With less than six weeks until election day on Nov. 4, the first of two scheduled gubernatorial debates was held in the Rio Grande Valley city of Edinburg on Sept. 19.
Democratic Party nominee for governor Wendy Davis, a state senator from Fort Worth, and Republican Party gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott, Texas attorney general, fielded questions from Carlos Sanchez, editor of The Monitor, a daily newspaper in McAllen, and Telemundo’s McAllen news anchor Dalila Garza. Abbott and Davis responded to questions for 60 minutes on topics such as border security, economic development, education and education funding, abortion and visions of the future.
On education, Abbott said, “I want to put our trust where it belongs, and that is with our teachers, and get all these one-size-fits-all mandates from Austin, Texas, off the backs of our teachers.” Davis said she voted against legislation that cut $5.4 billion from the state education budget and that Abbott has been defending those cuts in court ever since they were passed and those cuts have led to overcrowded classrooms and teacher layoffs, and shortchanged school children. Davis said as governor she would “fight to make sure our schools have more resources, not less.”
