Don Huffines, a fifth-generation Texan out of Dallas County, is running against incumbent Governor Greg Abbott in hopes to “drain the Austin swamp.”
Huffines has built his campaign on being pro-life, conservative and a God-fearing patriot who has always had a passion for politics.
“I’ve been active in politics with the Republican Party all of my life,” Huffines said. “I graduated from University of Texas in 1981 with a finance degree. My parents are not political but I’ve always been helping candidates since I was a teenager. I’ve been to 10 state conventions and three national conventions.”
Huffines served in Senate District 16 from 2014-18 and has married for 34 years with four boys and a girl.
While serving in the senate, Huffines was always ranked as one of the most conservative senators by the state’s political scorecards and saw the corruption in Austin.
“It really is a swamp,” Huffines said.
“It may not be as wide as Washington, D.C., but it is as deep. It’s full of crony-ism, about being a part of an elitist, exclusive club. I find it to be a pretty corrupt, dishonest place. There’s no leadership from our governor.”
Huffines said the Republican Party is never able to put any legislation through, which is a direct reflection of Abbott’s short-comings.
“We control everything in Austin,” Huffines said. “But we never get anything into law, because the governor doesn’t want them to be laws. The governor doesn’t support the Republican Party platform because he doesn’t believe in it. If he believed in it, we would have it all in law.”
Huffines said Abbott and many other republicans are RINOs (Republican In Name Only) and career politicians.
“He’s using the voters for his own personal gain,” Huffines said. “I, like most Republicans, are tired of being lied to. We’re tired of broken and empty promises. We’re tired of being used.”
During a phone interview on Thursday, Huffines answered a couple of questions about his campaign, and spoke on some of the issues he wants to get fixed should he get elected.
Rural representation
One of the biggest concerns many people in the Texas Panhandle have is when elected officials take office in Austin, is whether or not we will be represented almost 500 miles away.
“It’s a priority of the Huffines Administration,” Huffines said. “I don’t blame you for feeling like a step-child or that you’re forgotten. I love the Panhandle and I love West Texas. I hear the same thing from South Texas (near the U.S.-Mexico border) and they feel the same. El Paso isn’t even on the same clock as us.
“It’s something I’m sensitive to and I’m going to work on. The Panhandle, especially Amarillo, is a unique place of Texas with unique issues compared to Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and the swamp in Austin.”
Broadband internet infrastructure
“That’s a legitimate concern,” Huffines said. “As a ranch owner myself, I experience the same issue. It’s hard to work from the ranch when you don’t have high speed internet. Right now, I think the best bet is for Texas to stand-still on the issue so we don’t think we have the solution and spend the money.
“As you know, the federal government has allocated billions and billions of dollars on the same problem. We also have private industry and free market to also take care of it.”
Working with the Biden Administration
“I’m always willing to work with anybody who’s willing to work with me,” Huffines said. “My overall arching umbrella I’m campaigning on is Texas sovereignty. I’m going to prove Texas is sovereign to a level the United States has never seen. We’re going to prove to the U.S. and the whole world Texas is Sovereign. We’re going to use the U.S. Constitution to do that.
“That includes my border plan. I will never ask permission from the Federal Government to secure the Texas Border.”
Securing the border
“I’m going to finish Trump’s wall and I’m going to build it over several hundred miles across the Texas border (we’ve got 1,200 miles),” Huffines said. “It’s going to take $2.5 to $3 billion dollars, we’ll find the money. Abbott wants to build a wall with a ‘Gofundme’ site. It’s about a one-year payback to build the wall because of what illegals cost us each year.
“The most significant thing I’m going to do is to use the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section X), which was specifically written for this occasion. If a state is invaded, they have the right to do what they need to do to defend themselves.
“It’s very logical based on what our founding fathers intended. If the French invaded South Carolina and the federal government never came to their defense, of course South Carolina will have the opportunity to defend itself.”
Huffines said there have been illegal immigrants from 160 different countries caught crossing the border since the start of the year.
“Most of them are obviously not from Mexico,” Huffines said. “This is an invasion. So I’m going to engage the entire Texas military and National Guard to secure the 125 bridges over the Rio Grande River. I’m going to stop all in-bound commercial traffic from Mexico; in-bound only, not out-bound and individuals who have the proper paperwork. It’s to put the economic pressure on Mexico to secure their side of the river.”
Huffines noted that the Cartel is making hundreds of billions of dollars off this issue.
“They are the most evil criminal organization in the world,” Huffines said. “Be-headings, raping and killing people for fun. They do anything they want to do. They’re evil. I’m going to do in 30 days what no one in the history of this country has ever done. (Secure the border)”
Tax Plan
“It will take about eight years,” Huffines said. “We will never have an income tax and every one will be able to vote on the plan. It’ll be a constitutional amendment. I’m going to cap the growth of State spending to two percent every year. Our revenue has grown seven to eight percent every year. You take that revenue growth and you bring down property tax every year.
“Then you move some to the sales tax and the State fully funds all of the political subdivisions that are currently dependent on property taxes (schools, counties, etc.) and use all of the revenue buckets to make sure they are fully funded. We won’t change any of the funding formulas. This is very doable and very possible. But you have to have a governor who champions it.”
For more information on Don Huffines, visit his website at https://donhuffines.com/.
