Former Collin County Republican Party chair Abraham George is running against incumbent Rep. Candy Noble for Texas House District 89 in the Republican primary, and he spoke with The Dallas Express on Friday while visiting the polls.
District 89 has nearly 200,000 people living in it, according to the last census report, and includes Lavon, Lowry Crossing, Lucas, Nevada, Parker, Seis Lagos, and St. Paul, as well as parts of Wylie, Royse City, Princeton, Plano, Murphy, Josephine, Fairview, and Allen.
George was a pastor’s kid who grew up in Kerala, India. It took his family 14 years to move through the arduous process of obtaining U.S. visas before George came to the United States in 1996 at the age of 16. George started as a janitor’s assistant at an IT circuit board facility, where, over the next eight years, he steadily rose to the position of national sales manager.
He said he was not an example of overnight success; rather, he worked and continues to work to preserve the hard-earned rights and freedoms protected by the Constitution of the United States of America.
“There is a gap between society and the Constitution,” said George. “The problem is not the people, it’s the leadership. There is a huge gap between the legislators and the American people.”
“The bureaucrats are controlling our country today,” he elaborated. “This small group of people is controlling our government … and the people are tired of having this bureaucracy pushed upon them every day in different parts of their lives.”
One example George gave of bureaucracy dictating outcomes was the unlawful migration crisis at the southern border. He argued that “there needs to be a faster process to legally get people in the United States,” saying that “jumping the fence” was not the answer.
“Allowing people to come through the border illegally and encouraging this is the problem,” said George. “I understand the sentiment of people who want to come to America, but Biden and Greg Abbott have made it more about politics, and that’s the problem. It’s not about politics. It’s about our nation’s sovereignty.”
What is happening at the border now is a “show-and-tell to the rest of the nation,” said George. “When people with leadership at that level use issues like [the border] for politics rather than for policy and the country, that is wrong.”
“We don’t need to be moving [unlawful migrants] to other states. Instead, we need to be closing the border and move them back into Mexico,” he said. “Closing the border is not a debatable issue. It is something we need to be doing, and it will require a multi-layered solution.”
On the subject of possible border security solutions, George noted that “the wall is one of the answers… we need to complete the wall.” George also recommended “creating a border force for the State of Texas, so when there is an issue, like the invasion we have now, we can call the border force into effect and secure our border.”
“It can be something similar to the State Guard, where they are not paid unless they are activated,” he added.
George also suggested leveraging America’s trade relationship with Mexico.
“If we say we are not going to take any commercial traffic from Mexico until they close the border, trust me, Mexico will close the border in about a day because their economy is completely dependent upon us,” said George. “[Mexico] will close the border for us.”
On the subject of school choice, George said, “I think parents should be able to take their children to any school, especially because they are paying the property tax.”
George said he supports school choice but did not care for how HB 1, which would have established education savings accounts for families, was designed.
“The way they did [it was] horrible. One, there were a bunch of strings attached to the funding. And, two, there was no accountability added to it,” he claimed.
George contended that the school choice system proposed by the Texas House “has become a corporate welfare… That’s what it is… taking money from the taxpayers and giving it to private entities.”
“They should stop ‘Robin Hood’ altogether,” suggested George.
He went on to criticize a state law that was recently passed by the Texas Legislature.
“We have mandates from the state without being given the needed funding,” said George, citing the example of HB 3, which requires school campuses to have an armed guard during school hours while only providing $15,000 in state taxpayer money per campus for such services.
On the subject of DEI and discrimination, George was clear: “Just because your skin color is one or the other, you shouldn’t be treated the wrong way. And this goes for white people, black people, brown people… whatever the color. The pigmentation of your skin should not be a standard for anything.”
“Now there is a ‘let’s vilify the white people’ narrative,” said George. “Character should be what matters. Policy should be what matters. Color should not matter.”
George looked to himself in discussing reverse discrimination. “If you’re going to put me in [office] because I am browner, that is not a qualification. You need to look at my policies and where I stand on issues,” he said. “This reverse ideology that ‘everyone who is white is horrible and did something wrong’… that needs to stop. This country already has enough problems. We don’t need this problem.”
Another thing George feels strongly about is making sure Democrats are not committee chairs in the Texas House, where the Republican Party holds the majority, a topic previously reported on by The Dallas Express.
“We have a Republican majority in the House, and then we go put Democrats in committee chairmanships. It is the craziest thing,” said George. “We also need to elect the speaker… whoever has the majority caucus should be electing the speaker.”
George wrapped up by bringing the issues into a more expansive view.
“We are in a fight for the State of Texas. We cannot really tell who is Republican or Democrat anymore,” he said, suggesting that many candidates are essentially bought. “Do your own research… and get to the polling locations.”