nations
Second Amendment:
On Sept. 22, Cruz addressed his stance on the Second Amendment while speaking at the McKenzie-Merket Alumni Center.
“In Texas we believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, all of it,” Cruz said.
Cruz’s reelection campaign has been endorsed by the National Rifle Association, an organization that opposes expanding firearm background check systems. The NRA contends that federal background checks cannot stop criminals from stealing firearms, purchasing them on the black market or getting them from straw purchasers, according to the organization’s website.
O’Rourke favors instituting required background checks that would abolish gun show and online loopholes, according to O’Rourke’s campaign website. The loopholes cited by O’Rourke is in reference to an exemption of the federal law that requires background checks for private-party sellers.
Vendors who obtain a Federal Firearms License are required to perform background checks and record all sales for nearly all buyers, regardless of whether the venue is a gun show or their local place of business, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
But whether the sale takes place at a gun show or another venue, private-party sellers are not required by federal law to perform background checks on buyers, according to the ATF. They are also not required record the sale or ask for identification.
This exemption also applies to firearms sales from online retailers, hence the terminology invoked by O’Rourke on his campaign website. The exemption has made it easier for individuals who are prohibited from purchasing firearms to buy them illegally. In 2017, an independent study estimated that 22 percent of gun owners in the U.S. acquired their most recent firearm without a background check.
However, gun shows only account for a small portion of private-party firearm transfers, and most crime-involved firearms acquired at gun shows are obtained from licensed retailers, according to a study by the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis.
In response to this exemption, some states have begun to enforce mandated background checks on all firearm sales. From 2009 to 2012, states that required background checks on all handgun sales or permits experienced 35% fewer gun deaths per capita than states without any background check requirements, according to a Giffords Law Center report on gun laws.
It should be noted that federally mandated background checks for firearms transfers are met with vast public support. In January 2013, 88.8 percent of the population overall and 84.3 percent of firearm owners supported background checks for all firearm transfers, according to UC Davis’ study. That same poll showed that 73.7 percent of National Rifle Association members supported background checks for all firearm transfers.
Instead, the NRA advocates for expansion of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in order to prevent “arbitrary delays” when purchasing a firearm, according to the NRA website.
In addition to his stance on background checks, O’Rourke also opposes concealed carry reciprocity, which permits licensed gun owners to abide by the concealed carry standards of the state that licensed them while residing in other states. In effect, CCR overrides a state’s standards on concealed carry permits.
Rather than creating a set of national standards that dictate concealed carry rules, CCR instead requires all states to accept every other state’s standards, including states with weaker or no standards. Twenty-three states allow concealed carry by many people with violent misdemeanor convictions, 19 states do not require firearm safety training, and 12 states do not require any permit to conceal carry at all, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.
Health care:
“If look over at the national Democratic party, they’re all running over to socialism,” Cruz said at his Lubbock town hall event. “When you advocate for socialized medicine, it means the policies you are supporting are socialist… that’s not Texas.”
At his event on Texas Tech’s campus this September, Cruz compared O’Rourke to 2016 presidential candidate Democrat Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who won the Democratic primary for New York’s Congressional 14th District. O’Rourke’s platform calls for Medicaid to be expanded to cover more Texans and to guarantee that subsidies provided by the Affordable Care Act continue to be offered.
Senator Ted Cruz-R at the first debate for the 2018 Texas Senate Race. Photo courtesy of CSPAN
But O’Rourke’s platform does not call for a single-payer health care system directly. Instead, O’Rourke’s goal is to achieve universal health care by means of “a single payer system, a dual system, or otherwise”, according to his campaign website.
In addition, O’Rourke’s platform calls for the addition of an optional plan where policyholders could buy into a government-run health insurance plan, similar to Medicare.
During a campaign stop in Lubbock this July, O’Rourke discussed the difficulty that many individuals have when it comes to affording insurance in the current health care system. O’Rourke said that his constituents would frequently share testimony about a friend or family member who sought to be arrested intentionally in order to obtain the health care provided by the state.
“The number one provider of mental health care services in the state of Texas today is the county jail system,” O’Rourke said at the Cactus Theater. “If universal health care seems like an expensive proposition, think about how much more expensive it is to take care of that person when they are behind bars.”
Cruz has long supported repeal efforts regarding the ACA. In January 2014, Cruz filibustered the bill for 21 hours to prevent its implementation.
Rather than institute a socialized health care program, Cruz instead contends that the solution to this issue lies in the free market system.
Any sort of health care reform should galvanize patients by expanding competition between insurers, Cruz argues in his book, “A Time for Truth”. Cruz’s platform calls for allowing individuals to purchase insurance programs across state lines to that forces states to compete against each other in the national marketplace.
“If you want more coverage, you want more choices and lower costs,” Cruz wrote in the book. “(The Affordable Care Act) gives us fewer choices and higher costs.”
About Reece Nations: Undergraduate Managing Editor
