Call for debate

Tryon Lewis issued yet another call Thursday asking his opponent to debate him in the runoff election for the District 81 seat in the Texas House of Representatives.

"This is a very unusual race," Lewis said. "It's the most unusual I've seen in my 35 years of being active in the Republican Party.

"Quite frankly, I thought I would never see a political race in which the candidates were asking the public to put them in office and one of the candidates would not attend the public forums that are being proposed," he said. "And, one of the candidates would not talk to the press and not talk to the media and not answer questions on the issues."

Since the March 4 primary, Lewis' opponent, incumbent Buddy West, has been relatively silent. He's declined all invitations to speak at forums or debates. Since March 13, West hasn't returned calls to the media and only spoke once at news conference March 17. All other contact with West's office has been through his chief of staff, Erin C. Tresner, or media spokesman Mark Sanders.

"You know, we work for the public," Lewis said Thursday. "Public officials work for the public. We are not always right. There are not always easy answers. But, whatever we have to provide for the public, whatever guidance we have, whatever leadership we have, we can't hide. We have to answer the questions, we have to be accountable."

Sanders said Thursday that West is in Austin, tied up in meeting and unable to take phone calls. Sanders took exception to Lewis' news conference.

"I hope Mr. Lewis enjoyed this media stunt. That's all this is: a stunt," he said.

Lewis, on the other hand, took exception to Sanders or Tresner speaking for West.

"It's not up to our secretaries or our assistants, consultants or strategists to answer questions for us," he said. "It's the pubic officials - and those who want to be public officials - who have to stand before the public and be accountable."

In fact, Lewis said the lack of communication from West has made the race more difficult.

"It would probably help the dialogue in this race if  Mr. West would speak for himself," he said.

"I'm up here to speak for myself. My secretary didn't come up here for this news conference for you folks, to talk to you and to talk to the citizens," Lewis said. "I think it's important we speak for ourselves."

Sanders said it's his job to help West's campaign.

"Rep. West is currently taking care of business in Austin for the people of his district," Sanders said Thursday. "He has a campaign staff that's working on the campaign that allows him to take care of real business and not play silly political games. If Mr. Lewis doesn't like it, he needs to get a staff."

Meanwhile, Lewis, like he's done several times before, issued a call to West to meet him in debate.

"This is very important for the public," he said. "I hope that Buddy changes his mind and he will answer the public's and the press' questions. I will continue to do so."

Sanders, however, said there would be no debate.

"None at all," he said. "... Rep. West is not going to dignify Mr. Lewis with a debate because of the distortions that Mr. Lewis has made about Mr. West's record. He said that his 15 years of work for West Texas has been ineffectual and unproductive, and that's not true. And, I think most voters know that.

"We're not going to grant someone who would so distort a record another venue or a forum," he said. "It's not worth our time."

On the other side, Lewis said he stands by the comments he made during a Feb. 26 debate at OC.

"I said at the Odessa College forum that I didn't think we were getting the leadership that we needed, and with the help of the people in this district, I would try to provide and felt like I could provide that leadership," he said. "That still goes."

"I think the best evidence of that - that we're not getting the kind of leadership we need - is that our representative is not here, will not attend forums and will not talk about the issues," he said. "That's a lot about what leadership should be."

Lewis also spoke about the following issues:

Speaker Tom Craddick

In the last week, several representatives, who have in the past, these are state representative who have in the past have sought to move the speaker's position out of the Permian Basin to principally, I think, to North Texas, have come out here to announce their support for my opponent. I think they're four of the 150 representatives came out here to do that.

I think that it is very important to keep the speaker position in West Texas. It has been very valuable to us. I know personally from my experience that it's resulted in having a lot of support for projects in Andrews, for projects throughout the district, projects here in Odessa and for support of our institutions - health sciences center, Odessa College and University of Texas Permian Basin. I think it's very valuable for us to have someone from the Permian Basin in one of the most important positions in the state government, the speaker of the house. I hope that continues.

It will be my position that we should try to keep that position. And the people, the four representatives who came out here who are dedicated to changing that, I hope they don't win. I hope we keep this here. I hope it doesn't get moved to North Texas. I know they've got a lot more people, a lot more money, but for that very reason, we need someone to listen to the concerns and make sure the concerns of West Texas get heard.

Illegal immigration

What do we do about illegal immigration and illegal aliens and what benefits they get? It is my position that we have to be a nation of laws. That, if we don't follow our laws, we are not the United States of America. We're not the country that we've built all these centuries. And, part of that law, is that you have to be admitted to this country legally. I mean, we should have control of our borders. That's the principle of the law. And, certainly, I think we should have the principle that to get government benefits from the State of Texas, one should be here legally.

Tuition for illegals

We have in-state tuition, and we have tuition for those who are foreign nationals and out-of-state people. That's a reasonable concern. Because people who are citizens of this state, have certain rights, you know, to lower tuition. I think every state has that. I think it is reasonable to have that law. You know, my opponent voted to change that, voted to allow in-state tuition for folks who are not here legally, this is not their legal residence. I think that that was a wrong vote. And, I feel differently about that issue.

Driver's licenses

Another matter that has come up that is of some controversy is as far as driver's licenses is concerned. Several years ago, my opponent and others voted to change the identification to get a driver's license and to change that where you could use - it used to be you had to have a Social Security number to get a driver's license. And they changed that so you could use a foreign birth certificate, identification of that sort. And the problem is, that using these driver's license, use them for a lot of purposes of identification - even getting voter's registration and getting welfare benefits and so forth. So, I think we need to go back to the old way.

Welfare

My main concern in the next session will be to deal with taxpayers' money being paid out to restrict that to people, to persons who are here lawfully on welfare benefits, people who are not violating our law to be here. I don't think that's unfair. We don't give people who live in Oklahoma or Louisiana or Canada or France or Mexico or any other country, they're not eligible for our welfare benefits. And if, you know, we're just going to say anybody who comes here illegally and breaks the law to get here gets welfare benefits, I mean it's not fair to all those who aren't breaking our law. I mean, we just ought to just open it up and give it to everybody. I don't think we can afford to do that, nor should we do that. We have limited resources to give benefits to those persons who need it, and we need to give those benefits to those who are here lawfully. We need to make sure those benefits go to our citizens. And, that's the principle on that.

Others

The other two items that we've talked about are Voter ID: to make sure that those folks who vote are in fact citizens, and to give law enforcement the express power of arrest so that local law enforcement in appropriate circumstances can, if someone's violating the residency requirements, they have probable cause to show that, they can affect that arrest and notify federal law enforcement officers.