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AUSTIN — Round Rock Air Force veteran MJ Hegar and three-term U.S. Sen. John Cornyn sparred over racial injustice, policing and the Supreme Court during an encounter televised statewide Friday night.
In what may be their only debate, Hegar, the Democratic challenger, cast Cornyn as ineffectual and too cozy with big-money interests during his 18 years in Washington. It’s time to fire him, she insisted.
Cornyn, who for much of the past decade was the No. 2 Republican in Senate leadership, branded Hegar as the hand-picked candidate of Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York. She’s too liberal for Texas, he said.
Answering a question about coronavirus vaccines, Cornyn assailed Senate Democrats for blocking a fourth COVID-19 relief package — though, at $550 billion, one questioned by some as not commensurate with the country’s public health and economic crisis.
He quickly turned to his Schumer puppet theme.
“That’s the people who are supporting MJ, the people who recruited her and her donors, and the first vote she will cast will be for Chuck Schumer as the leader,” he said.
Hegar, who rose to prominence with a lawsuit that fought to allow women to serve in combat, turned to Cornyn and dismissed his characterization.
“I’m a Purple Heart combat veteran and a working mom of two, and I am your opponent,” she said. “I’m the person you’re running against, as inconvenient as that is for you. It’s my ideas and my support in this state that you’re going to have to face in this election.”
Cornyn asked for time to rebut, telling Hegar, “I’m worried about the people who are bankrolling your campaign, the Hollywood celebrities and people like Chuck Schumer.”
Discussion on race
Months after protests inspired by the killing of former Houston resident George Floyd by Minneapolis police, the Texas Senate opponents showed they take different lessons from the nation’s discussion of race.
Asked if they favor renaming Fort Hood, the Central Texas base that honors Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood, Hegar said she does. Cornyn said he supports creating a commission to study the subject of military bases named for Confederates.
While Cornyn seized on the opportunity to link Hegar to the Senate’s leading proponent of the study commission, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Hegar grabbed it as an opening to talk about sexual assaults at Fort Hood.
On racism and policing changes, Cornyn and Hegar diverged on whether systemic racism exists.
“I don’t believe I’m a racist,” said Cornyn, who challenged the premise of people who speak of racism being embedded in American institutions.
“When they suggest that somehow this is not a matter of individual responsibility, but it somehow is systemic, that just doesn’t ring true,” he said.
Hegar said she’s undergone “implicit-bias training” and believes everyone has subconscious prejudice.
Cornyn attacked her support of a group called Campaign Zero. “They want to abolish the police, and they want to legalize things like prostitution,” he said.
Hegar, though, said that when she spoke favorably of the group some time back, it was taking no such positions.
She said she supports its early stands in favor of community policing, stronger police oversight and more use of body cameras.
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On a state law conferring “qualified immunity” on police officers accused of wrongdoing, Hegar said it makes it too hard to weed out bad cops and should be drastically dialed back.
“We need to work with leaders in the Black community, and police leaders who want reform and accountability,” she said.
Cornyn offered a different view.
Police officers “need to be held accountable when they cross the line,” he said, “but I think … some measure of qualified immunity, where you think you’re doing the right thing and a good thing, is appropriate.”
Asked whether he’d met with leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, Cornyn said he could not say. “Frankly I don’t know necessarily who is and who is not a member,” he said.
Hegar shot back, “They don’t introduce themselves as ‘I’m a leader in the Black Lives movement.’”
Cornyn said that bad cops should be punished to “the fullest extent of the law” but that he supports law enforcement.
“I am not in the same camp as Ms. Hegar, who believes that we should tie the police’s hands behind their backs,” he said.
Hegar accused Cornyn of spreading “misinformation.”
“He keeps lying about me,” she said. “Let me be very clear. There is always going to need to be someone on the other end of the line when we’re in distress. I don’t support defunding the police — I’m not sure how many times I need to say that.”
On the Supreme Court, Cornyn defended Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s drive to install Amy Coney Barrett on the high court before the Nov. 3 election. Hegar opposed it, saying it shatters precedent.
“Integrity matters,” she said.
Hegar said she would support term limits for Supreme Court justices, while Cornyn said it’s an idea worth considering. Hegar shied away from supporting some liberal Democrats’ call for increasing the number of justices, currently nine.
Only debate?
The hourlong event, which originated from the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin, where COVID-19 safety protocols were strictly enforced, aired on Irving-based Nexstar Media Group’s many TV stations, including CW 33 in Dallas.
The candidates responded to questions submitted by viewers as well as those from moderators Gromer Jeffers Jr., political writer for The Dallas Morning News, and Robert Hadlock and Sally Hernandez, both anchors at Nexstar’s KXAN-TV, Austin’s NBC affiliate.
Hegar has called for three debates. In addition to Friday’s, she has agreed to take part in ones proposed by TEGNA stations and Spectrum News.
Cornyn, though, has consented only to the Nexstar debate.
Late Friday, when asked about further debates, Cornyn spokesman Travis Considine replied, “Stay tuned.”
Though their race has lacked the excitement and visibility of Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s near-defeat of GOP Sen. Ted Cruz two years ago, the prospects of higher Democratic turnout in a presidential election year and President Donald Trump’s slumping poll numbers have raised alarms among some Republicans.
So has Hegar’s announcement last week that she’d raised more than $13.5 million from July 1 through last month. Hegar, who for the first part of that period was fending off state Sen. Royce West of Dallas in a July 12 Democratic runoff, said she had more than $8 million in cash for the stretch run.
Flexing his advantage as an incumbent, Cornyn had led in fundraising through June, with more than $22.2 million in contributions for the cycle, compared with Hegar’s $6.5 million.