As midterm elections approach, Texas voters will have the opportunity to vote for the state’s next land commissioner.
On this year’s ballot, Texans can cast their vote for either Republican State Senator Dawn Buckingham or Democrat Jay Kleberg.
Dr. Buckingham, a former physician, became the first woman elected to the Texas State Senate from Travis County in 2016. Now, she is running for Texas Land Commissioner, pledging to fight inflation, secure the border, protect public education funding, and “unleash Texas energy and fight the Green New Deal.”
“The General Land Office [GLO] runs veterans’ nursing homes, which runs right up my alley as a physician,” she said in an interview with WFAA on Inside Texas Politics. “Additionally, as a physician, what I do every day is—people come to me with their problems, and we find a way to fix their problems, which is all of what the General Land Office is about.”
“We fund education. We do disaster recovery,” she continued. “We have several state veterans’ programs we run. We are the guardians and stewards of 13 million acres of state land, and I also come from a rural background, so it’s right into my skill set, and we are really excited about the opportunity to serve.”
Buckingham said there is “a clear difference [between] the candidates in this race.”
“My opponent is a Green New Deal activist,” she continued. “You start shutting down oil and gas on state lands like the federal government has done on federal lands, and you see devastation across our economy, and [it hurts] our families that are economically disadvantaged the most. We are going to be sure that we keep our energy independence. We want to be sure that we’re helping our families [who] need the help the most.”
The Republican candidate added that another difference between her and her opponent is their position on education.
“We’re a big funder, not just of K-12 education, but also the Permanent University Fund—being sure that our students have the resources and the funding to be sure we’re doing the best for our kids and their education,” she said.
A recent “Texas Decides” poll shows that Buckingham is leading Democrat Jay Kleberg, who comes from the famed King Ranch family, by eight points.
In his Inside Texas Politics interview, Kleberg responded to this poll, saying, “We have to educate people about the importance of these offices, and certainly, this is one that’s the oldest constitutional office in the state of Texas. It manages 13 million acres of public lands, provides critical funding to and manages the largest K-12 endowment in the country, veteran’s benefits, and disaster recovery.”
“We’ve put about 60,000 miles on my pickup truck to let people know how important this office is and that you want someone there who has a steady hand with relevant experience,” he said.
Kleberg says he has a “more than a decade-long career in conservation,” having served as the associate director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation and the co-founder and managing director of Explore Ranches.
Kleberg’s platform includes increasing the GLO’s contributions to public education, reducing carbon emissions, reducing home loan interest rates for veterans, ensuring “coastal resiliency” investments based on “climate change modeling,” and equipping the GLO to more effectively distribute natural disaster relief funds.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, George P. Bush, who has served as Texas Land Commissioner since 2015, was accused of intending to move $3.4 billion of Hurricane Harvey relief funds away from the coast and redirect them to inland Coryell county.
U.S. Representative Al Green from Houston stated that the small agricultural county, located 220 miles from the Gulf, was not the location Congress intended when it sent $4 billion in relief to Texas.
“We wanted to help people who were hurt by Harvey and had the potential to be hurt again, as opposed to people who were inland and not likely to have suffered great damage,” said Green.
Distributing disaster recovery funds is one of the core missions of the GLO, and Kleberg claimed he has a plan to do it properly.
“We’re going to put together a strike force that will, in the first 90 days of taking office, identify how to get those funds out quickly,” he said. “It’s not just those Harvey funds. You’ve got $8.4 billion in federal natural disaster relief funds that have not been spent in the state of Texas that go back to Hurricane Dolly [in 2008].”
Buckingham agrees that the GLO must improve at distributing disaster funds.
“The folks down in the Houston area who are five years out of Hurricane Harvey don’t feel like they’ve recovered enough, and whether that’s General Land Office or local issues, we want to be sure that the people who need resources and need help get it. That’s what we’re going to work on,” she said, adding that she would focus on better communication and collaboration with local officials.
Both Buckingham and Kleberg will appear on Texas ballots this fall. Election day is Tuesday, November 8, and the last day to apply for mail-in voting is Friday, October 28.