Texas House Dist. 31 Has Impressive Democratic Candidate

 (These photos of Mary "MJ" Hegar are from her website.)

U.S. House District 31 in Texas has been reliably Republican for years, but that may change in the coming election. The Democrats have a strong candidate this year.

That candidate is Mary "MJ" Hegar. Hegar was a helicopter search and rescue pilot for the U.S. Army -- doing three tours in Afghanistan. She was awarded a Purple Heart for wounds sustained in combat and the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor Device. After returning, she successfully fought for the right of women to serve in combat position in the military.

Her first ad for her run for Congress went viral, and has received over 4 million views in a very short time. The following is part of an interview she did with Michael Walsh at Yahoo News after the ad went viral.

Yahoo News: Are you surprised with the level of attention your campaign ad has received so far?

Hegar: I got to say yes and no. I’m always surprised when people show interest in my bio because I saw hundreds of people doing the same stuff that I was doing, but I’m not surprised that the message of absent representation [that congressmen are less interested in representing their constituents than advancing their careers] is resonating with people. I think that most people feel that way.

Now that the video is live, have you had people reaching out to you saying that their representatives didn’t think they were important enough because they weren’t a donor, or something else along those lines? 

I think there is this sense of “you’re not important” or that you can only get to the front of the line if you’re a high-dollar donor. I had one person say to me once, “Don’t forget me when you go to D.C.” I said, “Wait, let me be clear. Your donation says to me that you agree that we share values and that you think I’ll be effective in fighting for us.” If that’s what you mean then I’ll be fighting for us in D.C. I think we need more of that. We need more people who are not willing to promise people the moon just to get their money.

This video depicts the sexism you encountered when you came back. The door was closed in your face and you couldn’t talk to your representative because you weren’t a large donor. What would you like to do to make sure other women and people in general don’t get the same treatment you did? 

I really believe in my heart that people in general — whether that’s different ethnicities, religions, genders, backgrounds, accents, socioeconomic statuses or anything — really need a government that’s more reflective of our population. And until we have that, we will have representatives, a majority of whom are representing their own self-interests and the future of their careers. We’ve got to hire more servant leaders. I think that’s a great thing about the wave of veterans running. Veterans understand what it means to put the good of the country ahead of their lives. I don’t think we’ll see a lot of this improve until we have people in office who frankly don’t need to get reelected for their ego or résumé. They just are serving their time as long as their constituents want to put them there. Now, unfortunately, the system is set up to put up barriers [in front of] everyday people who want to run for office. That’s something I’m working on trying to tear down here in my district. I’m trying to support good people up and down the ballot.

If you’re elected, when you get to Congress, what main goals do you have in mind? What problems do you see in D.C. wherein you can serve as a corrective and set things straight? 

I have a very realistic view of what a freshman congresswoman can get done. I’ve been mentoring with members and been in D.C. lobbying to stop bad legislation in the past, successfully. It’s really more about what I can do at home. Now I do have things I want to accomplish in D.C., but the No. 1 priority is constituent services and making sure that the district I’ve grown up in and love has representation and has a way for constituents to communicate and get help when they need help navigating the bureaucracy in government. And advocating. I find it personally offensive when representatives say they know how to advocate for groups without going to those groups and saying, “What are your experiences? What things worked? What things haven’t worked? What are the obstacles you had to overcome? What can we do to make things better and collaborate?” I definitely want to fight for marginalized communities, fight money in politics, fight toxic hyperpartisanship. Those are my three big things.

You’re running in a very deep red district. It’s been Republican for a while. What gives you confidence that this seat can turn blue?  

Probably the same thing that has moved our race from “strong red” to “likely red” in a couple of polls. I have lived here almost my whole life. I know this district. This is not your typical red district. Most people here don’t like to self-identify as one party or another. There’s a lot of disenfranchisement on Democratic votes in Texas. A lot of “Oh, this is a red state. If you’re a Democrat your vote doesn’t count” — not to mention voter suppression of different minorities and other groups that tend to vote more heavily Democratic. I would say that the majority of people in this district don’t like to say, “I’m a member of this party or that party.” They’re discerning. They like to vote for the person: someone with character and integrity who will represent them. We have more veterans in this district than in 97 percent of the rest of the country. There is no longer a party of the military. Maybe 20 to 30 years ago, Republicans were the party of the military. I don’t think that’s true anymore in the information age. I think that the reason I’m confident we can win is my district is hungry for representation. While there have been other good people on the ballot against John Carter, those people haven’t been able to gather the type of resources it takes to communicate to voters that they are good people and will represent them. We’re presented with a real opportunity here and I know we can win.

I’ve taken on uphill battles before. Becoming a pilot was no easy feat, 150 enemy fighters to our nine, suing the secretary of defense: all of those things were done intentionally, after I looked at the data, saw the path to victory and did what it took to win. This will just be my fourth.