What I’m Fighting For

I am TSU graduate, youth baseball coach, and public safety advocate. I come from a family of Baptist pastors, and my call to serve my community is rooted in faith, family, and love for my neighbor.

I’ve worked with both parties and law enforcement to develop public safety measures to make Houston safer. I’m running to end the pay-to-play culture of corruption and work for the middle class — lower healthcare and home insurance costs, protect and fund our public schools while reducing property taxes, and keep our families safe from violence.

I’m willing to work with anyone across the aisle to get the job done. When I am elected, I will fight for:

Lower Housing Costs for Our Families

Fund more affordable housing construction. The Texas Housing Trust Fund is woefully underfunded, while public dollars flow freely to tax breaks for data centers and school vouchers for millionaires. We should expand state housing tax credits, low-interest construction loans and incentives for developments that guarantee long-term affordability.

Help working families purchase homes. Provide down-payment and closing-cost assistance for first-time buyers.

Protect tenants. Crack down on retaliation, unsafe conditions, excessive fees and discrimination. Increase rental assistance and establish emergency funds for families facing eviction.

Address rising property-insurance costs. We need more transparency and accountability in premiums, claims and coverage.

Lower Healthcare Costs for Our Families

Take federal dollars (that come from our taxes) for Medicaid Expansion. Health care is a right, not a privilege limited to those who can afford it. That’s why I will fight for Medicaid expansion to immediately cover 726,000 uninsured Texans.

Expand Community Health Centers. Make better use of local, non-profit, community-directed, and often federally funded health care providers that serve primarily low income and medically underserved communities where care is needed but scarce.

Expand mental health treatment options. Providing treatment up front is always a better investment than incurring the costs of incarceration or homelessness on the back end. We need more mental health residency programs, loan forgiveness programs for therapists serving underserved communities, and removal of licensing barriers for out-of-state providers.

Fixing the Power Grid

Get politics out of the PUC. The governor should appoint the highest qualified experts to the Public Utilities Commission and ERCOT, not political cronies.

Create a plan to keep data centers from crashing the grid. The plan should require robust community input, limits on the amount of power usage, particularly during peak times or emergencies, and an impact study on the long-term effects to the grid.

Stop the attacks on renewable energy. We need a diverse set of power sources, especially during extreme weather events and disasters. Wind energy has helped keep the grid up in disasters, particularly Winter Storm Uri, and solar energy has been important in meeting record demand on hot summer afternoons.

Connect the grid. Stronger connections with neighboring grids are just common sense – so Texas can import more electricity during emergencies.

Stop protecting negligent utilities. Make utilities—not only customers—bear financial consequences when preventable failures result from neglected infrastructure.

Safer Neighborhoods

Keep repeat violent offenders off our streets. Pass comprehensive, bipartisan bail reform that will ensure our safety without violating our constitutional rights.

Get mental health treatment for nonviolent offenders who need it. Beef up diversion programs that keep people who just need treatment from getting trapped in the criminal justice system.

Restore local control over public safety budgets. Our cities and counties know best how to keep their people safe but are hamstrung by state regulations over public safety budgets and policies.

Build trust between the community and law enforcement. Use proven community violence intervention programs as models in HD 138, where trusted messengers in the community work with law enforcement to reduce violence.

Keep our youth on the right path. Invest in after-school programs, job fairs, and sports, together with community policing programs, that offer youth new opportunities in the community.

Stronger Neighborhoods

Create a State Home Beautification and Neighborhood Renewal Program. Texas communities – including communities in HD 138, need help to address abandoned homes and vacant apartment complexes that hurt safety, lower property values, and waste housing we already have.

- This program would establish dedicated state funding to help cities, land banks, and nonprofit organizations acquire, rehabilitate, and bring abandoned properties up to code, so they can once again serve the people who live and work in our communities.
- Homes restored through this program would be made available to first-time homebuyers and as affordable rental housing for low-income families and Texas workers, helping stabilize neighborhoods without pushing longtime residents out.
- Instead of letting properties decay while families struggle to find housing, this approach invests in what already makes places like Spring Branch and House District 138 strong — our homes, our streets, and the people who call them home.

Restore local control over land use. Texas has preempted city and county regulation of many land uses. One that is causing a huge problem now is the toxic concrete batch plant immediately next to the Awty Early Learning Campus, where over 500 children between the ages of three and seven spend their days learning, playing, and breathing the polluted air around them. The state is not listening to the community. I will fight to change that.

Stronger Schools for Every Texas Child

Fully fund Texas’ public schools. Article 7 of the Texas Constitution requires the State of Texas to provide a free, quality public education for every child. Yet, our state government is not only shorting public education (Texas ranks 45th out of 50 in per-pupil spending), it is now diverting funds to private, for-profit schools through the new voucher program. Our current school funding model is broken. I want to work with leaders to find fair ways to fund schools so that every student has access to quality education, regardless of their zip code.

Restore local control over education. The TEA takeover of HISD must end and control returned to the duly elected Board of Trustees.

Pay teachers fairly. I will advocate for teacher pay raises to ensure we attract and retain the best talent.

Prepare our youth for family-sustaining jobs, not just for college. I want to create clear pathways to trades, recognizing that not every student will attend college. It is the state’s responsibility to prepare students for whatever life’s next steps may be after high school.