Bolanos Gains Prestigious Endorsement from National Farmers Union – Texas

In what Democrat Rick Bolaños called “a Coup and a further erosion of key support for Henry Bonilla,” Rick Bolaños announced in Del Rio that he has received the endorsement of the National Farmers Union, an organization with a strong history of endorsing Republicans.

The union, officially called the Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union of America, is a general farm organization with a membership of nearly 250,000 farm and ranch families throughout Texas and the United States.

Bolaños, proudly waving his letter of endorsement to the more than 100 supporters present, explained that the Union decided to endorse him instead of Henry Bonilla because Bonilla has proven that he is “out of touch with the small farmer.” He went on to say that “Bonilla, true to his avaricious strategy to vote only his donors, supports exclusively the huge agribusinesses, now recipients of more than 2/3rds of the grants and subsidies that once went to small farmers.” Bonilla, as Chairman of the agricultural appropriations committee, had enjoyed the benefits of the union’s endorsement ever since he first took office.

Earlier this month, Bolaños chided Bonilla in a press release calling him a coward for refusing to stand up against the Republican administration by signing a “discharge petition” intended to put through emergency legislation for “disaster relief” to farmers affected by the droughts and fires in Texas and other states.

Bolanos cited a study by the USDA indicating that last year more than 88% of the farming counties in Texas had been declared disaster areas, and this year it was 66%. Bolaños stated that “refusing to help the families who because of those disasters are on the verge of bankruptcy or have already gone bankrupt is an “absolute moral travesty.”

Bolaños added that his stance against the Trans Texas Corridor was another leading factor in the Union’s decision to endorse him over Bonilla. Since last fall, Bolaños has polled hundreds of farmers in Texas and learned that many of them were literally disgusted by Bonilla’s support of the Corridor, a costly project scheduled to seize vast amounts of farmland from smaller farmers in the state of Texas.

Comments are closed.