PAT DIXON

VFW forum in Bay CityThursday Oct 1, 6 pmVFW Post #24381672 TX-60, Bay City, TX 77414You are cordially invited to a political forum at VFW Post #2438 in Bay City on 01 October 2026.Tables will be provided. We will advertise a meet and greet from 6:00-7::00 with the forum beginning promptly at 7:00PM.You will be given a 2-minute opening statement. Questions will be asked by the audience in written form. The questions will be reviewed by the Republican and Democratic Chairs. If found to be appropriate, the MC will ask the question. You will have 2 minutes to respond. If the question involves your opponent, he or she will be given 1 minute to respond.Questions will cease promptly at 8:30 and you will be given 1 minute for a closing statement.

I am not going to make a long list of promises. Nobody knows if there will be another flood, COVID, or 9/11. The priorities depend on an unpredictable future. My principles are Libertarian, which do give predictable positions. I am happy to comment on policy positions, as I have on prior campaigns that can be seen in the links below and in the Policy Statements menu above.

Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is a neurodegenerative brain disease that has no known cause, treatment or cure. It affects nerve cells that control walking, balance, mobility, vision, speech, and swallowing. Five to six people per 100,000 will develop PSP.

I suspect he really does not intend to stop wasteful local spending because he can’t. Instead, a Governor could reduce state spending. When Ann Richards left office the state budget was $35B per year. Under Republicans it has grown to $169B per year (almost 5 time more). If you factor population and inflation, it is not as bad. The per capita state budget adjusted for inflation rose from $4,135 after Ann Richards to $5,329 today.

I support teachers being empowered to use their talents to motivate learning. That is hard to do when they are mandated to teach to standardized tests and conform to regimented regimes.

I support empowering teachers to use their talents to motivate learning. That is hard to do when they are mandated to teach to standardized tests and conform to regimented regimes.

I support parents being empowered to choose what is best for their kids. That is hard to do when they have no choice.

I support empowering parents to choose what is best for their kids. That is hard to do when they have no choice.

While there can be improvements, no system is perfect. I believe elections in Texas are conducted properly and the results are legitimate. I also believe Trump lost to Biden without anything stolen or rigged.

The rule of law. When someone commits fraud, there should be legal recourse. The job of a legislative body is to determine which harms warrant government intervention, and how laws should be enforced when those harms occur.

I agree with Kyra. A temporary moratorium on new AI projects should be immediately instated. I’m not against free-market capitalism but AI is being heavily subsidized and therefore isn’t free-market capitalism. The problem with America is we are becoming a corporatocracy. When you look at the effects data centers are already having on our strained water and electric infrastructure it is plain to see that it is harming the general public and needs at least some regulation.

On May 30, 2018, in the aftermath of the Santa Fe High School shooting, Greg Abbott asked legislative leaders to consider the merits of a “red flag” law that would allow a court to temporarily remove firearms from someone deemed dangerous. In 2019, following the mass shootings Odessa and the Walmart in El Paso, Abbott focused instead on measures such as improving threat reporting, mental health responses, and information sharing.

His first example is slashing property taxes. I have already addressed this in https://patdixon.org/property-tax/. Unless he identifies spending cuts pertinent to local property taxes (such as school districts, counties, cities, emergency services, etc) he should be ignored.

Allow people to live as they choose so long as they do not harm others.

• Right-size government around protection of life, liberty, and property.

Identify and enact targeted reductions in the scope and spending of Texas government before reducing taxes.

• Reject unsupported across-the-board cuts and tax promises that omit service consequences.

Use verified state spending reductions to lower the state retail sales-tax rate.

• Provide recurring savings by collecting less rather than issuing a one-time payment.

End state tax incentives and subsidy programs that shift private growth costs onto Texas taxpayers.

• Apply the same free-market rules to data centers and other favored industries.

Require projects that increase demand for water, power, roads, schools, and public safety to cover those costs.

• Welcome private growth without transferring its infrastructure burden to existing taxpayers.

