FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                        CONTACT: Tanene Allison

15 May 2013                                                512-591-8247

TDP Opposes Maneuver To Increase School Violence

Austin, Texas – on Tuesday, HB 972 – the Campus Carry bill – passed out of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. At the start of the year, the Texas Democratic Party convened a Task Force for Common Sense on Gun Violence. The Task Force collaborated with community leaders, mental health experts, gun owners, hunters and educators in order to arrive at their findings.

Among their recommendations was the strong opposition to any law that allows any firearm to be possessed or carried on a college campus, except those firearms possessed or carried by certified peace officers.  Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa released the follow statement:

“We need fewer guns on campus, not more. The Senate yesterday pushed forward their political agenda, putting at harm students and faculty across the state. Many of those members of university communities came out to testify against the bill. Our schools need to be safe places for learning and not some Wild West throw back. Enough is enough. We need more common sense in our gun policies, not more extremism.”

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We need your help protecting Texas’ colleges. This is urgent.

Republicans in the Texas Senate are pushing a dangerous bill — the so-called “Campus Carry bill” — that would reverse a decades-old ban on weapons in our college campuses.1

We need your calls today to stop this bill.  Call your senator right now and tell them to vote to vote “NO” on the “Campus Carry” bill.

Click here to record your call and get the phone number for your senator.

At the start of this year, Texas Democrats convened a Task Force for Common Sense on Gun Violence. Our findings after collaborating with community leaders, mental health experts, gun owners, hunters, and educators?

Banning guns on college campuses is common sense gun control, except when those firearms are possessed or carried by certified peace officers. The Task Force was firmly against lifting the ban. So are we.

Can you call your senator right now? We need to remind Democrats AND Republicans that Texans don’t want to see this ban lifted.

Please call your senator right now and tell them to vote “NO” on the “Campus Carry” bill. Then record how your call went by clicking here.

Thanks,

Gilberto Hinojosa

P.S. Can’t make a call right now? Give $5 or more to fund our rapid response network.

This week, Texas’ other Senator – remember him? – is attempting to block the nomination of Thomas Perez, our President nominee for labor secretary.

The Washington Post described Cornyn’s actions as “Washington at its worst, and that’s saying something.”

We agree. Apparently Cornyn has decided to give Crazy Cruz competition for the title of Worst Senator from Texas.

Maybe Cornyn sees this moment as a good time to remind Texans that he’s up for re-election next year.

We don’t have a minute to spare in ensuring that “Washington at its worst” never sets foot there again. Give $10, $25 or whatever you can to help us defeat his radical agenda.

Thomas Perez is exactly the kind of leader we want to see in President Obama’s cabinet. Perez was the child of immigrant parents from the Dominican Republic. He worked as a garbage collector to pay his way through an Ivy League education. Perez is the only Latino nominated for a Cabinet position in the President’s second term.

Cornyn doesn’t like Perez because Perez has a history of defending our civil rights as an assistant attorney for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. I guess Cornyn likes his discrimination enacted into the law, and doesn’t want someone like Perez stopping him.

If this is how Republicans plan to outreach to diverse communities, they better think again.

Give $10, $25 or whatever you can to support our efforts to recruit a strong candidate to run against Cornyn in 2014.

Cornyn might think that Cruz is stealing all the attention. But, don’t worry Cornyn, we’ve still got our eye on you.

Game on,

Gilberto Hinojosa

P.S. The election is just nineteen months away. Please give what you can today.

Senator Ted Cruz has aligned himself with an outright racist who openly believes that Hispanics are stupid! You read that right. Just when you think that the crazy antics of Cruz can’t get worse, they do.

Give what you can to support our effort to educate Texans and the country about the real Ted Cruz.

The Heritage Foundation is a think tank determined to do whatever they can to stop Comprehensive Immigration Reform. That would be bad enough, but their employee Jason Richwine – who co-authored the think tank’s study claiming immigration reform will cost trillions of dollars – also wrote a Harvard dissertation that argued Hispanics have lower IQs than Caucasians and that the United States should screen immigrants based on their IQ scores. In his spare time, Richwine contributed two articles to a “nationalist” website about Hispanic incarceration rates

There are no words to describe how absolutely insulting and absurd it is that someone would write such things, and that Cruz would align himself with an organization that promotes such a racist.

