Meet the Candidate: Trey Wharton – Texas House District 12

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) -We are about 2 weeks away from the start of early voting.

One race some Brazos Valley voters will see on their ballot is Texas House District 12. This week on News 3 at Six, we are getting to know the candidates who want to represent District 12 in Austin.

District 12 includes Robertson, Madison, Walker, Grimes, Washington, and the eastern and southern portions of Brazos County.

Kyle Kacal currently holds the District 12 chair. In November, he announced he would not seek reelection in 2024. Three Republicans are running in hopes of filling his seat: Ben Bius, Trey Wharton, and John Harvey Slocum.

Wharton joined News 3 at Six on Tuesday to discuss why he believes he should take the seat. He says if he is elected he plans to talk to the people in the different counties about what’s important to them and what they want to see passed. He says the number one issue he is hearing from people in his area is the border.

“We’re not in the middle of it, but we kind of are because everything’s coming through District 12. We’re going to see a huge growth coming straight up I-45, Highway 6, and 290 and that’s gonna affect every county in this district and that’s going to be something that we’re going to have to work, the state officials the county, and the local officials, are all gonna have to work together to kind of manage it.”

Wharton previously served on the Huntsville school board for eight years. One topic legislators have failed to agree on is school vouchers.

“I’m for the school educational savings accounts, but you can’t hurt the public schools in the process,” Wharton said. “I think the last bill that came out of the Senate that the house didn’t pass address several of the issues that the public schools had and that was there was some accountability where the funds were going. Also there was a stop loss for the school districts and it was more geared for the children that were economically disadvantaged so you could really help some inner city school kids get out of some bad situations they were in.”

You can watch our entire interview with Wharton in the player above.

You can learn more about him by clicking here.