United States Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) met with leaders across West Texas as he visited the region Thursday.
Cruz began the day in Amarillo, before arriving in Lubbock Thursday afternoon.
In the Hub City, he was greeted by businessman Jodey Arrington, who is the republican candidate for U.S. House of Representatives for District 19.
Arrington and his wife, Anne, drove Cruz and his wife, Heidi around town for the afternoon.
They stopped at the Texas Tech Board of Regents meeting, where Cruz briefly spoke, Arrington said.
Cruz toured the United States Department of Agriculture Cropping Systems Research Laboratory, and met with Lab Director John Burke.
Burke showed the senator and his wife the labs and fields used to perform research on peanuts, sorghum, corn, and cotton crops.
Cruz then participated in a roundtable discussion, where agriculture leaders provided feedback to the senator.
“It was really great,” said Dan Jackson, general manager of Meadow Farmers Co-Op Gin, who was invited to the private meeting.
“The roundtable included the cattlemen, the sorghum folks, the wheat growers, the corn growers, the cotton growers. Everybody got a chance to express their concerns, and the dire straits quite frankly that the 2014 Farm Bill put us in,” Jackson said.
Arrington said Cruz’s visit provided an opportunity for West Texans to voice their concerns.
“I think it’s opened the door to a longer-term relationship and many more meetings to discuss the challenges for ag,” he said.
“This was a really good time for him to get feedback so that he could assess our trade deals, our tax and regulatory policies, and our farm bill to say, ‘Do we have all the things in place to make sure that our farmers and ranchers can continue to produce the food and fiber for our country?'” Arrington explained.
“I hope going forward, this was a great first step in, as maybe one of his staffers said, building a bridge, so we can have that open line of communication and maybe get some good things going between us,” Jackson added.
Cruz left Lubbock for Abilene early Thursday evening, where he was expected to tour Dyess Air Force Base.
Cruz did not take questions from the press, but his office did provide a statement Thursday evening.
“Texas has a long, proud partnership with our nation’s military, and we are blessed to have some of the finest training facilities in the world,” Cruz said in the statement. “The safety and security of the American people is dependent on the leadership demonstrated at places like the Pantex Plant and Dyess Air Force Base. Additionally, with a dynamic and booming agriculture and livestock industry, our state feeds much of the country and is able to foster extraordinary job creation. Each of these industries requires the freedom to grow and prosper, which has been proven to be difficult under the Obama administration. I look forward to continuing discussions with statewide defense and agriculture leaders so that we can get Washington bureaucrats out of the way and determine how to better meet the needs of hardworking Texans.”
