“I am offering leadership that is grounded in service to this community and all the residents of District 28,” said Tannya Benavides, the Democratic candidate who will face nine-term incumbent Henry Cuellar and attorney Jessica Cisneros in the March 1, 2022 primary.
“We need to move ahead to energy reform, reducing carbon emissions, and climate justice. The issue of immigration reform needs a humane resolution. We need to provide access to higher education, protect the rights of women and LGBTQ+, expand Medicare, and ensure safe drinking water. Add to the list that in this city and in others in District 28, there is a need for a pediatric ICU center and a major trauma response center,” Benavides said.
“Not the least of the work ahead is addressing the needs of the 30% segment of the population living below the federal poverty level. Creating jobs that pay a livable minimum wage, access to equitable healthcare, affordable housing, and education are all steps forward and out of poverty,” she continued, adding, “We are the top inland port for international trade, but we are second from the top for being the most uninsured city.”
She said she has the will to find solutions to break the cycle of poverty.
“We who grew up in poverty can succeed at tackling what we know so well,” she continued. “I believe that our own people — regular citizens who have the will to serve without the expectation of personal gain — can better speak to these needs than a seasoned politician. Occasional money thrown at poverty is not a cure for the endemic poverty of some parts of our city and other sectors in the district,” she continued.
She said that though the sitting Congressman grew up in humble circumstances, “he overlooks the day-to-day struggles of the poor and serves instead the legislative needs of his large campaign donors such as the NRA and private prisons for profit. “Too often the poor become a priority only as an election draws near and paid cañoneros begin the door-to-door harvesting of votes,” she said.
Benavides sees cañoneros as paid gatekeepers who sometimes help unqualified individuals get elected to public service. “In doing so, they often make sure that perfectly qualified candidates don’t make it to the finish line,” she said.
Tannya Benavides is a 2010 graduate of Nixon High School and a 2015 graduate of Texas State University with a degree in political science. She earned a Masters in education from Johns Hopkins University in 2017.
She is a first generation American, the firstborn of the nine children of Martina and Francisco Benavides. “A college education was at the forefront of their wishes for us. I am grateful for all they managed to do for us,” she said. She grew up in the Azteca neighborhood and later in the neighborhood near Memorial Middle School.
She is married to Mario Flores.
Benavides taught in Houston for two years and then in New York City for three.
“I saw firsthand Houston P.D.’s role in the deportation pipeline of undocumented students and how easily the school district gave up students to ICE. I saw the peril of educational inequity for undocumented students and their parents. I’ve never forgotten the heartbreak of the deportation of hard-working students,” she said.
Tannya and Mario moved to New York in 2017.
“I taught in the largest school district in the United States, that of New York City, which has a lot of mayoral control via the City’s Panel for Educational Policy,” she said.
Benavides became director of strategy at Leadership for Education Equity, a non-profit that among many social and economic issues, was looking into student suspensions for as many as 180 days.
According to Benavides, at that time there were 3,000 student suspensions of 60 days or more. “Black and brown students were suspended five times the number that Anglo students were. We launched a grassroots campaign to create awareness with parents, members of the Panel for Educational Policy, and City Council members who were uninformed about the suspensions and in whose districts the number and length of the suspensions were inordinate.”
In the end, she noted, the work of about 100 teachers, parents, and students prevailed with restorative justice that established a student suspension maximum of 20 days and also suspended heavy-handed suspension hearing officers.
She said the experience provided valuable lessons in speaking up and community organizing strategies — skills she would well put to use when she and Mario returned to Laredo in March 2020.
Benavides found her hometown in pandemic lockdown and in divisive, fevered debate about Trump’s border wall.
She became a member of the No Border Wall Coalition (NBWC), which was becoming one of the most organized voices of resistance on the border — resistance to takings of land and homes, parks, public buildings and churches, historic buildings; resistance to the environmental impact the construction of the wall would have on water quality, access to the river, and wildlife habitat.
Benavides said that walking door-to-door in the Azteca neighborhood evoked memories of how good life had been there in a community of family and good neighbors. “What came sharply into focus for me was the government’s ruthless approach to taking land and displacing people,” she said, adding, “Clearly the government believed that entire neighborhoods along the river were dispensable, and so were the people who lived there.”
Benavides became the articulate voice of the NBW Coalition.
She said Henry Cuellar was visibly missing as a leader against the proposed wall.
“Nothing justifies being in a position of power and not doing enough for the disenfranchised, for those who have long understood their needs are not the priorities of those they elected to represent them. The Congressman wants a cookie for having done the bare minimum. He could have been a leader in the fight to stop the border wall, but his protest was vague, just enough to seem engaged, but he stuck instead to an agenda that made him electable,” she said.
“The same can be said for his inertia on the very real issue of immigrant rights, an issue that does not feed Mr. Cuellar’s political agenda,” Benavides said.
(To read more about the Tannya Benavides Campaign, go to tannyafortexas.com)
Best wishes!
Now that is the representation we need!
Good luck Tanya i m 100% behind you. No matter what happens in the race you are already a winner. Not everyone dares to do what you decided to do. Best of luck.