Meet Senate Candidate Cody Clark
Former Denton Police Officer Cody Clark is running as a Republican for the Texas Senate seat that will be vacated by incumbent Sen. Drew Springer next year. Mr. Clark and his wife Shelly own a business that provides care for intellectually and developmentally disabled people. The Enterprise spoke with Mr. Clark about his priorities and hopes for District 30 should he win the seat.
Enterprise: We have a great school system and a lot of employers here. We don’t have a lot of housing. Our water plant is a hundred years old and our roads need work. What do you think the solution is?
Mr. Clark: I’ve actually talked to your mayor and I reached out to all the major mayors of every city in the Senate District 30, but the vast majority of cities, I really wanted to dig in and kind of know what issues are important to. I live in a rural community. I live in Krugerville, Texas, which is just outside of Aubrey, which is a small town itself, but it is a wildly growing area. So it soon is going to be a less rural place and we like the speed of a rural community. So places like Olney are important to me.
I think solutions for y’all would be things like supporting infrastructure projects that are out in the more rural ends of our community, as opposed to the more populated areas of our Senate District area. If there was something on the table where y’all could use some of the monies coming from the state government … I would prefer to direct those kinds of things out into the places that aren’t booming with growth and have excess funds to spend on their infrastructure problems. So, if something like that were to come down the pipeline, I would be more interested in that happening in Olney, or being allocated to a place like Olney, Texas, than Frisco, Texas.
Enterprise: What inspired you to enter this race? What do you want to achieve?
Mr. Clark: You know in our Legislature, they pride themselves, especially our Republicans, on being cheap. I do not want to wear a badge of cheapness.
I don’t think that is a conservative value – to be cheap. I think a conservative value is, if we all collectively decide that there should be programming for some aspect of society, whatever it is, we should do it and fund it so that it can be reasonably accomplished.
Now, to do that, I don’t think that we have to have California, New York, whatever, high tax rates. We had a $33 billion surplus and we still are the worst in the nation at taking care of the least of us. That’s absurd. Quite honestly, I think it’s dishonorable, that we’re the great state of Texas and we do the most deserving individuals the worst in the country.
We have kids being affected by that. In our case, special needs people that cannot take care of themselves are being affected. That is not a conservative value.
Enterprise: What is your position on school vouchers?
Mr. Clark: [District 30] is a strange mixture of different competing values, and if you look at the Republican Party platform, the eight legislative priorities …. school vouchers and parent choice are on one of the eight tenets of that platform. I like the idea that parents get to make the choice of their educational needs for their children. I like the idea of capitalism. So when you have an underperforming school, I’m going to take my kid out of there, and the funds are going to go with them, and they’re going to go to this other school, and if this other, if this first school doesn’t step up and do better, and, and get their stuff under control in a serious way, then they’re going to work themselves out of the market. Everyone I’ve ever talked to that is in a rural community hates that idea.And the reason why is because there is an absolutely justified fear that it’s going to hollow out the school systems. And ultimately the only ones that get to escape from it are probably the more wealthy individuals in the district.
I’m ready to vote for something like that, as long as there’s some kind of legitimate consideration for how do we not do that to our rural school systems. I don’t know that there’s a legitimate plan that I’ve heard of yet that doesn’t do that. So I actually don’t think it will happen.