Three Republicans vying for retired State Sen. Kip Averitt’s seat tackled questions about Arizona’s new immigration law, nullification, redistricting and the projected state budget deficit Tuesday.

Granbury’s Brian Birdwell, Waco’s David Sibley and Burleson’s Darren Yancy fielded the questions during a candidate forum hosted by the McLennan County Republican Women.

One topic the Republicans discussed was immigration.

Burleson’s Darren Yancy (from left), Granbury’s Brian Birdwell and Waco’s David Sibley fielded questions during a forum hosted by the McLennan County Republican Women.

Arizona’s law grants police expanded power to stop and detain anyone reasonably suspected of being in the country illegally.

Without wholeheartedly endorsing the law, which he said he wasn’t fully familiar with, Birdwell said, “I absolutely will affirm the rights of the states to continue to affirm their borders.”

Birdwell, who narrowly survived the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon, suffering severe burns, said the issue of immigration is “absolutely personal to me: I wear the scars of not knowing who’s in this country.”

“We need something like this here in Texas,” Yancy said to loud applause.

He said he would want Texas law to use “probable cause” as the standard for stopping or detaining a person rather than the “reasonable suspicion” language in Arizona’s law, which has been criticized as overly vague.

Last week, during a meeting with the Tribune-Herald ’s editorial board, Yancy said he thought the law was “a little too Gestapo.” After the forum, Yancy explained that his earlier comment came before he had a chance to read the bill.

Sibley said he hadn’t read the law but that it reflected the failure of the federal government to deal with immigration.

“What kind of country doesn’t protect its own borders?” he responded. “I think Arizona’s trying to step into the breach.”

Sibley said he’s looked at a proposal that would, for a short period of time, employ the help of National Guard to secure Texas’ borders.

Budget deficit

“The state is required to balance its budget, and we must do so without raising taxes,” Birdwell said. “The best way for our state to create jobs and get out of this mess is to get out of the lives on a day-to-day basis of our citizens.”

Yancy, who sells insurance, said cutting employees at the Texas Department of Insurance was one way to get out of the hole. He indicated it has a much larger staff than its counterparts in other states.

But “if we don’t grow the Texas economy, we’re still going to be shackled,” Yancy said. He added that the way he would encourage economic development is lowering the state’s franchise tax.

Sibley applauded Gov. Rick Perry for putting in place 5 percent cuts to most state agencies, though he said that was only a partial solution for the deficit, which is expected to be as high as $15 billion.

Redistricting

All three candidates agreed that they wanted to see the Senate district — which consists of McLennan, Bosque, Coryell, Ellis, Falls, Hill, Hood, Johnson, Navarro and Somervell counties — kept whole during redistricting.

Sibley, a former state senator who would have 11 years of seniority in that body if elected, brought up his past experience.

“If I’m elected, it’ll be the third redistricting that I’ve done,” he said.

Nullification

All three candidates expressed unhappiness with the recently passed federal health care reform, but they varied in how they thought Texas ought to react.

Attorney General Greg Abbott already has joined with a number of other states in suing over the constitutionality of the reform legislation.

Yancy said he’d go a step further.

“We have to consider the opportunity to look at a resolution for nullification,” he said, referring to the theory that states can ignore federal laws they deem unconstitutional.

Birdwell said he preferred other ways of trying to repeal the law, but Sibley spoke up firmly against nullification.

“I absolutely support Abbott’s appeal,” Sibley said, “but on nullification, if you’re looking for someone who’ll say the laws of the United States don’t apply to us, I don’t see how we do that.”

mshapiro@wacotrib.com

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