COLLEGE STATION, Oct. 7, 2022 – On September 28th, 2022 at Texas A&M Beto O’Rourke, democratic nominee for Texas governor, came to visit hundreds of students. Every seat in Rudder Theater was filled as O’Rouke was hitting some of his most controversial talking points like power grid, gun laws, and abortion.
He first began by mentioning how women in Texas are dealing with a current “maternal mortality” crisis which is three times as harmful to black women. He knows how this fight for personal rights is not ahistorical, citing the 1973 Roe V. Wade case where young Texas women were originally successful in declaring rights for women. He calls for young voters to again return those rights to women;
“If Texas women want the right to privacy to assess abortion,” O’Rouke said, “ to make their own decisions about their own bodies, I bet in 2022, women are going to win it back right here in the state of Texas.”
His next topic was about how Texas’ current governor, Greg Abbott failed to maintain power in the Texas power grid during the winter of 2021 which resulted in the death of more than 700 hundred Texans.
“The fact is we’re reminded earlier that the people in power can’t keep the power on for the people that they serve,” O’Rourke said. “Last February, your lights went out, heat stopped running, and water stopped flowing because it was literally frozen in your pipes.”
From the issue of power grid failure, O’Rourke transitions into the missteps that Abbott has taken towards gun violence with mass shootings like the one that happened at Uvalde. He noted that the 5 worst shootings have occurred in the past five years while Abbott was in office. O’Rourke then discussed his goals implementing universal background checks, a red-flag law, and raising the age of purchase for AR-15’s to people who are at least 21 years old. He emphasizes the importance of putting the children first above the NRA and lobbyists.
“They [The children of Uvalde] were defenseless against a governor who would not lift a finger to prevent that from happening in their school, this school or any other classroom across the state of Texas,” O’Rourke said.
Towards the end of his speech, he listed off some other goals he has once elected in office which included: canceling the STAAR test; fixing the grid; diminishing the homelessness of veterans; lowering the rate of adolescent diabetes in Texas; increasing the mental health services outside of the county jail system; the addition of more healthcare, medicaid expansion, and property taxes; and the legalization of marijuana.