U.S. Senate candidate Gutierrez says he wants to reform ‘rogue’ Supreme Court

TYLER, Texas (KLTV) - A new challenger has appeared in the race to try to unseat Ted Cruz from the United States senate. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D-San Antonio) will face off against U.S. Rep. Colin Allred (D-Dallas) for the Democratic nomination. Gutierrez joined East Texas Now’s Jeremy G. Butler to talk about why he’s running and how he thinks he can win.

Gutierrez said he began to consider running for U.S. senate in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde.

“When we started to see the investigation flow out of there and we started to see all of the problems that occurred, the failures of government. And not just from law enforcement, failures of ambulatory services, failures of the governor’s office,” Gutierrez said. “And failures from Ted Cruz when he refused to sign the Safer Communities Act, a pretty lighthearted bill, if you’re talking about gun policy, quite frankly, that would have gone a long way to be about common sense gun solutions. But unfortunately, he didn’t vote for that.”

Gutierrez said he wants to focus on “what’s truly ailing Texas.”

“And what’s hurting us back home is the inability for people to be able to make ends meet,” he said. “Ted Cruz can do something about that, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t do anything to provide opportunity for our state. He voted against the infrastructure bill that brought $66 billion in new construction projects. Those are real jobs. ... We have to get back to doing what government should do, instead of just provoke and scare us that the boogeyman is coming.”

Government can and should address its broken immigration, Gutierrez said, but that alone doesn’t fix the state’s myriad problems.

I get that (Cruz) wants to talk about immigration every day, and certainly we need to have that discussion, and fix a broken immigration system on all fronts. No doubt. But that’s not the reason, some immigrant looking for a dream is not the reason we have poor education outcomes in Texas, poor healthcare outcomes in Texas, poor infrastructure problems,” he said.

Gutierrez also stated that as a U.S. senator he would be in favor of reforming the Supreme Court so that its rulings are more in line with what he says the majority of people in the country want to see.

“This court has become a political arm of the Republican Party, the far-right Republican Party let’s be very clear, and it shouldn’t be that way,” he said. “So it’s important that we win this senate seat so that we can push back against a rogue court.”

As to why he thinks he’s a better fit to take on Cruz than Allred, Gutierrez said

“I have a proven record of getting things done,” he said. “I have nothing bad to say about Colin Allred. ... I think we have to energize Texans along the border and I think I have a unique ability to be able to do that. ... We’re going to talk to them about what’s ailing them. We’re going to talk to Texans in Houston and Dallas and everywhere in between. In the panhandle. We’re going to try to energize people about the issues that matter most to us.”

When asked about criticism leveled at him in the past that he appears “opportunistic” in using the Uvalde shooting tragedy for his own political gain, Gutierrez described it as “nonsense.”

“The police failed those children. They failed them for 77 minutes,” he said. “We as policy makers need to know when things go wrong. So it led me to sign a non-disclosure agreement where I saw all that failure. And I’ve seen horrors that most people could never imagine, more blood than you’ve ever seen in your life. Those images I don’t take from my mind. I can’t erase them. Those families are friends of mine and they’ve become family to me. I will forever talk about this issue because it matters so much to them.”

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