Use fraud law and other existing remedies for AI harms and legislate only where identifiable harms lack legal recourse.

• Consider market discipline and rule-of-law remedies before broad licensing or permitting regimes.

Allow Texas cities to replace plurality runoffs with approval voting or a ranked-choice system chosen locally.

• Preserve local choice and reward candidates for broader voter support.

Give every Texas child an equal state scholarship that follows the student to the school the family chooses.

• Expand access beyond the limited Education Freedom Account enrollment cap.

Remove politically driven standardized-testing mandates and make parents the primary judges of whether schools meet their children's needs.

• Free teachers to use professional judgment and instructional skill.

Use neutral mapping software to produce compact and fair legislative districts rather than maps drawn for party advantage.

• Redistrict on the census timetable rather than for mid-decade partisan gain.

Oppose the death penalty, including when political incentives reward appearing tough on crime.

• Treat new exculpatory evidence as more important than political optics.

Request that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles reconsider Robert Roberson's case and issue a pardon.

• Base the request on the campaign's assessment of the later medical and investigative evidence.

Protect peaceful adult hemp and cannabis choices while retaining penalties for impaired driving and conduct that harms others.

• Pair any broader drug decriminalization with treatment, recovery, housing, harm reduction, and public-order enforcement.

Require government to meet clearly defined constitutional standards, including warrants where applicable, before accessing privately owned camera recordings.

• Keep ownership and control of home and business recordings with the owner.

Require a probable-cause warrant before searching camera networks to reconstruct a person's movements over a significant period.

• Require every query to state its investigative basis.

Set short automatic deletion periods for surveillance records that are not evidence in an identified case.

• Minimize collection and retention beyond a publicly stated purpose.

Prohibit generalized facial-recognition searches of innocent people without particularized legal authorization.

• Disable audio by default and exclude constitutionally protected activity from routine tracking.

Publish government camera locations and private-network relationships and create auditable records for every surveillance search.

• Record who searched, when, which database was used, and the legal basis.

Ban government sale of surveillance data and prevent agencies from buying private data they could not lawfully collect themselves.

• Protect private information from commercial exploitation without consent.

Require independent compliance audits, aggregate public reporting, and meaningful correction procedures for people harmed by erroneous surveillance.

• Make privacy safeguards enforceable rather than voluntary.

Apply stricter property-rights scrutiny to high-voltage transmission routes and the condemnation power granted to private utilities.

• Examine need, alternatives, lifetime costs, and rights-of-way before approving a route.

Prioritize existing transportation rights-of-way when expanding infrastructure to reduce cost and avoid additional eminent-domain takings.

• Apply free-market sustainability to transportation growth.

Use road-user revenue, including fuel-tax receipts, for transportation rather than diverting it to unrelated programs.

• Preserve the link between infrastructure use and payment.

Assess current Texas elections as generally properly administered and legitimate while supporting practical improvements.

• Retain voter-verifiable paper records and sample hand checks.

Welcome immigrants who are peaceful and productive and reject enforcement methods that harm Texans' life, liberty, or property.

• Cooperate with lawful federal enforcement without treating state power as unlimited.

Defend lawful self-defense, hunting, competition, collecting, and other peaceful firearm uses while holding criminals accountable.

• Evaluate safety measures with due-process, privacy, and constitutional safeguards.

Treat deprivation of personal liberty and livelihood as a last resort rather than a default response to public emergencies.

• Hold elected officials accountable for coercive mandates.

Keep state government neutral among faiths and protect the equal liberty of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and people with no religion.

• Do not use the governor's office to impose personal religious beliefs.

Hold a pro-life personal view while leaving difficult medical decisions to patients and doctors and refusing to impose religious doctrine through state power.

• Prefer persuasion and alternatives such as adoption to coercive enforcement.

Manage Texas investments for prudent risk-adjusted returns rather than using state funds to express solidarity with a foreign government.

• Leave foreign-policy disputes to the federal government.