{"id":449943,"date":"2026-09-28T07:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T07:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/449943\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T07:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T07:42:08","slug":"republican-state-representatives-speak-on-elections-public-safety-at-texas-tribune-festival-the-daily-texan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/449943\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican state representatives speak on elections, public safety at Texas Tribune Festival \u2013 The Daily Texan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFrom left, Renzo Downey, moderator and lead writer for The Texas Tribune; Mitch Little, State Representative for Lewisville; Jeff Leach, State Representative for Allen; and Daniel Alders, State Representative for Tyler, discuss the state of the Republican Party within Texas in the Pennybacker Ballroom in the Omni Hotel on Sept. 25, 2026.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Three Republican Texas representatives spoke at the panel \u201cThe Texas Republican Agenda\u201d at TribFest, the annual Texas Tribune journalism convention, on Friday.<\/p>\n

State Reps. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville; Jeff Leach, R-Plano; and Daniel Alders, R-Tyler, addressed the possibility of Democrats flipping Republican-held offices in state and national races. Little said that if Republican voters turn out, Republicans \u201cwon\u2019t have to worry\u201d about Democrats taking the Texas House of Representatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still do believe that good candidates that represent their districts well and that work hard win,\u201d Leach said. \u201cThere are national and statewide headwinds that we\u2019ve got to be ready for and certainly watchful for. But on the Republican side, we have a lot of really good candidates that are working their districts very hard. They\u2019ve delivered for their districts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little discussed public safety within West Campus and Austin. He said at the Texas Select House Committee on Governmental Oversight meeting for this week, representatives will speak about district attorneys who are \u201cnot putting people in jail and prison who need to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 Garza, Travis County district attorney,\u00a0 has been accused of hiding evidence relating to 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, which were dismissed by a Travis County judge in May, and of having \u201cpro-crime, pro-illegal immigration policies\u201d in a June letter from the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.<\/p>\n

The representatives also responded to comments made by Bo French, the Republican candidate for Texas railroad commissioner<\/a>. French posted comments on social media criticizing a picture of South Asian UT students celebrating during the Ohio State game.<\/p>\n

In response, Leach posted a photo of his son, a UT student, at the game with his friends. At the panel, Leach called French\u2019s tweet \u201chateful and harsh\u201d and said he would \u201chold his nose\u201d in French\u2019s race for railroad commissioner.<\/p>\n

\u201cBo thinks it\u2019s a \u2018problem\u2019 they don\u2019t all look like and have the same skin color as Brady (Leach\u2019s son),\u201d Leach wrote in the post. \u201cI think that\u2019s racist \u2014 and it makes me sick.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From left, Renzo Downey, moderator and lead writer for The Texas Tribune; Mitch Little, State Representative for Lewisville;…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-449943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449943","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=449943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}