Wake Up Fort Bend County, You're Being Royally Screwed
Striving for Change: Rallying Fort Bend County's Citizens for a Brighter Future.
Fort Bend County is the most diverse county in Texas. In 2022, Beto won this county, despite only a 47% turnout. In 2020, Biden carried Fort Bend County by 10 points. There are five gerrymandered Texas House districts in Fort Bend County, three of which belongs to Republicans.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Democrats in Fort Bend County have the numbers and the demographics on their side. Even with the gerrymandering, considering the GOP’s lousy performance during this last legislative session, local Democrats should be working diligently to ensure no Republican in this county goes unopposed.
We need to talk about how the three Republicans in this county voted despite being the most diverse county in Texas.
All three GOP members voted in support of white supremacy.
By far, the most egregious and most racist bill to come out of the 88th Legislature was the so-called DEI ban. This ban would prioritize hiring white professors in Texas colleges and universities. While Republicans tried to paint it as hiring more “Conservative” professors, anyone who watched the debates on it knows it was completely racially driven.
We recently saw the DEI ban in effect when Texas A&M rescinded the offer letter to a Black professor based on her race. Even though discrimination has now been written into state law, it’s still against federal law, so A&M is paying the wronged professor a $1 million settlement.
Republicans, especially those who are behest to West Texas billionaires, are attempting to push Texas back to a time of segregation. While the DEI ban only focuses on faculty and staff in Texas universities, Senator Brandon Creighton assured that in the next legislative session, Republicans would focus on banning Black and brown students in Texas universities.
All three Fort Bend County Republican Representatives voted in favor of the DEI ban. Why would sitting House members over the most diverse county in Texas vote to strip jobs away from people of color?
This will impact the Houston Community College System, Wharton County Junior College, the University of Houston, and Texas State Technical College. All places where young people from Fort Bend County are likely to attend.
All three Fort Bend County Republicans co-sponsored a bill prohibiting cities from mandating water breaks for outside workers.
Heat kills more people annually in the U.S. than hurricanes, tornadoes, or flooding. And Texas has more heat-related deaths than any other state. So, all three co-sponsored the bill prohibiting cities from mandating water breaks.
Why? Because allowing employees to have water breaks is anti-business, and they want to show that they are for businesses and against workers.
Gary Gates and Stan Kitzman voted against lowering the property threshold for SNAP benefits. It used to be that a person in poverty needed assistance to feed their family and owned a car less than like ten years old; they wouldn’t qualify. They increased that threshold to a vehicle worth more than $22,500.
Since most SNAP recipients are children, the purpose was to ensure that children in the State of Texas continued a cycle of food insecurity. Food insecurity impacts the most vulnerable members of society, as 1,348,600 children in Texas are affected, accounting for an alarming child food insecurity rate of 18.1%.
Every Texas legislator is aware of this high rate of hungry kids in Texas. Yet, Gates and Kitzman voted against feeding them, anyway.
Gates, Jetton, and Kitzman voted in favor of policies that will kill people in Fort Bend County.
The W.A. Parish power plant, owned by NRG Energy, was named the dirtiest coal plant in Texas in 2023 and produces the second-most sulfur dioxide pollution of any plant in the country.
Pollutants emitted from the plant are linked with health complications like asthma attacks and lung cancer, the latter of which is a leading cause of death in Fort Bend County. The facility is responsible for an estimated 178 premature deaths per year, according to a 2018 study from Rice University.
Approximately 100 of the plant's 330 full-time employees live in Fort Bend County. However, research indicates their livelihood may be killing them.
Despite this, all three voted to make Texas an oil and gas sanctuary state. Even if the EPA rules that this dirty coal plant has to clean up its act and stop poisoning Fort Bend County residents or even shut down, the GOP is trying to ensure they can stay open, despite the EPA.
All three Fort Bend County Republicans also voted against allowing companies to use ESG ratings. ESG stands for “environmental, social, and corporate governance.” It’s a rating to tell investors which companies are environmentally responsible. Investors don’t want to invest their money into businesses polluting the air and poisoning the water. However, this impacts oil and gas companies negatively as they tend to be the worst polluters. So, Republicans in the 88th Legislature decided that oil and gas companies were more important than the air and water you breathe.
Gates, Jetton, and Kitzman voted to block cities from making climate change initiatives without legislative approval.
With a Republican legislature, that’s the same thing as a complete block. So, if any cities in Fort Bend County want to make more energy-efficient building codes, the legislature will stop them. They must get the legislature's approval if they prioritize waste reduction and recycling. More green spaces, parks, and urban forests? Think again. Water conservation? Not on the GOP’s watch.
Gary Gates, Jacey Jetton, and Stan Kitzman hate the planet Earth and are willing to kill their constituents for the oil and gas companies to continue enriching themselves.
There are four months left until the 2024 filing deadline, and none of them have a Democratic challenger yet.
There are several Democratic organizations in Fort Bend County. Hopefully, they are all working diligently at recruiting contenders to face these awful three representatives who vote against their constituents’ best interests.
If you are in Fort Bend County and you want to get involved to help get these Republicans out of office, contact:
If Fort Bend County sees a 75%+ turnout in the 2024 election, they have a good shot at flipping one or more of these seats, but it’s going to take a lot of work, and they need all the help they can get.
Remember, #NoRepublicanUnopposed, and vote in every single election.