The fact that the Heritage Foundation hired a documented racist to write their Immigration Reform report is unquestionably despicable. So much so that even Marco Rubio has denounced the Heritage Foundation’s Immigration report.

But Cruz? No, Ted Cruz apparently sees nothing wrong with this.

We know that Cruz has no problem opening his mouth and making frequent – and lengthy – statements on just about everything. His silence on this racism is incredibly telling.

Ted Cruz…speaking at the Heritage Foundation

No matter how much the Republican Party claims to outreach to communities of color, their actions speak louder than any fake ad campaign ever will.

While Cruz was partnering up with one of the most notorious racists in DC, he was also busy proposing horrible amendments to the Gang of Eight’s Immigration Reform bill.

One amendment Cruz proposed would make it so that undocumented immigrants could never become citizens. Another proposal he made was to triple the number of border patrol agents and quadruple the technological infrastructure. This proposal could have required as much as $60 billion in additional government spending, and would have delayed the path to legalization for the nations 11.1 million by almost 10 years.

Ted Cruz: the poster boy for how it will never be in Hispanics’ interest to vote Republican.

The Texas Democratic Party is at work on an exciting Ted Cruz related project that will be announced next month. In the meantime, we’re working hard to build the infrastructure throughout Texas that can be sure we never send someone like Cruz to DC on our behalf again.

Cruz may think he will be President. But we know he’s destined to be only a one-term Senator.

If you’re able to support our efforts, any amount you can give will help us continue to expose the real Ted Cruz to the rest of the country.

No matter what Cruz might think, none of us are stupid enough to let him ever win an election again.

Gilberto Hinojosa

Republicans have done everything possible to gerrymander Texas and to make our democracy nothing but a joke. We are the only state in the nation where Republicans were found to have used redistricting to intentionally discriminate against African-Americans and Latinos. And now Republicans want more power to cause harm.

Our fight around fair voting districts is now in front of a court. But Republicans are pushing a power grab in the legislature, which would allow them to continue defining districts, instead of waiting for the court ruling. This is ridiculous! The only thing certain about that move is: We can’t trust them.

Republicans may think we’re stupid enough to fall for this, but they’re wrong. Our Democratic senators have stood up and unequivocally said: No! No, they will not let Republicans have the power to gerrymander our state in a discriminatory fashion any further.

Senator Watson released a statement making clear this promise.

“…Neither I nor my colleagues will support this or any legislative redistricting plan over the final 39 days of this session. The process initiated with last year’s discriminatory maps should be given time to play out. Subjecting it to another session of politics and division would be a disservice to Democrats, Republicans and all Texans.”

We need to say thank for you! Our Democratic senators are showing true leadership on this issue and protecting the integrity of voting in Texas.

CLICK HERE to sign a thank you letter to our Democrats senators. We need to let them know that we appreciate their leadership, and that we have their backs.

Sincerely,

Gilberto Hinojosa

Today Gov. Perry and Senators Cruz and Cornyn stood up before Texans and said that they don’t give a damn if your grandmother, or if your child, has access to health insurance. They said that they want to keep 6.2 million Texans uninsured, and that they want to turn down nearly $100 billion in funding. These were not declarations made in secret or hidden from the public. They weren’t made as some sort of sick April Fool’s joke. No, Texan Republicans are so proud of these insane decisions that they announced them in a press conference about their refusal to expand Medicaid.

Texas has more uninsured people than any other state in the nation, and Gov. Perry plans to keep it that way.

Representative Trey Martinez Fischer puts this failure of leadership into perspective, “One man’s politics should not stand in the way of quality, affordable healthcare for millions of Texans. When business, faith leaders, health professionals, and elected officials all agree, the decision to expand Medicaid in Texas becomes incredibly clear. This is the right thing to do.”

Expanding Medicaid is simply the right thing to do.

Check out the below video and share it with your networks to educate Texans about the need to expand Medicaid.

