Kristian Carranza is a longtime political strategist who worked as a regional director for the Democratic National Committee. She was Democrats’ nominee in Texas House District 118 in 2024, and is running again this year for one of Texas’ most competitive state House seats.
Incumbent state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio) is running for Congress instead of reelection, and Carranza will face Republican Jorge Borrego.
Hear from the candidate
1. Please tell voters about yourself.
I am a 35-year old native of San Antonio’s Southside. I began a career in community organizing almost 15 years ago as a way to uplift the voices of working people after leaving Texas A&M-Corpus Christi to help support my mom through her healthcare challenges. Since then, I’ve registered 10,000 voters in Texas, helped my neighbors sign up for discounted insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, managed staff and multi-million dollar budgets, and made it from McCollum High School to Washington, DC and the White House.
I am completing my bachelor’s degree this summer through a program designed for older, returning students because it’s never too late to go back to school. I’m running for the State House in the community that raised me because I want to create opportunities to get ahead and financial relief for working and middle-class families.
2. Briefly describe your top policy priorities.
I’m running because our politicians in Austin have failed the most basic test of leadership. Your community is supposed to come before your political party. If you do not have the courage to stand up for what’s right, no matter the political consequences, it’s time to step aside. Our campaign is centered around kitchen table issues: protecting healthcare, making housing affordable for working families, lowering the cost of childcare, more support for public schools and teachers, and job training to help aspiring families compete for higher salaries.
I’ll stand up against job-killing tariffs and work to expand workforce development programs to train any Bexar County resident with the work ethic and determination to compete for higher-paying jobs.
3. What would you like to see the legislature do to make Texas cities better places to live? In what ways could state officials work better with local officials?
Democracy starts at the local level, but state preemption laws have stripped away local control, including the ability of cities to build more housing and address rising home costs. We need policies that allow for growth and maintain an affordable family housing supply which is critical to the financial health of our schools. Texas funds schools based on enrollment and attendance, but if families are priced out of the neighborhoods they love and live in, it’s our local schools that suffer.
4. Texas has taken major steps to reshape its public education system, including allowing taxpayer dollars to fund private school tuition. What do you believe needs to happen to monitor the success of Education Savings Accounts, and to ensure every student still receives a quality education?
As a proud product of Southside San Antonio public schools, my position is firm: our tax dollars belong in neighborhood schools. Now that ESAs are moving forward, we must ensure they aren’t a “blank check” for private entities at the expense of our children.
To monitor success and protect every student, private schools receiving public funds must be held to the same A–F academic standards and financial audits as public schools. We cannot have a “double standard” where public schools are scrutinized while voucher recipients operate in the dark.
We have to monitor for discrimination. Private schools shouldn’t be allowed to “cherry-pick” students while leaving behind those with special needs or different backgrounds. No student should have to waive their federal IDEA rights for a voucher. True quality education requires increasing the Basic Allotment for the 90% of Texas students who remain in public schools. We cannot allow our local districts to face closures and deficits while we subsidize private tuition.
5. Reducing the burden of property taxes is expected to be a major focus of the next legislative session. Describe your ideas for balancing the needs of a growing state with state leaders’ desire to rein in that major revenue source?
As someone who grew up watching my mom balance multiple jobs just to keep a roof over our heads, I know that for families on the Southside, property taxes aren’t just a line item, they are a threat to homeownership and raise costs to renters. But we are being presented with a false choice, property tax relief versus quality schools.
The best way to balance the needs of our growing state is for the State of Texas to finally pick up its fair share of the tab when it comes to public education. Because the state underfunds our schools, local homeowners and renters are forced to bridge the gap.
By using our historic budget surplus to increase the Basic Allotment and fully fund our neighborhood schools, we can naturally lower the local property tax burden without gutting the services our children rely on. There’s no good reason why in Texas, the 8th largest economy in the world, schools are being forced to close down due to lack of funding from the state.
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