Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Cassandra Hernandez and John Jun.
As the two District 115 Texas House of Representatives candidates took the floor to square off in the forum at the Dallas College Coppell Center, several issues were top priority in voters’ minds, chief among them education and reproductive rights.
With both candidates stating they oppose school vouchers, each took their time sharing specific views on the matter. According to Hernandez, charter school funding has risen from 8% to 18% and because of this she hopes to pass a recapture bill. Hernandez’s plan requires a breakdown in tax bills showing taxpayers how much of their taxes will go to their own school districts and how much goes to others.
Standardized tests, such as the STAAR test, are also on the ballot with some support to do away with the tests and workforce readiness tests.
“I grew up taking tests, I’m sure all of you probably grew up taking tests too,” Jun said. “I think all of you turned out fine. I do believe tests are necessary to make sure that you are doing it at the level that you should be doing it. Now, what kind of test is for the Texas Education Agency to determine as well but at the same time we need to make sure that our children are ready to be out there in the world. If you’re not teaching them to be able to read at the grade level that they’re actually in, then that is a problem, not just in the short term, but also long term for all of us.”
The next big-ticket issue was abortion. Jun took the opportunity to share his personal experience with his wife’s fourth pregnancy.
“I believe in life,” Jun said. “Currently, we have a law that says that if you perform an abortion on a woman who is pregnant you do get charged for that unborn baby. You did kill that baby. Now, I do believe there should be exceptions for emergency situations because again, if it was life and death for my wife, I would definitely be protecting her life. I also believe there should be exception, rape and incest because they’re not willing participants and I was OK with the Heartbeat Act that gave 12 weeks because I understand there’s different situations that we don’t know about.”
Hernandez took a different approach, sharing her personal struggles with fertility to illustrate her stance.
“My husband and I are going through our own issues right now,” Hernandez said. “We have been speaking to another member about IVF and these are all issues we need to work towards. We have to clean up the abortion bill. We have to make sure we have those exceptions and we have to protect IVF. We need to protect the ability for people to leave the state to have an abortion as well.”
In regards to transgender rights, the candidates took a few moments to discuss their views. Jun answered by referencing his personal religious practices.
Hernandez cited her religious faith, but added she hopes to separate it from her candidacy.
“I very strongly believe in separation of church and state,” Hernandez said. “Am I a religious person? Yes. But I believe that somebody who gets elected has to be able to put that aside and if you can’t separate your religion from being able to advocate for everybody in your community no matter what their background is then you have no business being elected. You have to answer for everybody.”
For the remainder of the night, the candidates touched on environmental, immigration and infrastructure issues. Hernandez said she plans to bolster renewable energy usage and production, whereas Jun spoke to the sustainability of nuclear energy.
This final forum provided prospective voters the chance to get to know and interact with the candidates.“I wanted to hear about experience and I wanted to hear about the broader issues and what each candidate would attempt to do for us at the state level for those broader issues,” Coppell resident Grace Johnson said.
Election Day is Nov. 5, while early voting is underway.
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