We have the opportunity to strengthen Texas’ health care system and to provide quality care to our children, seniors and other Texans in need. This is not a time to play politics. This is a time for action.

U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro wrote a recent op-ed in which he pointed out to Perry that, “Being tough on people with no health insurance won’t win you the Republican presidential primary in 2016. It definitely won’t win you the presidency.”

We agree. Texas deserves better than this. We deserve political leaders who care about our health. And we deserve, and demand, Medicaid expansion now.

Let’s get this done,

Gilberto Hinojosa

We know that we have a great battle on our hands with this legislative session. In 2011, Republicans pushed drastic cuts to public education and gutted the Women’s Health Program and other preventative health care for women.  They don’t care about women, they don’t care about children, and they’re not done trying to harm all of our families.

Governor Perry is fighting to keep 1.5 million Texans uninsured, and to deny the over $100 billion Texas would receive for expanding Medicaid. The Republican crazy has gone so far that they think such outrageous policy decisions make sense. That insanity makes about as much sense as Republican’s fight to continue underfunding our schools, despite a Judge calling such action unconstitutional.

When the attacks on our values are so extreme, we’ve got to fight with everything we’ve got.

Leading the fight in this legislative session is a coalition of Democratic women throughout the state. On April 9^th these women will storm the Capitol to make all of our voices heard, and I invite you to join them!

Blue Ribbon Lobby Day is the first such day organized by and for Democratic women in Texas in a generation. The good news is that men are invited too. I’ll be there, along with my wife, and hundreds of other great Texas Democrats. We are gathering to stand up for Texas women and our families, and to remind lawmakers that educating our kids and keeping our citizens healthy should be top priorities.

Our families and the women we love are too important for us to sit by without a fight. So come join us. Let’s turn the Capitol into a sea of Blue, and show our legislators what the future of Texas will look like.

Sincerely,

Gilberto Hinojosa

PS: If you can’t make it to Austin on April 9th, you can join our action from home or online. Find out how on the Blue Ribbon Lobby Day website.

This is a historic and momentous week for our nation. Today and tomorrow the Supreme Court will hear two cases regarding the right of our LGBT brothers and sisters to be treated equally under the law. The outcome of these court cases will go down in history.

We have seen a massive sea change in public opinion on this issue. A majority of Americans now support marriage equality. As a country, and as a state, we have learned more about the importance of equality. We have witnessed friends and family members who are in loving, committed relationships, and yet are not treated as equal in their love. And while so many of us have come to embrace marriage equality, our children are likely to always wonder what the big deal was. 81% of adults under 30 now support marriage equality.

It is wonderful that polling now supports marriage equality. But even more important than polling is the Constitution. And the Constitution of the United States dictates that marriage is a fundamental right, and that same-sex couples must be allowed equal protection under the law.

The Texas Democratic Party was the first Southern political Party to endorse marriage equality in our platform. We are proud of that leadership. We understand that Texas is a stronger state when we are all supported and treated as equal under the law. But despite increased acceptance and support for LGBT rights, there is still so much more work to be done. In Texas, our LGBT friends and family can be fired from a job, or denied housing, simply because of who they are. This just isn’t right. And we must continue to push for progress and equality.

As a part of doing this necessary work, the Texas Democratic Party and Texas Stonewall Democrats are hosting an Equality Forward Summit April 5^th-7^th. We invite you to attend this summit to learn how we can continue the push for full equality in Texas.

Click here for more information about the Summit, including schedule and registration details. And if you will be in Austin, but unable to attend the whole Summit, please join us on Saturday the 6^th for a special reception with former Congressman Barney Frank, the first out member in Congressional history.

This is a momentous week in our nation’s history. A week to celebrate how far we have come, and to remember how much more work we still need to do.

Let’s bend that arc of a moral universe further towards justice!

Sincerely,

Gilberto Hinojosa

Last week we emailed you about the mess of an embarrassment Ted Cruz has shown himself to be. Senator McCain is even calling him a “wacko bird,” and the Washington Post said he’s like an inmate running an insane asylum.

