{"id":257444,"date":"2026-04-20T01:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T01:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/257444\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T01:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T01:16:07","slug":"candidates-for-house-district-49-speak-on-affordability-voting-participation-at-public-forum-the-daily-texan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/257444\/","title":{"rendered":"Candidates for House District 49 speak on affordability, voting participation at public forum\u00a0 \u2013 The Daily Texan"},"content":{"rendered":"

With State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, challenging Gov. Greg Abbott in the November midterm election for Texas governor, the race for House District 49 is open for the first time since 2017. The district represents UT and West Campus in the Legislature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Montserrat Garibay<\/a>, former U.S. Department of Education assistant deputy secretary, and Kathie Tovo<\/a>, a former member of the Austin City Council, advanced to the Travis County May 26 runoff election after an 8-way Democratic primary in March.\u00a0<\/p>\n

TX Votes, a non-partisan student organization focused on increasing civic engagement, hosted and moderated an HD 49 public forum on Thursday. A TX Votes moderator asked both candidates about their experience, affordability policies, civic engagement and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Affordability<\/p>\n

During the forum, both candidates said that if elected, they would work on increasing the $7.25 minimum wage in Texas. Tovo said, however, UT should also increase wages for on-campus jobs and extend on-campus housing vouchers to off-campus housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the jobs on campus, they tend to be much lower paying than some of the private sector jobs,\u201d Tovo said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Garibay said as a state representative, she will work to pass legislation to hold landlords accountable. She said she would advocate for Project Connect<\/a>, a Capital Metro plan to construct a light rail in downtown Austin, to make transportation more accessible for students. Garibay said as a former UT student, she understands the struggles many students face and said many leaders don\u2019t understand the issues at hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of those 150 state representatives don\u2019t bring those life experiences, so they\u2019re making decisions in our communities that have nothing to do with the lives that you are living every single day,\u201d Garibay said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Voter Participation\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both candidates said they would push for same-day registration on election days and more accessibility to polling locations. Garibay said UT should have more polling locations, and would push to extend polling location hours, including weekends.<\/p>\n

Tovo said the gap in time between the primaries and the run-offs\u2014which occurs during the summer, when many students are already home\u2014 is \u201cdisenfranchising students.\u201d She said she would work on addressing that gap and would also push for student IDs to be a valid form of identification for voting.<\/p>\n

Overlooked Issues<\/p>\n

TX Votes asked both candidates to name an \u201coverlooked\u201d issue in the legislature that they would work on addressing if elected.<\/p>\n

Tovo said the legislature does not discuss food insecurity on college campuses enough. She said she supports \u201cthe growth of local food systems,\u201d noting her City Council experience, where she said she initiated programs to increase fresh produce at convenience stores.<\/p>\n

Garibay said artificial intelligence and data centers are often neglected in state lawmaking. She said politicians and businesses are making decisions \u201cwithout the people that are going to be affected the most.\u201d She said she would work on putting guardrails on AI and overseeing the effects of data centers on communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Campaign Finance Transparency\u00a0<\/p>\n

The candidates were asked to provide transparency on their campaign donations<\/a> by a crowd member. Garibay has raised over $240,000 since launching her campaign, and Tovo has raised over $160,000, according to the Texas Ethics Commission.<\/p>\n

Garibay, who received large financial support from labor unions, said those donations are a \u201cbadge of honor,\u201d as someone with experience in these organizations. Tovo said she would support limits on campaign contributions at the state level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, challenging Gov. Greg Abbott in the November midterm election for Texas governor,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-257444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}