House Dem Denounces Luther Words
on Chinese Ban at Colleges in Texas
Capitol Inside
January 7, 2022
One of the two Texas lawmakers whose families came from China issued a scathing condemnation to Republican state House candidate Shelley Luther on Friday after a short-lived call on social media for a prohibition on Chinese students at institutions of higher learning here.
“Chinese students should be BANNED from attending all Texas Universities," Luther declared in Twitter post that's been deleted. "No more Communists!”
State Rep. Gene Wu - a Houston Democrat who was born in the city of Guangzhouof in China - countered the Luther pitch with a stinging rebuke.
"To casually conflate all Chinese students in America with actual registered members of the ruling party in the People’s Republic of China is not only ignorance of an extreme nature, it is also the type of rhetoric that drives anti-Asian hate crimes," Wu contended in an email late this afternoon. "Luther’s racist statement not only paints a target on the backs of Chinese nationals studying in America, but it labels and targets anyone who looks or sounds vaguely Asian as a potential enemy. As we have seen repeatedly, racists who seek out people to harm are not overly concerned who they target."
The state's most famous living beauty shop owner since her arrest in 2020 for COVID-19 restriction violations, Luther is taking aim at State Rep. Reggie Smith of Van Alstyne in the GOP primary election on March 1. The House District 62 contest has been a stage for a comeback after an unsuccessful race for the Texas Senate several months after doing a night in jail for reopening her business in Dallas when Governor Greg Abbott had a business closure order in effect at the outset of the pandemic.
Republican State Senator Drew Springer of Muenster beat Luther by 13 percentage points in a runoff in late December 2020 in a special election for an opening in Senate District 30. But Luther was impressive in her debut as a candidate who had no experience in politics beyond her role as a covid lockdown protest leader. Luther actually led Springer by a fraction a percentage point in the initial election that fall with 32 percent of the vote in a field with five Republicans and one Democrat.
The tweet on Chinese students in higher education would have been tantamount to political suicide for a legislative contender in Texas in the old-school GOP that's vanished in the past year. Former Texas House Republicans Rick Miller of Sugar Land and Betty Brown of Terrell wrecked their political careers with rhetoric on Asian-Americans that had been mild compared to the Luther on-again, off-again proposal.
Brown was sponsoring a controversial voter identification bill in 2009 when she inquired during a committee hearing if Asian-Americans who'd come to testify if they'd considered changing surnames that would be easier for election officials to identify them at the polls. Republican Lance Gooden, who's a member of Congress now, unseated Brown in the primary election in 2010 by less than 1 percentage point.
Miller was a more recent victim of his own tongue - having cancelled a campaign for re-election in 2020 after sparking a tempest the year before with a claim that some Republicans had filed to run against him because they're Asian in a House district with a rapidly-growing Asian population. One of those - freshman State Rep. Jacey Jetton of Sugar Land - won the House District 26 seat that Miller apparently thought he couldn't successfully defend after alienating Asians there.
Jetton is a Korean American. GOP State Rep. Angie Chen Button of Garland was born in Taiwan after her family fled the part of China that's controlled now by communists. Button went to college at the University of Dallas. Wu attended Texas A&M University and the University of Texas before earning a juris doctorate at South Texas College of Law in Houston. Wu is a former prosecutor.
The three members of the first Asian American Caucus in the House - Button, Jetton and Wu - sent a bipartisan Happy New Years message out last week. But Wu could be out on a limb alone with the criticism on Luther's envisioned Chinese student ban given the potential backlash that they could face in re-election bids this year from the GOP new voters who are unapologetic racists and unconditionally loyal to Donald Trump.
Trump has used China as a scapegoat in the blame game for the nation's first turbulent year in the coronavirus crisis. The virus is believed to have originated in the Chinese metropolis Wuhan. |
