BELL COUNTY, Texas — The candidates looking to represent Temple, Belton, Nolanville, Harker Heights and parts of Killeen for Texas House District 55 made their final push to voters on Monday ahead of the primary election.
Incumbent Rep. Hugh Shine, who has represented the district for the past eight years, touted his support of state border security initiatives and highlighted his push to lower state property taxes, where he said he appeared as a co-author or sponsor on all bills.
"This all boils down to one thing, I voted against the vouchers," Shine said, referring to Governor Greg Abbott's endorsement of challenger Hillary Hickland. Shine said the bill supporting the vouchers would provide "no guardrails" or private board to oversee the operations of private schools receiving taxpayer money.
"There's no financial audit, those are strict requirements because any governmental entity that receives taxpayer money at least has a financial audit," Shine said.
Challenger Hillary Hickland said she entered the race to be an advocate for families and children "to have effective representation that reflects the values of our district."
Hickland said she worked on a sub-committee for the Texas Republican Party to "stop the sexualization of Texas kids" and "fighting for legislation to protect our kids."
"Whether that was establishing mandatory library standards or banning gender modification in minors, we were pretty effective in getting those laws passed," Hickland said.
Hickland said a major difference between her and Shine is that she is in favor of school choice legislation.
"When it comes to the options, the only families who have options are the ones who can afford it and that's wrong," Hickland said.
On the border, Shine praised the work of the State, DPS and National Guard and said the main problem remains the ongoing fight with the federal government.
"We end up finding things that we passed in the legislature embroiled in federal court with the Department of Justice," Shine said. "We just need to continue our vigilance and secure our border."
Shine outlined his time in the House over the past session, saying House Republicans made a conscious effort to reduce the growth of municipal government, cutting it from "8 percent to 3.5 percent."
"Then we added compression to the school funding program, about $5 billion in assistance, and this last session we added nearly $12 billion to that compression," Shine said.
Shine said limiting the property tax rates of the local municipalities and putting money in for compression at the state level for the purpose of reducing maintenance and operation tax rates "is a step in the right direction."
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5, and Bell County voters will be able to cast their votes at any polling location across the county.
More from 6 News: