Whether itโs Miller or Hays in office next year, the agriculture commissioner has several issues coming to a head. Texas farmers and ranchers are facing tough financial hardships from the effects of the drought and extreme heat.
Kody Bessent, CEO of Plains Cotton Growers, said producers need a staunch advocate who will promote Texas-grown products on a global scale.
โWe can produce a crop of very, very high quality, but we have to continue to use all the platforms we have to promote that,โ Bessent explained.
And the rural lifestyle is increasingly endangered. Take, for example, rural health care. Texas leads the country inย rural hospital closures. Meanwhile, another 4 million Texans struggle with hunger and food scarcity because of inflation.
Adrian Billings is a family medicine physician with Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, where he focuses on reviving rural health care. Billings said it would be greatly beneficial if the agriculture department would help with that mission.
โRural health should be more of a priority,โ Billings said. โI would love to see more of an investment financially, as well as with time and resources. Iโd like to see more of that happening and to try and bridge this gap of urban and rural health care disparities.โ
Susan Hays is called back to rural lifeย
This is the first time Hays is running for elected office, but sheโs no stranger to Texas politics. Throughout her legal career, Hays worked at the Texas Legislature and the Texas Supreme Court, and co-founded Janeโs Due Process, a legal services nonprofit for pregnant minors.
Most recently, Hays has found herself practicing law in the cannabis industry โ she helped write and pass the Texas hemp legalization bill in 2019 and calls herself Texasโ first โcannabis super lawyer.โ Part of her campaign message is to continue that work by fully legalizing cannabis in the state.
But she wants to legalize the crop for more than the popularity points. Hays believes it could be a cash crop opportunity for farmers and a boost to the Texas economy. However, hemp in Texasย hasnโtย lived up to expectations.
โPeople arenโt afraid of it anymore. They or someone they know has tried it and found it to be very helpful,โ Hays said. โThe other piece of it is once we have stable cannabis markets, which weโre a long way from right now, itโs one of the few crops somebody can make a living off of on an acre or less.โ
And she believes she would be the right agriculture commissioner to see the task through.
โIโm a policy wonk and smart enough to figure out how to get things done the right way,โ Hays said. โAnd I also enjoy getting my boots dirty and getting out there.โ
Hays loves being in a rural community now, but growing up, she was pulling off cow ticks and helping her brothers castrate calves โ while wearing a dress โ and looking for a way out. She became the trope of a rural kid moving away in search of a better living.
A few years ago, rural life was calling her home. Hays and her husband bought land in Alpine, a small town framed by mile-high mountains and an hourโs car ride north of Big Bend National Park.
โIโve always been deeply attached to the land, and enjoy being out in it and getting dirt under my fingernails,โ Hays said.
Hays promotes practices that could help farmers boost their crop growth even with Texasโ changing climate. And she wants to pay farmers for putting carbon back into the soil to combat climate change, which can be done through methods like cover crops or conservation tilling.
And then there is rural health care, a topic Hays evoked at a recent rally with gubernatorial candidateย Beto OโRourkeย at Texas Tech University. The gap in access is only getting wider, she said.
โIf you look at survival rates from traumatic accidents or heart attacks, you know itโs the first hour that matters,โ Hays said. โIf youโre an hour away from getting emergency care, youโre more likely to die or be permanently disabled.โ
She also wants Texas to expand Medicaid, saying itโs โasinineโ that the state leaves federal tax dollars on the floor by not. Texas is one of 12 Republican-controlled states that havenโt expanded coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Itโs estimated that Texas wouldย receiveย $6.3 billion annually, and coverage would be expanded to include 1 million enrollees.
Sid Miller stands by his record
Miller touts a list of accomplishments over his two terms in office, such as the Farm Fresh program, a farm-to-school initiative that saw schools purchase $65 million worth of fresh food, and Operation Maverick, which investigated more than 7,000 businesses operating with illegal scales.
And he touts the Texas Sunset Advisory Commissionโsย reviewย of the agency from 2021 in which the department was called โwell-managed.โ
โThe Sunset Commission said weโre the best state agency theyโve ever reviewed, so I think that says a lot about what weโve done and what type of people we have with the TDA,โ Miller said.
The commission, which reviews state agencies and programs for efficiency, did note that โthe department’s day-to-day responsibilities are largely removed from the politics and public attention focused on the commissioner.โ
But some of Millerโs political actions have caught the publicโs attention, and not in a good way. When asked about spreading fabricated photos or supporting stories on social media, Millerย saidย he doesnโt personally post everything to his accounts and that his team takes posts down โmost of the timeโ when they find out theyโre false.
More recently, Miller was the special guest speaker at a screening of theย debunkedย film โ2000 Mules,โ which falsely claims there was significant voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
Millerโs family has been ranching since the 1700s, and Miller continued that tradition himself. He later turned it into 20 world rodeo championships. Miller said agriculture has always been the glue that holds Texas together.
โWe donโt own the land, the land owns us,โ Miller said. โAgriculture is the heartbeat of America.โ
When it comes to keeping agriculture stable, though, Millerโs conservative views are vastly different from Haysโ. At the top of Millerโs list is stopping China from buying farmland in the U.S. And Miller does want to expand and fully implement medical cannabis use. His support for cannabis legalization ends with โcompassionate use.โ
When asked about full legalization, Miller adamantly said, โIโm not for that.โ
In the face of historic crop losses from the drought, Miller,ย who has acknowledged humans have contributed to climate change, said producers will be turning to crop insurance. However, crop insurance does not make up for the millions of dollars in lost products, whether that be cotton or vegetable crops. When pressed on how to get to the root of the problem, Miller said there wasnโt much to do.
โWell the root of the problem is it doesnโt rain,โ Miller said. โNot much I can do about that, other than pray.โ
Miller also sees the rural health care landscape differently. He points to the work the department did with distilleries during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide sanitizer and other resources. He said rural hospitals are in โgood shapeโ since federal and state funds were distributed to facilities around Texas during the pandemic.
โSo financially, theyโre pretty sound,โ Miller said. โTheyโre back to doing elective surgeriesโ โ which were at times put on hold during the pandemic โ โand itโs business as usual now.โ
:ย This article was written by ย JAYME LOZANOย ofย The Texas Tribune. ย The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans โ and engages with them โ about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. ย This article originally appeared at: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/10/20/sid-miller-susan-hays-texas-agriculture-commissioner-election-2022/