With early voting beginning in the Republican primary election on Monday, February 14, Texas Scorecard asked candidates in the race for Texas House District 5 a series of questions to help voters make up their minds before heading to the polls.
Candidates
Dewey Collier
Cole Hefner (No response received)
The following are the full, unedited responses we received.
Why are you running for office?
Collier: I am a proud Texan, a strong Christian, conservative, and family man, who believes our party needs to return to the standards we once held. We deserve to be represented by someone with moral clarity, who is willing to listen to us, and not be so arrogant as to believe he knows what is best for us and if you just give him two more years he will do better. He, like many of his colleagues, have become double minded as warned in James 1:8 “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.”
What are the three main issues facing the district you hope to represent? How will you address them?
Collier:
- Marvin Nichols reservoir project, toll roads, et al: we need massive legislative reform on the eminent domain process, to include prohibiting private companies from taking people’s property through the eminent domain process.
- Educational Freedoms: allowing parents to enroll their children in any schooling option they want. Banning critical race theory from Texas forever, and by creating a parental bill of rights.
- Lowering taxes across the state and especially the elimination of property taxes on all homesteaded property.
Texans all across the state are reporting an ever-increasing property tax burden. Should the property tax system be fixed? If so, how?
Collier: I believe that the citizens of Texas should be released from the burden of property tax. However, the only way to ensure that citizens of Texas benefit from this action is to tie it to homesteaded properties status only. The rest of the tax code should remain basically the same for now. Based on the surplus this year and with good stewardship we should be able to implement this program without increasing other taxes in order to make up any deficit. Out of state, corporations, and property speculators should not benefit from this program. That is why I believe it should only be for homesteaded properties, and in the future business exemptions should be linked to homesteaders.
Should Democrats serve as committee chairs in the Texas Legislature?
Collier: No, Never!
How would you characterize the state’s response to the coronavirus? What would you have done differently?
Collier:
Too little, too late, we as state should have rallied our resources to:
- launch an educational campaign informing the public on who was the most vulnerable and how to best protect themselves from contracting the virus.
- establish programs for those at risk to remain in their home and be able to receive food, medicine, and care without having to leave their home, and thus minimizing their exposure.
- we should have continued our activities of daily living as normal for the healthy non compromised persons. This would have allowed us to reach herd immunity quickly with the least impact on our healthcare system and once reached would decrease the risk of the compromised from being exposed.
Shut downs and mass quarantines never work, they just delay the inevitable unless you can stop the mode of transportation.