One good thing about Cruz is that he reminds us daily about how important it is that we work to get ready for the next election, and to return Democrats to power in Texas.

We know that you’re a partner in that work, and so we want to let you in on an exciting new program the TDP is to launch.

Can You Give Today To Support Our Work To Turn Texas Blue?

The way we Turn Texas Blue is by building a grassroots infrastructure that can turn out votes and convince our best candidates to run for office. The Texas Democratic Party is going to lead in this work by sending organizers out across our state, to build up local parties and to create a winning program from the ground up.

We know that there are numerous counties in Texas that are full of eager Democrats, but they haven’t had the support needed to turn out the vote. We’re about to get out on the road and give them that support.

Our twenty field organizers will work with twenty counties at a time, spending four months in each county. While visiting a county, grassroots organizers will lead intense trainings with local leaders, create long term organizing plans focused on voter registration and turnout, and build up the local communications infrastructure.

Wherever you live in Texas, the TDP will be closer to you than we’ve ever been!

Give Today To Support Our Field Organizing Work

We can’t just campaign during election season. Turning Texas Blue requires a full time focus every day of every year. You and your communities have the power to Turn Texas Blue, and our new field program will give you the tools to lead in this work.

This is how we win. This is how we make Cruz a footnote in history. This is how we protect women’s rights, fund public education and give more Texans healthcare.

And this is how you play a role in making history. You can say that you were there. That you supported the work back when it first started. That you were one of the Texans who returned our state to Democratic power!

But we need your help to fund this program. We’re asking that you give what you can so that we can hire our organizers and get them started on this work.

Click Here to Help Create A Permanent Field Effort In Texas!

Thank you for all that you do. Long before others believed we could Turn Texas Blue, you knew it was possible. Now is the time for us to lead in that work!

Please donate today.

Sincerely,

Gilberto Hinojosa

Every single week, Republican Senator Ted Cruz takes his crazy up to a new level.

Rep. Joaquin Castro put it well: “Republicans in Texas have gone off the rails. More folks are waking up and realizing these folks have gone too far.”

Donate today to fight back against extremist Republicans!

Every time you look at the news, Cruz is embarrassing Texas in new ways. When he’s not hanging out with his friends Sarah Palin and Donald Trump at CPAC, Cruz is acting crazy in the Senate.

In a recent debate about assault weapons, Cruz got into a fight with Senator Feinstein. Senator Feinstein became mayor of San Francisco after Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone were shot and killed in City Hall. She saw their bullet-riddled bodies. She broke the news to the public. She has sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee for twenty years. Cruz decided he needed to give her a lecture to explain the Constitution and guns. Republican Joe Scarborough gave a fierce and impassioned response to Cruz’s lecture, calling it, among other things, “complete and utter ignorance.”

“I am not a sixth grader,” Senator Dianne Feinstein replied. “I am reasonably well-educated, and I thank you for the lecture.” As one news outlet put it: She looked, really, like she might throw some water in his face

Don’t us Texans know that feeling!

Cruz is setting new records for crazy. Yesterday Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post that Cruz’s actions in the Senate are essentially the same as inmates running an insane asylum. And when Senator John McCain recently referring to Cruz as a “wacko bird,” you know we’ve crossed into some seriously crazy territory!

That’s our representation in the Senate.

It doesn’t have to always be this way. We have an upcoming Senate race in 2014, and then we can replace Cruz in 2018. But there’s a lot of work we need to do first.

Donate Today to support our efforts to elect strong Democrats!

We need to build a field infrastructure throughout the state to organize Democrats. We need to educate more Texans about the harm Republicans are causing. We need to recruit strong candidates. And we need to talk to our friends and neighbors about how we’re going to Turn Texas Blue!

But we can’t do this without you.

If Cruz and his crazy don’t represent you, DONATE TODAY to support our efforts.

We’ll keep working hard on your behalf until Texas is represented by those who share Texas Values. But we need you to join our efforts.

Can we count on your help?

Thank you for giving what you can, and for fighting to make Texas a state represented by elected officials who actually represent us!

Sincerely,

Gilberto Hinojosa