The horserace is on to succeed retiring Texas Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo with Kevin Sparks of Midland, Jesse Quackenbush of Amarillo and Stormy Bradley of Coahoma working the mammoth newly realigned 31st Senatorial District for backing in the March 1 Republican primary.
There is as yet no Democrat in the race to represent the district’s 45 counties in Austin.
Having served since 2004, Seliger had accrued increasing disgruntlement from the GOP’s more conservative wing and he said the deletion of four counties in the Panhandle and the addition of 12 in the Permian Basin had made another candidacy untenable. He will serve through next year.
Sparks, president of Discovery Operating, said last Monday that he’d been campaigning hard for two months and he was having a private fundraiser Tuesday night in Odessa in his effort to ally Odessa and Midland, which has historically proved difficult for regional candidates from the Basin. He’s been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
Odessans haven’t backed Midlanders and vice versa, Sparks noted, which has figured into candidates like Seliger winning.
The 57-year-old business administration graduate of the University of Texas at Austin said his campaign counters a disturbing national trend. “When you look at everything going on around our country, it’s clear that we have to start standing up for our conservative values,” he said.
“We have a significantly different culture in the Basin and Panhandle than a lot of other places and we have a national media trying to squelch the values of the larger portion of our nation. If we don’t think it can happen in Texas, we’re kidding ourselves.”
Sparks’ father Don was among the senate field in ‘04 when Seliger was first elected.
“We’re working hard to connect with as many people as we can all across the district,” the candidate said. “Odessa and Midland are in large part the same community and we’ll be stronger when we speak as one voice. What one community does absolutely affects the other.”
Sparks said there is currently no state senator with a background in the energy industry, but one is sorely needed to work with oil patch reps like Brooks Landgraf of Odessa and Tom Craddick of Midland. “We don’t have a single senator with any oil and gas experience and it makes no sense to be debating without anybody who has the expertise to talk intelligently about those issues,” he said.
“There is a disconnect between the I-35 corridor and the people out here in West Texas. So a lot of legislation gets passed with the mindset of those metro communities.”
Sparks has relatives who farm and ranch at Spearman, Gruver and Sunray and Discovery Operating has interests in Hansford, Ochiltree, Sherman and Lipscomb counties in the Panhandle. “I’ve been there a lot and I intend to represent the whole district,” he said.
“I was in Amarillo and Perryton two weeks ago and I’ll be headed back there next week. When you’re working in the oilfield in the wintertime up there, you’d better have your insulated coveralls on.”
With Texas’ population increase between 2010 and 2020 from 25,145,561 to 29,145,505, each of its 31 senators, the maximum number of whom is set by the state constitution, must now represent 940,178 people, up from 811,147 10 years ago, according to Ballotpedia. The filing deadline for the primaries is Dec. 13.
Quackenbush is a 59-year-old criminal defense and personal injury attorney who ran for the 31st District seat in ‘04, but only to air his concerns about oilman T. Boone Pickens’ Panhandle water exportation plans, said the University of Houston Law Center graduate.
This time he’s running flat out to say the Second Amendment should be strenuously protected, critical race theory (CRT) should not be taught in schools and the Texas Legislature’s new anti-abortion bill is a waste of time and money because it will not withstand legal challenges.
One definition of CRT is that racism is neither prejudice nor individual bias and that racism is part of the American legal system in which it is supported by established policies and procedures, according to references. “I’d like to criminalize the teaching of CRT and require the immediate and permanent suspension of the licenses of any teachers who cross the line and teach it,” Quackenbush said.
“We should make it a felony because it is encouraging racism. I’m pro-life, but until Roe vs. Wade is repealed I’m against gratuitously going out there and wasting millions of dollars just to test the waters with a law that is obviously unconstitutional while senselessly adding a severe crisis for women who seek that type of healthcare.”
Texas’ abortion law, Senate Bill 8, allows any private citizen to sue an abortion provider or any other person, including a driver, who helps a woman get an abortion after a fetus heartbeat becomes detectible, among other features, The bill was sponsored by Republican Reps. Shelby Slawson of Stephenville, Dustin Burrows of Lubbock, Stephanie Klick of Fort Worth, Briscoe Cain of Houston and Jeff Leach of Plano.
Quackenbush said Texas politicians are promising to lower property taxes, but he would take emphatic action to do so.
Asked about his public reprimand on Feb. 4, 1994, by the State Bar of Texas, he said the dispute related to a client who had paid him $500 and his refusal of the client’s request for a refund. “The Bar thought I should give the money back after my staff had spent hours and hours on the case and I think I gave him a couple of hundred dollars,” he said.
Spokeswoman Claire Reynolds of the Bar’s Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel in Austin gave the Odessa American the report on the 1994 hearing, which says Quackenbush “committed professional misconduct with regard to the complaint by violating Rule 1.04(a) of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct by collecting an unconscionable fee and by violating Rule 8.04(a)(3) by misrepresenting that the interest charged on a promissory note was instead a service charge.”
Bradley owns a steel manufacturing company, Bulldog Steel, a construction company, Metal Solutions, and a property development firm, B4 Investment Properties, in Big Spring, 65 miles east of Odessa on I-20. She is a Howard College nursing graduate and a board member of the Coahoma Independent School District, Scenic Mountain Medical Center and Big Spring Chamber of Commerce.
“The Republican Party has had control of the Texas House and Senate and the lieutenant governor’s and governor’s offices for over 20 years,” said Bradley, 32. “We can pass anything we want and yet the priorities of our Republican platform are not being met because we have a lot of talkers and not a lot of doers.”
Referring to Gov. Greg Abbott’s COVID-related restrictions that he rescinded last March, Bradley said, “Our governor just forced mandates on us and shut down businesses and no one in the House or Senate did anything about it.
“We relinquished our constitutional obligation to protect our liberties and I got angry and frustrated like a lot of people because it almost cost me my business. It did cost several others their businesses. I decided that someone with courage and integrity needed to stand up and here I am.
“They’re going to lower property taxes in every session and here lately our representatives and senators will secure our borders and nothing is done about that. We have a chain link fence that people can drive their cars through and they are. What good is that?”
Ector County Democratic Chairman Hannah Horick said no Democrat was making the race, but party leaders were looking for one. “We are certainly working on it because we’re interested in challenging every race,” Horick said.
“I don’t know of anyone locally, but we’ll contact Amarillo. It’s hard when the senatorial district is the size of an entire state.”
Subject to court challenges, the new map deletes the Panhandle counties of Collingsworth, Donley and Wheeler and Pampa and Gray County, where the 2020 population was 21,886. It adds Borden, Coke and Crane counties, Lamesa and Dawson County, Irion, Mitchell, Reagan and Schleicher counties, Snyder and Scurry County, Sterling and Upton counties and Monahans and Ward County.
It now includes the counties of Andrews, Armstrong, Bailey, Borden, Briscoe, Carson, Castro, Cochran, Coke, Crane, Dallam, Dawson, Deaf Smith, Ector, Gaines, Glasscock, Hall, Hansford, Hartley, Hemphill, Howard, Hutchinson, Irion, Lipscomb, Loving, Martin, Midland, Mitchell, Moore, Ochiltree, Oldham, Parmer, Potter, Randall, Reagan, Roberts, Schleicher, Scurry, Sherman, Sterling, Swisher, Upton, Ward, Winkler and Yoakum.
