by Caden Ziegler
During the Governor & Lobbyist Breakfast, each of the governor candidates gave a speech presenting their platform to the small congregation of lobbyists, Governor’s cabinet members, and the current Governor himself. After their speeches, there was a short Q&A for each candidate, Governor Kennedy Montgomery took this opportunity to ask how these candidates would assume his position in office.
Montgomery states that he believes that one of the most necessary qualities of a Governor is to serve the public.
“I honestly believe it starts with opening your heart and opening your mind,” Montgomery said. “To figure out and find the needs and wants of every delegate, and how you can best encompass and serve everyone. You do a lot of talking, you do a lot of speaking, but I believe listening is a big part of servant leadership. Addressing the needs of every delegate is an integral part of being governor. If you can’t listen then you don’t know, and if you don’t know, you can’t help.”
Every candidate at the breakfast was asked about unity among the districts and delegations.
Candidate Jordan Clemets attempts to unify Texas YG by implementing a free broadcast of the conferences using Facebook’s live stream feature. “
“[Unity] is extremely important because our state is large and vast,” Clements said. “Unity is a core principle of Texas. We are constitutionally allowed to split into five different states, however we don’t because we are united as one large, glorious state. I feel like unity is very important because it represents that as well, whether we are from Midland, Dallas, Ft.Worth, Houston, or Austin. We are all in this together and we are all Texans.”
Ossmar Cardiel, another candidate, also spoke a lot about unity in his speech. Montgomery asked Cardiel what plans he had to unify YG if he were to win.
“On my tri-fold I also have my Snapchat on there so people can reach me there, because a lot of our delegates…stay active on social media such as Snapchat, Twitter, and so on,” Cardiel said.
Communication is a large part of Cardiel’s platform, he states that “one person can accomplish a lot of things, but… together, and with the whole idea of unity, we could actually accomplish a lot more if we all work as one.”
The third present candidate was Sharif Long. He plans to unify the districts by the second part of his platform; equality.
“Governor Montgomery has done a great job of implementing unity on his platform last year, and [he] really [wants to] build off of that with [his] platform. There is no doubt that everyone in the programs voice matters,” Long said.
Montgomery said “[he is] just interested to see how it all plays out,” since “they are all pretty good candidates” and “they all believe in the essence and power of unity.”
