Run Forrest!! Run!!!

Once I decided to retire, I was inspired to run for U.S. House of Representatives by the "push" by the President to re-district Texas in order to increase the number of Republican delegates to the Texas delegation by five.  So, my mission is to mitigate this blatant mid cycle gerrymandering by "flipping" Texas House District 5 (CD-05) from red to blue. I am a resident of Kaufman County, which is near the center of CD-05, having "retired" to the family ranch which my great grandfather William E. Lumpkin purchased over 110 years ago. My grandfather Forrest Sr. and my father Forrest Jr. are both graduates of Terrell High School. I can't think of anywhere else I would want to spend the remainder of my days than in Kaufman County where my Lumpkin and Park ancestors served their community.

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I am passionate about health care, especially rural health care, and basic research and development. I see government's roll in these two important national endeavors being destroyed by the current occupants at the head of the Executive Branch and the acquiescence of the current party controlling the Legislative Branch.

 

If elected, I will make it my priority to improve access to health care especially in rural areas such as in Anderson, Henderson, Kaufman, and Van Zandt counties where constituents must travel long distances for hospital care.  With the recent cuts to Affordable Care Act subsidies, many constituents are seeing dramatic increases to health insurance premiums, and many are therefore forgoing insurance altogether. This is setting up a spiral of increasing insurance premiums as fewer and fewer individuals are in the pool of insured.

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I will also work to insure that the government continues to fund basic research in the sciences including health and climate science. An important NASA facility in Texas House District 5 is the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility near Palestine which was targeted for closure by the President's budget proposal of May 2025. The balloons launched and recovered by this facility are critical not just for the atmospheric research critical to understanding our climate but also to astronomical research which help us understand Earth's relationship to the cosmos. Naturally, as a retired NASA employee, protecting the Columbia facility will be a priority for me. And the current administration's cuts to institutes such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are good examples of the anti-science stance of the Trump administration. These cuts are setting us back years in terms of pushing the needed technological advances and understanding that will keep us, our economy, and our planet healthy.

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Finally, I will work to insure that each fiscal year, the House passes all thirteen appropriations bills on time (by September 30). I abhor government shutdowns, and there were several during my career as a civil servant. There is nothing that makes government more inefficient than the activities performed (and not performed) due to government shutdowns. Continuing resolutions also contribute to this inefficiency. Congress has but one job that it is tasked to perform each and every fiscal year. That is to pass by the beginning of the fiscal year the appropriations legislation necessary to fund the government. This has not been done at any time during my 35+ years as a government employee. Due to increasingly partisan bickering, Congress is not doing its job, and the constituents of CD-05 and the nation as a whole deserve better.