Texas House District 121 in north and central San Antonio is one of the few competitive races for the Texas House of Representatives this election.
Although the district has long been held by Republicans, including former Speaker of the House Joe Strauss, Republicans have won by increasingly slimmer margins over the last decade.
Even though redistricting made the seat slightly more reliably Republican in 2022, State Representative Steve Allison still only won re-election by a 10-point margin two years ago, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
The district now stretches from Olmos Park and Alamo Heights to the San Antonio International Airport, Stone Oak, and on up to the northern edge of Bexar County.
Texas Democrats see an opportunity to flip the seat blue after Allison lost the Republican primary in March. Allison was one of 21 Republican state representatives who voted to block school vouchers last year, which made him a target by Gov. Greg Abbott and pro-voucher groups.
Abbott endorsed 15 challengers in the GOP primaries in a bid to gain the votes he needs to create a voucher-like program that would give families public dollars to pay for private school or home school. Eleven of those challengers won their primary, including Marc LaHood in HD 121.
By the governor’s count, the primaries give him a narrow pro-voucher Republican majority, assuming all districts currently held by Republicans stick with the GOP in the general election.
Democrats will need to flip around three seats in order to block vouchers in the next legislative session. House District 118 is another competitive race in the San Antonio area that Democrats are hoping to flip.
Current HD 121 State Rep. Steve Allison recently said he is supporting Laurel Jordan Swift this election, although he still considers himself a Republican.
Democrat Laurel Jordan Swiftis a political newcomer who told TPR’s "The Source" that she voted Republican until 2016. “I was raising five kids and working full time, and wasn't paying super close attention, and everything seemed fine until about that time,” Jordan Swift said. “I started really investigating the issues, and I realized that I really didn't agree with Republicans as much as I agreed with Democrats. I'm very moderate. I'm in the middle.”
Republican Marc LaHood made an unsuccessful bid for Bexar County District Attorney in 2022. His brother Nico LaHood was Bexar County District Attorney from 2014 to 2018.
After he won the Republican primary in March, LaHood said he was confident he could win the general election, despite people telling him he was too conservative for the district.
Abortion
Jordan Swift said she is running in part to repeal the state’s strict abortion law.
“I don't think people, even moderate Republicans, realized when that abortion ban took effect, how it would so negatively affect all women and all people,” Jordan Swift told "The Source." “Even when folks really want their babies, they're not allowed to get real health care when they're having a miscarriage.”
Jordan Swift said she believed abortion will be enough for some Republicans to change their vote.
“It's a deal breaker for a lot of people. But then when you pile on vouchers and underfunding public education (it is a deal breaker),” Jordan Swift said. “And there's a lot of other things that you can add to that, that people are finally starting to be fed up with.”
When "The Source" asked LaHood if he would consider altering the abortion law to protect women in a medical emergency, LaHood said it was first important to decide what is life.
“How do we balance out the duty of the government to make sure that we're providing adequate care to our moms but we're still following the law?” said LaHood, who identifies as pro-life.
Vouchers
Jordan Swift is against school vouchers and believes Texas public schools need more funding.
LaHood was endorsed by the governor because of his support for vouchers.
When asked about the cost of vouchers limiting funding for public schools, LaHood suggested that perhaps public schools already had more money than they need.
“If $15,500 is being spent on a child, there's only three possibilities,” LaHood said. “Either one, it costs more than that to educate our children in school, which means that for our children to stay in the current school systems, the school students, the school systems, are being bankrupted. The second question would be, well, maybe the government just magically got something accurately right. Or the third option is it doesn't cost that much. They're covering all costs.”
On average, Texas school districts have about $10,000 to spend per student, not $15,000.
When a caller asked about vouchers being insufficient to cover the tuition of many private schools and the impact on public schools, LaHood did not answer the first question and gave some questionable math to answer the second.
LaHood said he thought public schools would be all right because the voucher would be less than the full cost of each student — a calculation that didn’t entirely make sense and that doesn’t take into account that many families using vouchers in other states had previously never sent their children to public school.
“Going to like a pure business model, the schools aren't being bankrupted if a child or if a parent chooses to relocate their child to a different school system or homeschool because they're still receiving $7,500 or more,” LaHood said, claiming that schools in his district have at least $15,000 per student.
Current HD 121 State Representative Steve Allison recently said he is supporting Jordan Swift this election in the hope that flipping his seat will protect public education from vouchers.
Property tax
LaHood also told "The Source" that he is in favor of eliminating property tax, which is the largest source of funding for public education in Texas.
“I'm a firm believer that if the government can take your home or your property because you're not paying taxes, that you don't really own anything,” LaHood said. “You're just renting from the government.”
Most states fund education through a combination of sales tax, income tax, and property tax. Because Texas has no state income tax, eliminating property tax would leave schools almost entirely reliant on sales tax.
Jordan Swift said eliminating property tax is an unrealistic and unfair proposal.
“Nobody likes paying property taxes,” Jordan Swift said. “It's a painful thing, but a [dramatically higher] sales tax would be most harmful to the poorest folks.”
Instead, Jordan Swift said the best way to lower property taxes would be to expand Medicaid.
“We're spending our federal tax dollars to expand Medicaid in 40 other states across the country, and we have not accepted that aid,” Jordan Swift said. “Our rural hospitals are closing, our urban hospitals are overpacked and overcrowded, and the folks that don't have insurance we subsidize with our property tax dollars.”
Border security
LaHood said he believes in less government and reducing government spending, but said he doesn’t have a problem with spending billions of dollars on Operation Lone Star.
“There are some things that are necessary,” LaHood said. “We have a right to have a secure border.”
Jordan Swift also said it was important to secure the border, but she said that was the federal government’s responsibility.
“We don't want people coming across the border willy-nilly unaccounted for,” Jordan Swift said. “But we shouldn't be using Texas tax dollars to pay for it.”
Climate change
Jordan Swift said another reason she’s running for office is to address climate change.
“I earned my degree from UTSA in biology, and back then they could teach us about climate change,” Jordan Swift said. “It's a fact, and I just think if we all put our heads together, we can solve it.”
